THROUGH BEST PRACTICES BUSINESS GROWTH

Every construction company strives to manage projects faster, smarter and more efficiently. In this issue of Georgia Construction Today, we’re spotlighting member firms Garbutt Construction Company,

Holder Construction Company, Sheridan Construction and Tebarco Mechanical Corporation. By embracing opportunities that go beyond the status quo, they are finding success while improving their own operations.

Do you have a story you’re willing to share that can help the entire construction industry grow? If so, please connect with Alyson Abercrombie at abercrombie@agcga.org.

Holder Construction: Tracking for Excellence

Holder Construction’s tagline and motto is to ‘…lead with integrity, seek excellence, and care more.’ A great example of their commitment to ‘practice what they preach’ is the work underway by Holder Construction’s innovation team, led by Danny Owens. Owens and his team are developing a technology solution focused on:

• Better communication with clients about time and budget management

• Improved productivity at the worksite

• Improved safety precautions for the entire team, including contractors They are working on a proprietary project management solution that leverages a variety of technologies and new processes. One of the programs they are testing is based on issuing badges that are worn on the vests or hard hats for every person on-site. The embedded beacons provide automatic workforce tracking. The value gained from this data ranges from employee tracking issues in an emergency situation to reevaluating the best routing for access to a facility.

“When materials are blocking an entrance and workers are wasting time routing in and out of another entrance, this impacts hours of productivity,” said Owens. “With this data, we can quickly discover that a simple move of the building materials could address the problem. We owe it to our teams to provide the most productive work environment possible and we owe it to our clients to make necessary changes in real-time for the best result and budget decisions.”

The same on-site data gathered from the beacons, combined with internal budget evaluation tools, are helping Holder Construction review overall labor investments and productivity rates in aggregate.

The goal of this program is not to invade individual workers’ privacy, but rather to ensure Holder is getting the best result from each of its team members and to make changes when and where necessary.

“One place where the individual’s data is needed, is when we are tracking team members during an evacuation,” explained Owens. “For example, rather than knowing we have 500 workers on-site and counting afterward that 498 have shown, it is much safer to see each team member headed to the safety zone in real-time.”

Overall, Holder Construction is making significant investments in their high tech, proprietary solution. But Owens explained there are lots of companies and tools available at a range of price points for these types of solutions, using many kinds of technology such as Bluetooth, LoRa, RFID and more.

As technology continues to play a significant role in construction, and the innovation in those technologies will benefit Holder Construction’s clients and its teams, Owens intends to stay on the cutting edge and seek excellence in all that they do.

Mr. Danny Owens Innovations Manager Holder Construction Company, Atlanta (770) 988-3000 dowens@holder.com