Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
IT Consulting FAQ
Nearly all of Burger Consulting Group’s staff, especially the consulting team, have construction industry backgrounds. Often, engagements with Burger Consulting Group begin with a process or system evaluation. This diagnostic process leads to the identification of various processes and systems which are not optimal for the organization. Recommendations around improvement can include upgrading an existing system, better implementing an existing solution, or integrating disparate solutions. Because we are objective, the firm is not wedded to any one vendor or product, but rather chooses to assist clients with the development of an overall technology-stack suitable to the firm. Further, with background in Heavy/Civil, GC/CM and specialty contractors, Burger Consulting Group can bring very specific insight and recommendations to the unique processes of each type of contractor.
Historically, Burger Consulting Group clients have always valued and appreciated two things: construction process knowledge and independence from the vendor community. Cost is sometimes a consideration. Location/proximity can be considered sometimes if a firm is looking for regular on-prem support. Finally, knowledge of the software solutions can be a consideration. A certain broad knowledge of many solutions is helpful in strategy and selection where deeper specific knowledge is needed when implementing.
This can include one or more of the following:
- A review of IT organization structure, including individual roles and responsibilities, to ensure that areas of responsibility and skills available align with the overall needs of the company.
- A review of the underlying technology infrastructure from networking, security, data centers, management tools, IT service management, cloud, data and/or integration strategies, end-user devices, etc. to ensure that these are sufficient to support the applications and technical initiatives that drive the business. This also includes the identification of areas that introduce technical risk to the company.
- A review of the applications in use to ensure that these are being used to their maximum potential, that they support best practices and the current business processes, and that end-users are adequately trained in their usage. Where risks and inefficiencies exist, these are identified, rated and recommendations prioritized.
- A review of the overall IT strategy to ensure it aligns with industry trends and the long-term goals of the business.
Our job is to provide the best advice and recommendations for our clients without bias toward any one vendor or platform. We can’t do that effectively if we have a financial agreement with specific software vendors for the selection of their product. That would be a disservice to our clients and would eliminate certain vendors from participating in product selections. By remaining software-agnostic, the vendor community knows that when we help clients select a specific solution, it is done on a level playing field. This ensures our clients receive the best solution for their needs based on what is available in the market.
Business Process Improvement FAQ
Process consultants in general help organizations evaluate, automate and streamline business processes. They often bring strong knowledge of an industry’s business processes to the engagement but also have considerable experience in moving organizations toward a vision of best practices rather than simply a dogmatic view of “this is the best way”. Streamlining business processes is a process in and of itself where the consultant must listen carefully, engage with the process team(s), and drive them carefully toward a better way. They should also be aware of enterprise technologies so they can bring those to bear as needed (e.g., middleware, ECM, Low-Code/No-Code) as well as state-of-the-art solutions that can handle an entire process from end to end.
Any firm should take a hard look at their business processes from time to time. An outside firm can be helpful in this situation by bringing new and fresh ideas to process improvement, whether it is simply a more efficient workflow or the addition of technology to speed a process along. By looking at processes comprehensively, rather than in silos, organizations can often find ways to integrate systems, improve processes, and create efficiency across an entire workflow (e.g. procurement to payables).
Software Implementation FAQ
Software implementations can be complex and overwhelming for any organization. However, here at Burger Consulting Group, we have in-house resources to assist you through your endeavor. The services we provide are management of software implementations, design, configuration/setup, integrations, data migration, testing, documentation/training, readiness assessment, and Go-Live support.
Viewpoint is a construction software company. They operate under the Trimble umbrella, after being acquired in July 2018. The company offers software solutions to help better manage end-to-end construction management. Construction software is used to automate processes, streamline day to day tasks and provide real-time business insight. Viewpoint is often used to reference one of their main products, Vista, which is an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) construction solution. They offer a number of ERP solutions (Vista, Spectrum and ProContractor) to fit companies’ sizes and business complexities, along with specialty products to address specific construction needs (e.g. project management, field services, etc.).
BCG partners with clients to ensure smooth and successful client implementations. Our services can augment the professional services offered by software vendors.
Our approach uses a proven implementation methodology, the ‘Playbook’ to prepare and manage our clients throughout the lifecycle of the process. This includes incorporating change management principles to foster organizational buy-in and successful adoption by team members and end-users.
Expert consultants conduct highly valuable design workshops with your team to build future business processes, delivering ‘future-state’ process documentation and workflows that align with your organizational objectives and industry best practices.
Each engagement includes a dedicated Project Manager that works directly with you. Our Project Management team utilizes a hands-on approach to manage both business and technology needs to mitigate risk and deliver projects on time and within budget. The Project Manager services can address the needs of integration workflows, data migration, testing of processes within the new solutions, and training and documentation.
This question depends upon the availability of resources internally. If you have a Project Manager that can dedicate 100% of their time for nine to twelve months on managing an implementation, you probably don’t need to hire a full-time external Project Manager. However, if you don’t have a resource readily available, we would highly recommend thinking about hiring someone who has experience in this area.
Software testing ensures that the software being implemented is configured and set up correctly based on either existing or newly defined processes. It is necessary to document the steps of each process (and all the outcomes of each step) that can be anticipated before going live in the system. We have never encountered a system that didn’t require tweaks in some manner before going live and having end users work in the system. This is a critical step in the implementation process and can be expected to take at least several weeks to work through several iterations of testing.
Utility Contractors FAQ
There are a number of options here depending on how the production plan and estimate were assembled. A planned production rate is usually best for comparison to what is actually achieved in the field. That is also what field foremen are most interested in. This allows for storage over the long term of actual production rates and values for use in bidding future work. Many timecard solutions have moved into this area but may only have the budget man-hours for a given task. Other estimating systems actually have a timecard solution tied in (think HCSS or InEight) which tie the actual daily production and man-hours to the planned rates from the estimate.
Yes. There have been considerable advances in automating equipment management in the last several years. Telematic devices now come standard on most pieces of heavy equipment. But until recently, contractors could only access that data via an equipment manufacturer’s portal (e.g. JDLink). Today, systems like Tenna and Clue provide systems that aggregate telematic data from disparate fleet types (e.g. Case, Cat, Komatsu) and are able to process that data further into service work orders, maintenance schedules, and charge-out data.
Yes. Many construction firms today have moved to stand-alone HR solutions and away from embedded HR applications that are part of the ERP (accounting) solution. Employees today want access to much more HR related data than in years past so a self-service portal was needed. Web-based applications helped facilitate that. Some larger scale HR solutions have moved into construction (e.g. Workday, UKG, Bamboo) which are not construction specific but that does not appear to matter too much, with one exception. When the HR solution vendor expects a customer to use their integrated payroll, problems can arise. HR does not have all that much construction specific functionality but Payroll most certainly does. Burger Consulting Group recommends a suitable HR product for most construction firm with good integration capability back to the firm’s ERP-based Payroll application to ensure functionality such as union payroll, Certified Payroll reporting, and job costing of labor.
It is difficult to provide a one-size-fits-all answer to this question given the disparate nature of utility contracting firms. However, a few general guidelines are available. As more of your infrastructure moves out of the building, so too should your infrastructure personnel. This is not a savings but a transition. Those infrastructure support personnel should be replaced by IT staff that are user and application focused or skilled in enterprise architecture like middleware, data and content management. The cloud has eliminated work, at least within the construction firm. But the pace and direction of technology has actually created greater demand and potential value which has to be directed and managed. IT should be staff accordingly.
For most contractors, content management has always been a lesser priority. Documents and records have been stored in a myriad of places not limited to shared-drives, cloud storage applications, e-mail, local machines, and customer portals. This means that documents and records necessary for defense (or offense) in claim situations are hard if not impossible to retrieve. Further, utility contractors have disparate systems which are often not well integrated. This leads to inconsistent processes and unreliable data. ECM solutions, now more readily available, have as their sole purpose the storage and retrieval of documents and records that pass through the firm. These documents can then be retrieved from a single location using important metadata tags that make the process far more dependable and secure. Think about time sheets, locates, GPS location data, customer work orders, and other important records. ECM solutions also have strong integration technology available to capture these records from whatever source system they come from. Legal fees are substantially reduced when contractors have ECM technology available and, while success is never assured, one significant risk of loss is substantially reduced.
Mechanical Contractors FAQ
Many mechanical contractors are beginning to use third-party solutions like MMS or Kojo or even Coupa and Ariba to either enhance their procurement cycle or fundamentally replace it. Contractors have to make this entire process, from end to end, a higher priority in their business. Without good use of POs and receiving tickets, contractors lack good purchasing history and committed cost in Job Cost as well as create inefficiency in the AP function. Some of these third-party solutions aid in the requisition function from office and field as well as provide field- based receiving functions. Ensuring a detailed bill-of-materials (BOM) from the estimating solution is also imperative. This approach will require integration back to ERP for posting to Job Cost and AP.
Yes. Many construction firms today have moved to stand-alone HR solutions and away from embedded HR applications that are part of the ERP (accounting) solution. Employees today want access to much more HR related data than in years past so a self-service portal was needed. Web-based applications helped facilitate that. Some larger scale HR solutions have moved into construction (e.g. Workday, UKG, Bamboo) which are not construction specific but that does not appear to matter too much, with one exception. When the HR solution vendor expects a customer to use their integrated payroll, problems can arise. HR does not have all that much construction specific functionality but Payroll most certainly does. Burger Consulting Group recommends a suitable HR product for most construction firm with good integration capability back to the firm’s ERP-based Payroll application to ensure functionality such as union payroll, Certified Payroll reporting, and costing of labor.
It is difficult to provide a one-size-fits-all answer to this question given the disparate nature of mechanical contracting firms. However, a few general guidelines are available. As more of your infrastructure moves out of the building, so too should your infrastructure personnel. This is not a savings but a transition. Those infrastructure support personnel should be replaced by IT staff that are user and application focused or skilled in enterprise architecture like middleware, data and content management. The cloud has eliminated work, at least within the construction firm. But the pace and direction of technology has actually created greater demand and potential value which has to be directed and managed. IT should be staff accordingly. Mechanical contractors are very likely to depend on integration technology today as they are most often dependent on separate systems (point-solutions) for Service, Fabrication, and Construction as well as support applications for HR and maybe even time keeping.
The first thing to know and understand here is the fact that almost none of the standard ERP systems used by construction have functions for prefabrication, specifically shop-floor control and production management. They do have Purchasing and Inventory control which is a good start but nothing to tie those to the shop work orders for scheduling. Larger scale ERP solutions that came from the manufacturing sector (e.g. IFS, JD Edwards, Dynamics) do offer integrated Shop-floor Control but are much more costly to implement and manage. For larger mechanicals with greater reliance on prefabrication, this could be inevitable. But there are third-party solutions which do the Shop-floor control function well but integrations back to ERP are immature.
Electrical Contractors FAQ
This is a mix with smaller to mid-sized contractors relying on the integrated Service applications provided by their ERP solutions (e.g. COINS, Spectrum) and mid-sized and larger firms beginning to look at third-party service solutions that can integrate back to ERP. Some large-scale ERP solutions also offer integrated Service management but that is a much greater commitment of dollars and man-power to implement. When integrating third-party Service applications, contractors should be aware of the magnitude of that effort as there are many touch-points between the two systems.
Many electrical contractors are beginning to use third-party solutions like MMS or Kojo or even Coupa and Ariba to either enhance the procurement cycle or fundamentally replace it. Contractors have to make this entire process, from end to end, a higher priority in their business. Without good use of POs and receiving tickets, contractors lack good purchasing history and committed cost in Job Cost as well as create inefficiency in the AP function. Some of these third-party solutions aid in the requisition function from office and field as well as provide field- based receiving functions. Ensuring a detailed bill-of-materials (BOM) from the estimating solution is also imperative. This approach will require integration back to ERP for posting to Job Cost and AP.
Yes. Many construction firms today have moved to stand-alone HR solutions and away from embedded HR applications that are part of the ERP (accounting) solution. Employees today want access to much more HR related data than in years past so a self-service portal was needed. Web-based applications helped facilitate that. Some larger scale HR solutions have moved into construction (e.g. Workday, UKG, Bamboo) which are not construction specific but that does not appear to matter too much, with one exception. When the HR solution vendor expects a customer to use their integrated payroll, problems can arise. HR does not have all that much construction specific functionality but Payroll most certainly does. Burger Consulting Group recommends a suitable HR product for most construction firm with good integration capability back to the firm’s ERP-based Payroll application to ensure functionality such as union payroll, Certified Payroll reporting, and job costing of labor.
It is difficult to provide a one-size-fits-all answer to this question given the disparate nature of electrical contracting firms. However, a few general guidelines are available. As more of your infrastructure moves out of the building, so too should your infrastructure personnel. This is not a savings but a transition. Those infrastructure support personnel should be replaced by IT staff that are user and application focused or skilled in enterprise architecture like middleware, data and content management. The cloud has eliminated work, at least within the construction firm. But the pace and direction of technology has actually created greater demand and potential value which has to be directed and managed. IT should be staff accordingly. Electrical contractors are very likely to depend on integration technology today as they are most often dependent on separate systems (point-solutions) for Service, Fabrication, and Construction as well as support applications for HR and maybe even time keeping.
This is a very significant struggle today. Most specialty contractors are forced to use the GC’s project management platform whereby their data is stored in a system that they don’t have control of, especially after the job is completed. But maintaining RFIs, submittals, drawings, meeting minutes, and other documents in your own solution can mean considerable work.
Highway Contractors FAQ
Heavy/civil contractors are very likely to depend on integration technology today as they are most often dependent on separate systems (point-solutions) for Estimating, Equipment, Asphalt/Ready-mix Production and Sales, Trucking and Construction as well as support applications for HR and maybe even Time Keeping. This demands more than point-to-point integration technology which is costly to build and subject to break when vended solutions are updated. Enter middleware solutions (e.g. Boomi, MuleSoft, Morpheus) which allow not only movement of data on a scheduled and non-intervention basis (i.e. no keying) from one system to another but also has the ability to transform data to meet the expectations of the target system. Middleware is powerful and very efficient once deployed but takes IT resources to set it up.
Yes and no. There is nothing available today that comes out-of-the-box for heavy/civil contractors to report all KPIs and metrics for Jobs and Equipment, Material, and Company Performance though this is being developed. In the meantime, contractors are beginning to use cloud-based data lakes as a means to aggregate such data and report it through solutions like Tableau and Power Bi. However, the other inhibitor to the use of solutions like this is the more basic issue of data condition. With disparate systems and inconsistent adherence to processes, the condition of many contractors’ data is questionable which then impacts the quality of aggregated data in solutions like Tableau and Power Bi. Data warehouse technology can help with some level of data transformation but does not magically clean up all data.
This is hard to narrow down as many different solutions and technologies are important to the effective running of a heavy/civil contractor. However, a strong ERP solution that is capable of handling heavy/civil transactions is a good start. A time keeping solution for the field that includes capture of man-hours, production, and equipment hours is also important. Most heavy/civil contractors have a large fleet of equipment which must be kept running and efficient. An estimating solution specific to heavy/civil project bidding is essential and should not be done on spreadsheets. One could argue a scheduling solution along with good scheduling practices to be vital as well. Today’s trucking and material tracking applications are important for efficient and effective movement of aggregate material. As you can see, there are many applications involved and it would be hard to prioritize one over the others.
Having a single system to manage and report all metrics for a heavy/civil contractor is a little ways off but a solution is being developed along those lines. However, in the meantime, a contractor’s ERP is a good place to begin. Much, but not all, of the data a heavy/civil contractor needs either begins there or end-up there. Meanwhile, other systems contain important data that is part of the overall performance reporting picture. As data warehouse and analytics technology develop it will become more viable to bring data together from disparate systems and report through a single dashboard to series of graphs and charts accessible from a single platform.