Company
Thornton Construction Company
Location
Hialeah, Florida
Industry
Institutional
Introduction
Thornton Construction Company is a contracting and construction management firm located in Miami, Florida. It has more than 20 years of experience specializing in complex institutional construction, such as airports, healthcare facilities, municipalities, colleges, among others. This company’s core values are integrity, quality, and reliability; they’re demonstrated in its team’s everyday work and each concluded project.
Challenge
Tedious Tracking
For Kim and her team, their job site collection methods for information were very tedious; they had to either have a manual headcount or go through a signing sheet and have people count it daily. With the public health emergency caused by Covid-19, this process got more extensive. It took a lot of time to take every worker’s body temperature and write down that data manually.
Peeraya Inyim also works at Thornton Construction as a Virtual Design and Construction Manager. She explained that one of the risks of relying on a manual headcount was that after being counted, a worker could walk out of the job site, and another worker could sign out for him at the end of the day or somebody else could get in the project and pretend that he was the person that left.
“I think that SmartBarrel is an amazing tool, we are a huge advocate of it on this project, and we have been trying to get other projects within our company to use it and give us their feedback. SmartBarrel has been really helpful, getting us custom tools to the needs that we have.” -Kimberly Paez
Features
- Daily Log
- Project Dashboard
- Procore Integration
- Timesheets
- PPE Tools
- Touch-Free System
- Safe Onboarding
- COVID-19 Safety Tool
- COVID-19 Questionnaire
- Thermal Reader On Device
- Weather Tracking
SOLUTION
According to Kim, the installation process and getting up and running with SmartBarrel was straightforward. At the beginning of their project, they only had a trailer with no power in the field, so they opted for the solar panel option, which was simple to plug-in. The device works out of data, so they did not need to add any other components. “Once we had the building more complete, we were able to connect power to the SmartBarrel device, so that was literally plug and play,” said Kimberly. Peeraya also described the SmartBarrel installation process as “easier than installing a TV at home.”
Since the Thornton team started using SmartBarrel, they have everybody checking-in every day on the device using their cellphone number or their key fob. This automated system allows them to instantaneously get all of the information without counting people manually or writing things down on paper anymore. “SmartBarrel has really cut off the time that we spent in the man-count process, we used to spend a lot of time because of the number of workers that we have in the job site, sometimes we have more than 100 workers. With SmartBarrel, we reduced the time to less than 30 minutes,” affirmed Peeraya.
Integration
For Kimberly, one of the features that they value the most from SmartBarrel is the Procore integration, as her team uses the Procore platform every day. With SmartBarrel, they can have an accurate number of how many people are on the job site per subcontractor, and it auto-populates into a daily log tool in Procore. In that way, they also eliminated having to input all of that information manually.
Kim enjoys having a dashboard that her team can access remotely. It allows them to see how many people are on the project per subcontractor. They can check who is in the field and who left; it gives them a live count at any time from anywhere.
Covid-19 Features
SmartBarrel recognizes that Covid-19 has created new needs in construction companies, as new processes are required in the industry. For this reason, the SmartBarrel team created new features that help to fulfill those requirements. “SmartBarrel has assisted us greatly with the process that we have implemented in our company for Covid-19. It allows us to have questions sent out to each subcontractor via text message to respond to those and let us know whether they’re feeling sick or if they have been in contact with anyone with Covid. We use that information on a weekly safety checklist, so this is something that we’re gathering, and we’re keeping a record of, and SmartBarrel has been able to help us be more automated in that process. The temperature gauge is in the new device; it is beneficial because we don’t have to take the temperature manually anymore as we used to in the past,” said Kimberly Paez.
Peeraya also explained the benefits they get from the Covid-19 tool. “The SmartBarrel dashboard allows us to monitor remotely if any workers have a high body temperature, or if someone didn’t complete the questions in the Covid-19 Questionnaire, we can call that person and ask them to finish them. It allows us to know up front whether or not there is an exposure”.
After experiencing the integrated project management solutions that SmartBarrel provides, the Thornton Construction team feels very comfortable and happy with the value they have been receiving from it. Paez explained why: “I think that SmartBarrel is an amazing tool, we are a huge advocate of it on this project, and we have been trying to get other projects within our company to use it and give us their feedback. SmartBarrel has been really helpful, getting us custom tools to the needs that we have. The staff at SmartBarrel is very very helpful. Whenever we have a question, they’re quick to respond and always get us anything that we need as soon as possible, effectively and efficiently. I love SmartBarrel; it has helped us save out an enormous amount of time.”
Peeraya feels very positive about SmartBarrel as well: “SmartBarrel is a cost-effective tool. Compared to other technology out there, SmartBarrel is a user-friendly option; it is what you want in your job site.”
