Most contractors think time tracking is just an HR problem.
Wrong.
When your field crews are clocking in on paper, padding hours, or playing the buddy punching game, the damage spreads across the company. HR scrambles to fix payroll. Operations can’t forecast labor costs. Business development bids with garbage data. And your PMs? They’re flying blind.
We sat down with the leadership team at Acousti – a specialty drywall contractor running crews across the Southeast – to talk about what actually happens when time tracking breaks down. What we got was a brutally honest conversation about how one weak link in your labor data destroys profitability across every department.
Here’s what construction leaders who manage the chaos every day had to say.
Hit play above to hear it straight from them, or keep scrolling for the breakdown.
The Field Question Nobody Wants to Answer
We started the panel with a simple poll: Who gets hurt most when you have inaccurate hours from the field?
The options:
- Project Managers
- Operations
- HR/Payroll
- Business Development/Estimating
- All of them – it’s a big sh*t show
Spoiler: It’s the last one.
Mike Camacho, Senior VP of Operations at Acousti, didn’t mince words.
“Labor in our industry, especially in drywall, is our biggest risk. Material is pretty stagnant. Everybody’s getting material from the same places. But the labor force, the tracking of the labor force, the production we’re getting from the field – it is critical to have these answers.”
When you’re running 100+ workers on a single project, 15 minutes of time theft or sloppy clock-ins per person adds up to thousands of dollars per week. Multiply that across 10 jobsites, and you’re bleeding six figures before you even realize it.
Why HR Can’t Fix What the Field Breaks
Steve Langston, VP of Human Resources at Acousti, dropped a truth bomb that most contractors miss:
“The biggest issue – the true villain right now – is labor shortages. And everyone on this stage has felt exactly what this is.”
Here’s the cascade:
- Labor shortages force existing crews to work extended hours
- Extended hours lead to burnout, safety risks, and turnover
- Turnover creates more shortages
- More shortages pile pressure back on remaining workers
And if you’re tracking time with paper timesheets or relying on foremen to manually enter hours? You have zero visibility into who’s working what, where the overtime is stacking up, or when your people are about to break.
Steve was clear:
“Without indicators of things like what are they doing, where’s the workload going, how many hours are they spending – then making sure you have proper compensation packages, PTO plans, allowing people to take time off – these are all things that repair the foundation that lets employees actually work hard.”
Translation: If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. And your people will quit before you figure it out.
Construction Operations Gets Blindsided by Bad Data
Mike Camacho runs the operation at Acousti. He needs production numbers yesterday. Not next week. Not after payroll closes.
“I need to know what production my team is getting on a weekly basis. And if I can get it faster than that, it’s going to make it even better. Because on these large, complicated projects, we need to be able to course correct when we’re not hitting the productions that are in our estimate.”
Bad construction time data doesn’t just cost money. It kills your ability to react.
Here’s the nightmare scenario Mike described:
You’re on a $30 million project. Your estimate said 100 workers for 6 months at X production rate. But your timesheets are a mess – handwritten, illegible, buddy-punched. By the time payroll processes everything and you get accurate hours, you’re two weeks behind reality.
Two weeks where:
- Workers are standing around waiting for materials
- Your superintendent is overstaffed because the GC demanded bodies (but you’re tripping over your own crews)
- Labor costs are bleeding but you won’t see it until the next WIP report
“You don’t want to get to the end of a job and then have a million dollar write-up and say, ‘Wow, we made a ton more money,'” Mike said. “That’s not good data, even though it’s considered positive. You should have known that along the way.”
The takeaway: Construction operations can’t course-correct with delayed, inaccurate labor data. You’re driving blind.
Construction Business Development Bids on Feelings, Not Facts
Richard Zimmerman, VP of Business Development at Acousti, summed it up perfectly:
“Knowing where your hours are, knowing your estimates are accurate – you’re bidding a job based on collaboration of people with tons of experience and millions of dollars of projects. For the most part, we have those things dialed in. But once you get to a job that’s 100 acres with 100+ employees, it’s physically impossible to keep an eye on all those guys.”
Even with great estimators, even with foremen and superintendents watching the site, a 1.5-2% labor suck on your budgeted hours compounds across projects.
Richard’s team noticed something critical: Their labor turns (average hourly rate efficiency) would fluctuate month to month. Why? Because their list showed 40 workers clocked in at 7 AM and out at 4 PM – but they knew that wasn’t accurate.
“Maybe they come in 15 minutes late and leave 15 minutes early. The larger the job, it compounds. Being able to know where your costs are and manage them better – it’s a big deal in terms of us being able to competitively price projects without putting huge contingencies in because we’re really not sure.”
Without construction verified hours, you’re either:
- Overpricing bids with safety margins (and losing work)
- Underpricing bids based on optimistic assumptions (and bleeding money)
Neither wins you jobs profitably.
The Field Doesn’t Have Time for Excuses
David Rosen, Project Manager at Acousti, lives on the jobsite. He’s the one dealing with the chaos when systems fail.
Before switching to construction digital time tracking with facial verification, David’s team used paper sign-in sheets. The problems?
“We can lose 20-30 minutes a day depending on crew size.”
That’s just the morning lineup. Then add:
- 1-2 hours per day transcribing illegible handwriting into the system
- Another 1-2 hours per week fact-checking discrepancies
- Constant disputes over who worked what hours
With 150+ workers on a large project, David was spending 10+ hours per week just managing timesheets.
“Now that we have SmartBarrel,” David said, “it’s one to two hours a week. We fact-check during the week and have foremen approve hours. But in general, preparing timesheets to get people paid takes one to two hours on Friday. That’s it.”
The difference? Verified time, captured in real time, with no manual entry.
David caught time theft within the first week of deployment. “We had somebody clock in on Saturday, leave immediately, and had their friend clock them out. We caught it that week during payroll because the system flagged it – wrong person, red circle.”
That’s one fraud incident stopped before it became a pattern. On paper it would’ve bled for months.
The Real Cost: What You Can’t See, You Can’t Fix
Steve Langston brought the conversation full circle with a point that should scare every contractor:
“Inaccurate paychecks are devastating to an employee. That can mean the difference between lights on or lights off, whether my child goes to ballet lessons or football practice. There’s nothing that’s more taxing on morale than inaccurate paychecks. Period.”
And inaccurate paychecks start with inaccurate construction time tracking.
When your data is wrong:
- Payroll is a nightmare (and workers quit over bad checks)
- HR can’t manage workload, PTO, or burnout
- Operations can’t forecast or course-correct in time
- Business development bids with gut feel instead of facts
- Field teams waste admin time instead of managing crews
Everything ties together. One breakdown cascades everywhere.
The Million-Dollar Statement
Richard Zimmerman said it best during the panel:
“Everything ties in together way more than anyone expects. Pre-construction, construction, post-construction, maintenance – everyone’s battling their own fight. But at the end of the day, they’re very well connected. A screw-up in one place can damage the whole organization.”
That’s the reality most contractors miss. Construction time tracking isn’t just about preventing buddy punching or cutting 15 minutes of time theft per worker. It’s about giving every department the accurate, real-time data they need to do their jobs without flying blind.
What Acousti Did (And What Happened)
Acousti deployed SmartBarrel’s biometric facial verification time clocks across their Southeast jobsites. The results followed:
- 60% reduction in payroll processing time (from 10+ hours/week to 1-2 hours)
- Real-time labor visibility for operations to course-correct instantly
- Verified hours that support accurate T&M billing and draw schedules
- Better bid data that removes guesswork from labor cost estimates
- Instant fraud detection that stops time theft before it becomes a pattern
David Rosen’s team went from drowning in paper timesheets to having verified, clean punches in minutes. Mike Camacho’s operations team can pull live reports to see exactly where labor dollars are going. Richard Zimmerman’s estimators can bid with confidence knowing their historical labor costs are accurate.
And Steve Langston’s HR team? They’re not chasing down discrepancies or dealing with paycheck complaints every Friday.
Watch the Full Panel Discussion
This article covers the highlights, but there’s way more in the full webinar “How Time Tracking Impacts Every Department of Your Construction Company”.
Hear directly from Acousti’s leadership team as they discuss:
- How they evaluated construction time tracking solutions (and what made them choose biometric verification)
- The deployment process and how they got 100+ workers onboarded fast
- Real-world examples of catching time theft and labor inefficiencies
- How they use time data to improve safety, compliance, and jobsite communication
- Why they believe verified time is the foundation for AI and automation in construction
If you’re still using paper timesheets, or if your construction digital solution lets workers manually enter their own hours without verification, you’re leaving money on the table.
Not just in the field. Everywhere.
Your HR team is scrambling. Your operations team is guessing. Your estimators are bidding blind. And your PMs are managing chaos instead of managing projects.
The most accurate time from the field isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation for everything else.
Want to see how specialty contractors are finally solving this? Talk to our team today.
