About SmartBarrel
Time tracking from the field up. Built to end excuses.
We love construction. We build for the field. We don't f*** around.
Built by a 10-year construction veteran. For contractors who want timekeeping to be accurate, accountable, and audit-ready.
The Problem We Solved
Albert Bou Fadel spent over a decade in glass and glazing construction as a project manager running 300+ workers across multiple Florida jobsites. His team was using a fob-based timekeeping system. Then came the call from the GC superintendent saying that Albert’s crew wasn’t on site. The time tracking software showed 30 workers present.
Albert drove three hours to find one worker. Sitting on a bucket. With a keychain full of 30 fobs.
He couldn’t even fire the guy and ended up paying that crew for the punched time. That’s when Albert started looking for an accurate, easy to use, fraud-proof timekeeping solution. He tried every timekeeping solution on the market including:
- Mobile apps that required smartphones and WiFi
- Fingerprint scanners that failed with gloves and welded hands
- ID card systems workers forgot
- Even iris scanners (yes, really)
Every solution came with excuses: “My phone died.” “No internet.” “Gloves.” “Welded fingers.”
That’s when Albert decided to build SmartBarrel: a time tracking solution designed to track hourly labor in actual construction conditions.
That 300-worker problem Albert solved? It was just the beginning. Today, SmartBarrel is on jobsites in all 50 states helping subcontractors and GCs who self perform accurately track labor hours. SmartBarrel AI powered timekeeping works for crews from 50 to 5,000+ workers. Across single sites or 50+ simultaneous jobsites. In one state or across fifteen.
Biometric facial verification that ensures accurate labor hours helps deliver structured labor data across enterprise operations. Because when your foundation is 100% accurate time capture, everything else that depends on labor scales.
SmartBarrel - Founded 2018
SmartBarrel is dedicated to creating technology that wins over the field. We understand that for the office and payroll team to get accurate data, the field has to be happy and actually using the solution.
SmartBarrel doesn’t require training for the field team. We know that workers want to come to the job site and just get to work, without wasting time on admin tasks. Every worker needs to be accountable to enter their own time. We provide them with an easy solution to do just that.
The SmartBarrel device is durable, weatherproof, LTE-connected, and can be powered via electricity or solar. Our time tracking solution uses AI-powered facial verification to automatically verify employee times, coupled with a dashboard that provides foremen the ability to review time cards and assign cost codes. SmartBarrel has been designed from the start as an excuse-free solution.
Fun Fact: The original time clock was designed to be mounted on the top of a construction safety barrel, which is where it got the name: SmartBarrel
Our Vision
We bring accountability and transparency to construction timekeeping. Simple for your crew, built for your complexity.
Workers punch in their phone number and the timeclock takes their picture. Our system verifies the photo and creates a timesheet. The foreman validates punches and assigns cost codes in 5 minutes a day. Now you have real-time, structured labor data feeding your payroll, ERP, job costing, and business intelligence tools.
Every worker is accountable for their own time. Every foreman is freed from timekeeper duties. Every contractor armed with data they can actually trust.
That’s what we built SmartBarrel to do.
Our Motto
This is our motto because it’s construction’s reality.
Anyone can build flashy tech. In construction, it has to work – or it won’t get used. Period.
Construction only happens in one place, the field. SmartBarrel maintains a field first ethos as we develop construction’s easiest and most accurate timekeeping solution. Simple deployment. Zero excuses. Built for the harshest conditions. Designed by people who’ve worn the boots and carried the hard hat.
SmartBarrel in Action
We're on the ground at industry events, learning from contractors and sharing what works. You'll find us at AGC conferences, Specialty contractor trade shows, Regional construction events and Technology demonstrations
Want to see SmartBarrel in person? Check our Events Page or book a demo, and we'll bring it to your jobsite.
Meet the SmartBarrel Team
Built by construction people, technology experts, and folks who understand that great software requires both.
Albert Bou Fadel
CEO & Founder
Albert is founder and CEO of SmartBarrel. He spent 10+ years in construction—co-founding a glazing factory and managing crews with clipboards, watching time theft drain projects. After testing every timekeeping solution and finding nothing that worked, he taught himself coding and electronics to build SmartBarrel. He’s obsessed with giving contractors clarity on labor hours. When you’ve dealt with the same BS for a decade, you don’t stop until it’s solved.
Yana Tcharnaia
VP of Growth
Yana leads the company’s expansion across North America. She spent eight years at Jonas Construction Software, one of the industry’s leading ERP providers, working with hundreds of contractors – from small specialty trades to enterprise GCs—solving workforce management and job costing challenges. She’s seen what works (and what fails) when contractors modernize time tracking. At SmartBarrel, Yana helps contractors find solutions that actually work in the field.
Britton Bauer
Director of Sales
Britton leads SmartBarrel’s sales team with over 18 years of experience building revenue engines and scaling sales organizations. With 7+ years in SaaS sales and leadership, he’s developed a track record of exceeding targets by focusing on what actually matters: understanding customer pain points and delivering solutions that solve real problems. At SmartBarrel, he helps contractors cut through the time tracking chaos and find workforce management that works in the field – not just on paper.
Shiloh Hoggard
Director of Customer Success
Shiloh ensures contractors actually use the software and see results. She believes successful implementations bring people, process, and technology together on jobsites. Her team focuses on adoption, training, and solving problems before they derail productivity. Whether onboarding a 100-person crew or helping a contractor’s rollout, she’s driven by clients thriving because their tools work for them, not against them.
Karen Tara Bourbié
Head of Marketing
Karen leads go-to-market strategy and growth initiatives. With 15+ years driving marketing for technology companies – from startups to enterprise organizations – she’s built GTM strategies, sales enablement programs, and demand generation engines that deliver results. At SmartBarrel, she focuses on solving business problems that matter: helping contractors find workforce solutions that add real value, not just features.
From Jobsites to Dashboards
Founded in 2018, SmartBarrel serves specialty contractors managing operations from 50 to 5,000+ workers across North America.
What started as a solution for one frustrated PM managing 300 workers is now the time tracking system for mid-market and enterprise contractors running multi-site, multi-state operations.
The technology: Biometric facial verification. Built-in LTE. Self-learning AI. Zero training required. Easy to use software makes validating punches and assigning cost codes a 5 minute a day task.
The architecture: Zero-touch data flow from field to payroll to ERP. 70+ data points captured automatically. Real-time labor cost visibility across your entire operation.
The integrations: Procore, Foundation, Viewpoint Vista, CMiC, PowerBI – SmartBarrel feeds clean, structured data to the systems you already use.
Your crew performs an easy punch in and out. Your foreman spends 5 minutes a day on payroll. Your CFO sees real-time labor costs across all jobsites. Your PM sees accurate job costing without manual entry. Your IT team sees zero-configuration ERP integration.
That’s the SmartBarrel difference: engineered sophistication delivering field simplicity at enterprise scale.
See SmartBarrel in Action
Book a 15-minute demo and we’ll show you the time tracking solution that actually works on construction sites.