It may be basic and even banal, but e-mail was the first and still the major impact of IT across the construction industry. At the design end of things, architects and engineers are using extremely smart and sophisticated software. Electronic tendering is common and in fact now standard in state projects. Professionals on-site in hard hats are using laptop computers to consult plans and documents and exchange e-mail by mobile phone.
But for smaller and specialist firms in the sector, visibility and control of specific projects is of enormous value and is often as much related to versatile financial software as to anything more technical. We talked to four smart companies in different parts of the construction sector.
Dunwoody & Dobson
This distinguished Dublin firm is now 101 years in business and under the direction of the fourth generation of the Dunwoody family. It has a particularly fine reputation in restoration and heritage contracts (the firm has worked on almost every historic building in Dublin at some stage) but this prestige work is balanced by new build work in industrial and commercial construction projects. It has over 90 permanent staff and 200 or more others at peak periods.
“We have always employed our own trades staff,” says financial controller Willie Moran, “So we have very experienced carpenters and joiners, painters, plumbers, slaters and others on our core team. Some of them are second or even third generation employees. So that is part of our strength today combined with the fact that all of our projects are led by one of the four directors. Each of them has two or three major projects on the go at any one time with perhaps up to 10 smaller ones.”
Dunwoody & Dobson has three primary software suites that underpin its operations: Pegasus Opera as its core financial management system (for nearly 18 years through successive upgrades) together with Buildsoft and Microsoft project. The Buildsoft package covers all of the standard industry elements such as job costing, bills of quantities, breakdowns by trades and subcontractors and so on. Project is the overall control and timeline instrument while both are linked to the Opera system for the accounting elements.
“We have a small head office team really, with just 10 PC users on the server,” explains Willie Moran. “Some of our foremen use laptops on-site, as do the directors, who also have the facility to log on from home over broadband to check email or project reports remotely. The key point is that we have a set of well-proven IT solutions so that the wide range of work can be managed efficiently.” All set, in other words, for another century!
Bedrock Homes
Bedrock Homes is a young and successful design and development construction firm that has recently completed a 24-house luxury development in Kilminchy, Co. Laois and is now focussing on highly energy-efficient homes for the 21st century according to proprietor Roy Cooper. “That end of things is now based on Builddesk, a super professional software system for designing and verifying energy efficient construction because it can calculate from the energy performance characteristics of almost all known construction materials plus the physical design.”
On the business management side, Roy Cooper has been using various systems since 1991 in his native Canada, Bermuda and Ireland and is very happy with his decision to plump for Sage Line 50 Financial Controller when he set up Bedrock in 2004.
The Job Cost Controller gives the detailed reporting as well as estimates, budgets and financial forecasts and then track each project and each house individually. It keeps track of every item which is then allocated to each house or to central ‘stores’ until used. “We’re able to keep track of everything easily, even each individual house and how much it is costing us.”
“Our next move is probably to invest in ACT! as a CRM tool linked to the Sage system,” Rory Cooper adds, “Because we are moving in to a market that is very much about individual choices and specialist suppliers and experts.”
Terradrive
Under every successful building is a firm foundation, naturally enough. In practice, that is not always easy to achieve. Enter Mayoman Eddie Horkan and his company Terra Drive (www.terradrive.ie), based in Carlow’s enterprise centre, which specialises in pilings and underpinnings and meeting the challenges of preparing sites for construction projects large and small. After just 18 months in business successfully and with the Best New Business award from Carlow Chamber on its office wall, Terra Drive now has a team of 11 with four in the office and seven specialists quite literally out in the field.
Terra Drive has much the same administrative challenges as any other type of firm in the industry, notably the recording of costs for each client and specific job. But its solution is unusual because the company has almost from its inception been happily using the online Twinfield financial and administrative system. “As often in business in this country, it came about simply enough—Twinfield’s Irish operation and Martin Langedijk are our office neighbours here in the Enterprise Centre,” Eddie Horkan explains. “We had for a short period been using manual accounts and records and were just beginning to realise what a cumbersome chore that was when Martin showed us his system.”
“We were convinced and willing to be so but in fact it has worked out very well for us. The interaction with Twinfield and the help we got in the early stages was great and after 18 months we could hardly imagine doing things any other way.” Twinfield is a managed service delivered over the Web. As well as the feature-rich software the system allows the company’s accountants to share the financial data. In this case, for example, the Terra Drive accountants are Lalor O’Shea who have launched Teamwork Accounting as an online brand to utilize this feature of Twinfield.
Another use of technology that has been very beneficial for Terra Drive is the client portal on its Web site. “They can look up their own records with us, not just accounts stuff but things like schedules, surveys and highly important clearance documents from professionals at various stages of projects,” Eddie Horkan explains. “We used to give clients multiple copies and they still came looking again at the end of the project – or long after! Now everything is there for them to help themselves.”
K&K Windows
At Craanford, just outside Gorey, sister companies K&K Windows and Twin Building share offices and administration because they have overlapping ownership and have grown in parallel as businesses in the construction sector regionally. Twin has grown from building one-off houses to major 80 and 65 house developments for Carlow and Wicklow county councils respectively. K&K manufactures aluminium and PVC Windows.
“K&K has about 40 staff and Twin has ten at the moment and the IT systems consists of a server and nine PCs—which is essentially the admin staff of the two companies,” explains Vanessa Doyle, who doubles as accounts and IT manager. The sales manager and some other directors also use laptops and can access the system remotely over broadband while the companies are also looking into remote access using PDAs from sites or customer premises.
K&K Windows uses the Profit Maker suite of software specially developed for the door and windows industry. It caters for all needs from orders to the input for electronically controlled manufacturing by which measurements and other specifications are input from PC for each order. This in turn integrates with Exchequer for general administration and accounts.
“We have been using Exchequer for some years and it has proved flexible enough to handle almost all of our administrative and business needs. We do job costing for both companies, profit and loss by project or company or whatever because it is easy to assign costs any way we wish. The system includes a specific module for the needs of the construction industry.”
Vanessa Doyle says they use almost every feature of Exchequer financials, including e-banking and bank reconciliation which are very important in controlling such a wide spread of business activities. “Another very important feature in construction is dealing with registered sub-contractors and RCT (Relevant Contracts Tax) to keep the Revenue happy.
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers