HCSS 2020 Q4 Newsletter

HCSS NEWSLETTER Info@hcss.com

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www.hcss.com

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13151 W. Airport Blvd., Sugar Land, TX 77478

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Winter 2020

The 2021 HCSS Users Group Meeting Has Been Cancelled Because service is our number one goal at HCSS, we wanted to provide the annual Users Group Meeting we know our customers have come to expect. But you've spoken–the majority of you don't want to have an in-person event right now, so we are cancelling UGM 2021. We do expect UGM 2022 to be back in-person and bigger than ever, so plan to meet us there!

In the meantime, we have a lot of other opportunities to learn more about HCSS software, engage with other HCSS customers, and provide feedback to help us make our solutions better fit your needs. Here are a few:

Webinars Check out our list of upcoming webinar topics, including

Field Production Analysis, COVID-19 Resources and Top Tips to Start Tracking Observations, and more. Webinar topics are tailored based on HCSS Support call trends to ensure we touch on the most helpful information possible.

HCSS Community Discuss best practices with other HCSS software users, get answers to common questions, and review your support case history. Use the Ideas Zone to suggest and vote on new product features. Log in at community.hcss.com with your HCSS credentials.

HCSS Academy The HCSS Academy is an online learning environment with training courses on all of our major products. Access is included in your maintenance or monthly subscription costs for each product. To get started, log in at academy.hcss.com with your HCSS credentials. Don’t know your HCSS credentials? Please contact our 24/7 Instant Support at 1-800-444-3196.

Solutions Summit: Do more with Less In late January, we will host panels of HCSS customers, industry experts, and organizational partners to share practical advice for improving efficiency and preparing for anything 2021 can throw at the heavy construction business. While it will not be focused on HCSS software, it will give you opportunities to improve your business in the coming year. See the details and register on the Solutions Summit site.

To ensure that resources for learning and connecting with experts on HCSS software are accessible to everyone in 2021, we’ll be expanding our learning events calendar in the coming weeks with new offerings and deeper dives, so stay tuned for updates.

Golf Course at Ravenna | HEI Civil

How HCSS Safety QR Codes Save Time & Money for HEI Civil Since 1973, HEI Civil has provided superior heavy-civil general contracting services to diverse markets in Colorado.

With 1,000+ employees spread across multiple divisions and multiple states, HEI Civil has complex safety needs, not the least of which is its expansive training and certification program. The earthwork and utility contractor tracks completion of more than 100 different skills, and it needed software that could support doing it efficiently.

Their solution was HCSS Safety, a comprehensive construction safety software that can dramatically cut safety admin time and deliver realtime, actionable data. One of the many easy-to-use features of HCSS Safety is its integration with QR codes, which have drastically improved HEI Civil’s communication and reduced reporting time. For example, supervisors in the field can simply scan the QR code on employees’ hard hats and get instant validation for training and certificates.

“Scanning the QR code shows all of a person’s trainings, certifications, authorizations, and a whole lot more,” says Kathy Freeman, Director - Environmental, Health & Safety at HEI Civil. “We also store our CDL paperwork on HCSS Safety, flagger certifications, training records for defensive driving, silica awareness, dirt testing, rigging awareness, overhead utilities training, paving machine operations, even how to setup a VPN

for our phone or iPad. With one scan of the QR code, all of that information is immediately available.”

Not only can supervisors see what training and certifications their field employees have completed with the QR codes, but they can also provide instant access to essential documentation to those who need it.

Freeman says they deliver standards of procedures, equipment specs, first aid instructions, and emergency facilities information through the QR codes, and she’s looking for even more ways to take advantage of the technology.

“I’m currently updating our emergency action plan, and when it’s completed, I’m planning on linking it to a QR code so someone can scan for immediate access,” Freeman says.

This simple, instant access to information has saved the company thousands of dollars in printing costs, as they no longer have to provide printed manuals and documentation. It has also made it faster and easier for the company to communicate big changes or company-wide alerts.

The biggest time savings, though, are in documentation and reporting of training completion. Supervisors in the field have what they need to know in a single tap. Even on government jobs that require more documentation than normal, reporting is simple and practically instant.

“We are on major projects in the city of Austin, for which they require a lot of documentation—more so than what we would normally see,” Freeman says.

“For those projects, they just scan the QR code and it’s done. We don’t have to send reports. They can just scan the QR code and know, okay, this employee has this information. That has been nice.”

For all its benefits, the QR code integration is just one feature of HCSS Safety that is saving HEI Civil time and money. The company also uses over 1,000 HCSS prepackaged safety courses, videos, and site inspection templates, as well as automated incident reporting, to name just a few.

To see how the many ways HCSS Safety saves HEI Civil time and money, read the full case study here:

Read Full Case Study

Interested in the Benefits Your Company Will See With HCSS Safety?

More Info

The Ultimate Gift Guide for the Construction Employee in Your Life It’s that time of year when we look at our loved ones—the project managers who’ve grown eight arms to handle all their jobs, the estimators going crosseyed from adjusting the details of estimates, the payroll personnel ensuring a steady flow of sweet, sweet paychecks—and wonder how to thank them for all their hard work.

As an Unlimited User customer, your employees have unlimited access to all applications listed below:

To help you out, we’ve assembled the perfect gift guide for everyone in the office, field, and shop. The best part is, you won’t even have to splurge; all of this software is included in our Unlimited User Plan for just 0.2% of revenue (or less).

For the rainmakers

For everyone in your company that’s drumming up new business, we recommend HeavyBid Preconstruction.

Eliminate all the individual spreadsheets or cumbersome paper pre-construction processes and give everyone a single source of project pipeline information, note storage, important links, pictures, internal dates, and more. It will keep your estimators, divisional managers, and executives from stepping on each other’s toes.

We also recommend giving those folks the biggest coffee cups you can find, since they turn caffeine into revenue streams.

For those surfing the waves of change

The one constant in our industry is that everything changes. Keep the whole team apprised of the latest changes with access to HCSS Plans, which you can use for way more than just digital plan sets - use it to ensure that everyone in the field always has the information they need! Give your flaggers instant access to the latest traffic control plans.

Keep truck drivers always up-to-date on route plans right on their phone.

And of course, make sure everyone working in the field and office are on the same page every day with the latest digital plan sheets.

For the safety-conscious

HCSS Safety licenses are the perfect gift for fleet managers, shop foremen, mechanics, project managers, project engineers, superintendents, foremen-anyone and everyone who is responsible for safety in your organization. With access to templated safety meetings,

JHAs, inspections, and reporting, everyone has what they need to operate safely. Going home safe to their families is the best gift you can give.

For the decision makers

Put down the nice brass paperweight and the fancy watch—what executives really want is better data so those topdown decisions feel less like throwing pasta at the wall to see what sticks.

With HCSS Intelligence, they’ve got instant access to compelling reporting right out of the box that takes the highest value information from across all the HCSS applications and makes it actionable. Cross-Company Collaboration at UGM.

For those who go with the flow

While customers usually equip their full-time fuelers with FuelerPlus, there are a lot of mechanics and foremen with fuel tanks on their trucks that they dispense from without ever tracking it. Give them the gift of a FuelerPlus license and get back the joy of a complete view of your fuel usage.

And while we’re on the subject of dispensing fluids, passing out a festive holiday ale rarely goes amiss.

For everyone on your list

HCSS myField is the easy-to-use employee engagement and timetracking tool to put on every employee’s phone. Laborers, operators, drivers, office staff, mechanics, flaggers— everyone in your company can benefit

(Base offering only)

from getting instant communications, recording their hours, equipment usage, meter readings, equipment inspections, and safety observations, all of which integrate seamlessly with the rest of the HCSS platform.

Still looking for a physical gift? Try a nice cooler. Nobody says no to a nice cooler.

Something for Everyone

These are just a few of the tools that can help keep your company humming and improve efficiency. If you want to equip everyone with exactly the tools they need to do their job well, without rationing access to software, we recommend the Unlimited User Plan.

For just 0.2% of revenue (or less), you can give everyone the perfect gift to head into the new year.

Talk to your sales rep or contact us here to find out how you can get started with the Unlimited User Plan.

Hundreds Gathered at the HCSS Campus for Sophie Rydin’s Celebration of Life More than 300 people gathered on the HCSS campus to celebrate the life of Dr. Sophie Lin Rydin, wife of HCSS CEO Mike Rydin and former Vice President of HR for the company.

In a testament to the immense impact Sophie had on the lives of those around her, hundreds of photos and stories of how Sophie had impacted their lives poured in when news of Sophie’s passing broke. The team gathered many of those into 3,000 square feet of wall displays and a 40-page book about Sophie’s life.

As one of Sophie’s coworkers, Deanna Lim, put it best, “Life was better with Sophie in it. Now we’re going to have to live life like Sophie would.” In that spirit, attendees continued Sophie’s legacy of empowering others to be successful by donating to the drilling of wells in areas without access to clean water. More than

$17,000 were donated, which will fund 12 wells permanently improving the lives of thousands of Kenyans.

You can see more pictures of the event, a digital version of Sophie’s Celebration of Life book, and more news to come about the ongoing impact of Sophie’s legacy of helping others at sophierydin.com.

Visit SophieRydin.com

HCSS CFO Steve McGough Reelected as ARTBA Chairman for 2021

We’re proud to announce that Steve McGough has been reelected as ARTBA Chairman for 2021. In his first term, Steve established a three-year strategic plan for the organization and championed a robustly funded transportation bill before the U.S. Senate.

He also brought his unique expertise as the leader of an innovative software company to help ARTBA rapidly meet the needs of the infrastructure construction industry as the pandemic changed the landscape.

“None of us were thinking about a pandemic this time last year. But I’m proud of ARTBA’s nimbleness in developing new pandemic-related programs and services, such as the webinar series, virtual forums with state DOTs, and regular market reports,” Steve said. “These activities helped fill a void.

Thousands of executives participated in webinars and downloaded our reports.”

We’re excited to see Steve continue to help in strengthening the highway and infrastructure industry, which many of our customers are a part of.

“We are so proud of Steve that a major contractor organization such as ARTBA would select a software company president as their Chairman. It shows how much construction now values technology”, says Mike Rydin, HCSS CEO.

Dan McRae of COMANCO Wins the CONEXPO Timecard Challenge in 77 Seconds

Dan McRae of COMANCO with the HCSS Time Card Challenge Champion belt.

We drew out the competitive spirit of our CONEXPO booth attendees with the HeavyJob Time Card Challenge, where we asked competitors to fill out a detailed timecard with hours worked, diary notes, equipment hours, material quantities, a safety meeting, and even jobsite photos in under two minutes.

Though attendees accustomed to cumbersome paper time cards approached our challenge with skepticism and trepidation, most were pleasantly surprised by their own ability to use the simple iPad interface to beat the two-minute deadline.

While many of our 300+ participants came in under the time limit, one competitor stood out above the rest: Dan McRae, Sr. Project Manager at COMANCO, our champion with a time of one minute and 17 seconds!

Because COMANCO has been a long-time HeavyJob customer, Dan knew exactly how to copy-paste from previous days and use our simple drop-down menus to populate a time card in no time. To celebrate his accomplishment, we surprised Dan with a Time Card Challenge championship belt.

Dan’s peers and coworkers gathered to applaud his win, present him with the full-size, wrestling-style championship belt, and conduct fun interviews with Dan and one of his Time Card Challenge rivals. Watch the video of the presentation here:

Watch the presentation While we can’t guarantee that every foreman in the field can finish in under two minutes, we know from experience that most can fill it out in under five minutes and cut their daily report time in half while providing time sensitive information to the rest of the company “for free”. See how HeavyJob can help you streamline your operations between the field and the office and improve your field reporting here.

Make 2021 Your Year with Tips from Solutions Summit: Do More With Less If you’re looking to 2021-proof your company, join us in January for our Solutions Summit titled Do More With Less, a two-day virtual event addressing some of the toughest challenges and biggest opportunities facing the heavy construction industry in 2021.

Take the opportunity to hear from industry experts, including our customers, heavy construction industry organization partners, and leaders in the field, together in experience-packed panels. Get your questions answered in live Q&A sessions, and learn from the mistakes and successes of those who have already attempted what you want to achieve.

This will not be an educational event about our software. Instead, attendees will come away with practical advice, tips, and tools to weather uncertainty and do more to grow and improve their business—even if they have fewer employees or resources to work with.

Who Should Attend

Executives, estimators, project managers, safety managers, fleet managers, IT leaders, and anyone in heavy construction who wants to dramatically improve their productivity and ultimately do more with less.

Pricing

The cost of the Solutions Summit it typically $125 per attendee, but during our early bird pricing it's $99 if you register by Dec. 31.

Contact Us for Group Rates

Date & Time

Wednesday, January 27 - Thursday, January 28 10:00 AM - 4:30 PM Central

Agenda

View all of the topics here.

Register Now

Thinking about moving to the Cloud? Winter is the Time.

Calling all IT professionals: If you’re considering a move to HCSS Cloud, your time is here. Our customers typically see the most success using the winter months, when operations are running thin and there is less pressure to maintain the existing systems to make the shift. Right now, you’ve got a perfect window of a few weeks to work with us and configure a new system while usage is at its lowest. When crews and office staff return to work in earnest in 2021, you can roll them straight into the new system.

Talk to your sales rep or contact us here to see how we can help you make the transition to HCSS Cloud while the window is open.

Secure and Compliant Hosting

Instant 24/7 Customer Support

Eliminate Expensive IT Hardware Expensive

Bid News HCSS HeavyBid customers are denoted with green text.

IN

On SR 149, SR 249 & US 6 at Various Locations

F H Paschen S Nielsen & Associates LLC ...........................$4,060,135.56 Superior Construction Co Inc.................................................. $4,082,642.58 JCI Bridge Group Inc................................................................... $4,313,528.09 Rieth Riley Construction ............................................................ $4,577,048.22 Dunnet Bay Construction Company ....................................$4,649,409.32 Ellas Construction Company Inc ..............................................$4,704,511.42 Milestone Contractors LP .........................................................$4,961,404.00

CO

WB 1-70 Ramp Terminal Intersection w/SH 72 Ward Road SHE 072A-046

SEMA Construction, Inc. .............................................................$3,170,523.00 Millstone Weber, LLC .....................................................................$3,280,761.17 Graham Contraction LTD ...........................................................$3,313,048.25 American Civil Constructors, LLC............................................$3,481,469.55 Concrete Works of Colorado Incorporated ..........................$3,769,171.00 Duran Excavating, Inc ....................................................................$3,777,767.45 ABCO Contracting, Inc...............................................................$4,249,839.00

TX

Project BR 2021(105) Replace Bridge and Approaches

Austin Bridge & Road Services, LP ..................................... $14,983,636.76 SEMA Construction, Inc ...........................................................$15,075,583.84 Sterling Delaware Holding Company, Inc.........................$15,268,336.29 Ragle Construction, Inc. ..........................................................$15,636,853.82 Webber, LLC ................................................................................$16,495,798.00 Ed Bell Construction Company............................................. $16,647,642.46 Ohl USA, Inc ..................................................................................$16,786,069.78 REBCON, Inc ...............................................................................$16,858,673.25 Coppell Construction Co., Inc.................................................. $17,231,367.07 Fluor Heavy Civil .........................................................................$17,290,462.67 J.D. Abrams, L.P ............................................................................$18,159,010.48 Johnson Bros. Corporation, A Southland Company..... $18,821,253.73 Mario Sinacola & Sons Excavating, Inc..................................$21,209,711.01

MN

In Hennepin County on TH 94 from Brooklyn Blvd. to 0.1 MI East of Dupont Ave.

OMG Midwest, Inc. ..................................................................... $4,589,898.98 Park Construction Company................................................... $4,658,825.38 Valley Paving, Inc...........................................................................$4,833,271.89 C.S McCorssan Construction, Inc ......................................... $4,999,963.04 North Valley, Inc .............................................................................$5,722,268.01

Upcoming Events WEBINARS January 21 | 10:00 AM CST High-Impact Feature: Analyzing Your Project Bids with HeavyBid Insights February 11 | 10:00 AM CST High-Impact Feature: Leading Indicators Workflow in HCSS Safety March 11 at 10:00 AM CST High-Impact Feature: Staying In-Charge of your Data Through Reporting in HeavyJob

TRAINING CLASSES January 21-22 - HeavyBid 101 - Online January 28-29 - HeavyBid 201 - Online February 11-12 - HeavyBid 101 - Online February 25-26 - HeavyBid 201 - Online

INDUSTRY EVENTS January 27-28 - Solutions Summit | Do More With Less Learn More at www.hcss.com/events