With projects spanning eight geographic regions and structures ranging from world-class football fields to hospitals and government buildings, the Manhattan Construction Company needed complete visibility into its entire workplace.
Recent growing pains, while welcomed, made it a challenge to manage its various projects at the productivity levels they needed to meet profit margin targets.
“Our preconstruction department was looking to improve resource utilization related to how we produce estimates,” says Justin Bell, senior project controls manager for Manhattan Construction. “The operations team works on projects that last six months to three years or more, but the team in preconstruction develops a bid in just a couple of days to a week. The more rapid turnaround in preconstruction workforce assignments made it difficult to coordinate with the operations team.”
The operations group was currently using various Excel spreadsheets as its project management system, which created a silo around the department’s critical information, making it hard to coordinate changes with among various team members. COVID-19 made Bell’s job even more complicated. As the pandemic rolled through the country, it paused some projects and accelerated others, with project schedules that continued to evolve and change.
MCC’s management team realized it couldn’t scale its business, let alone coordinate all the COVID-19 related schedule changes, with its current home-made spreadsheet approach. It opted for a comprehensive resource planning platform.
We’ll Take Manhattan
Manhattan Construction Company is a fifth-generation family-owned company that provides preconstruction, construction management, program management, general building and design-build services throughout the United States, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. MCC’s portfolio of work includes sports, mission-critical, healthcare, government, education, laboratory, aviation, transportation, convention, casino, hospitality, warehouse and distribution facilities. Manhattan is a 15-time Associated Builders and Contractors Accredited Quality Contractor, an ABC 2019, 2020 and 2021 Top Performing Contractor, a nine-time STEP Diamond Safety Award Winner and a 2019 National Safety Excellence Award winner.
Blueprint to Success
Manhattan Construction used a real-time “what if” feature to quickly see how shifting project deadlines affected resource allocations through the company’s various jobsites.
Bell appreciated the platform’s capacity planning, what-if analysis and other tools to help deploy the right people in the right place at the right time.
The tool’s real-time functionality enabled it to act like a blueprint so Bell could see all aspects of a project at once, along with a view into related projects. Initially, he was concerned that implementation of the new software platform would be a hurdle for his organization, but he found that wasn’t the case. MCC chose a platform that integrated with the company’s enterprise system without creating a massive amount of maintenance and customization. After an hour and a half of training, each regional group was up and running.
The platform was simple and intuitive to use.
Achieving Company-Wide Project Visibility During the Pandemic
When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in early 2020, MCC quickly discovered that projects popped up faster than expected and some needed to be completed faster than normal. This increased the need for visibility on an inter-regional level.
MCC needed to move people who were working in Texas to Oklahoma to complete a project on schedule. In other instances, projects that were about ready to start were paused, with resources set to be idled and unproductive. With the extended visibility in one tool that was now available, MCC managers could make instant decisions about which team members and equipment resources should be reallocated quickly to another project or region. Essentially, the platform allowed users across all regions to manage resources that were not even within their territories to manage.
Hoping for the Best—But Using Technology to Prepare for the Worst
The software platform enabled MCC to produce a best-case and worst-case report for the entire company in real time. Managers now assign this to each project so when the data is exported, it is easy to forecast their resource needs. Then, managers can have discussions that validate and balance those needs to come up with the most accurate forecast possible.
One report is company-wide but broken down into eight regions. It shows the maximum and the minimum number of people needed day by day projected for an entire year. This helps MCC determine its staffing needs over time. Then, there is a report that is a list of projects and what the resource needs and timeframes are for those projects.
“These reports make us much more effective at resource planning on a national level,” Bell says. “In the past, if you needed somebody, you had to guess who to call or email. Now, there’s a tool that automatically knows to prompt us for it. The information is right at our fingertips.”
