Company Tracks Safety Program with mJobTime Daily Logs
California roofing and renewable energy contractor maintains competitive edge with solid safety record
DRI Companies, a construction firm specializing in roofing and renewable energy installations, works with the leading homebuilders in California and Nevada as well as many of the area's most prominent developers, retailers, commercial property owners and managers, and industrial companies.
The company has eight regional offices and employs about 400 field employees, adding more during peak seasons. About 85 foremen oversee crews of between two and 30 journeymen and apprentices, depending on the size and scope of the project.
With dozens of projects under way and crews forming and re-forming as project needs change, keeping track of employee time and attendance and job site events was a challenge.
To maintain its competitive advantage, the company needed an efficient way to generate real-time labor and job cost reports as a project management aid. Kathy Linares, DRI Companies’ vice president information technologies, was assigned to select a time tracking system that would meet the company’s current and future needs.
Another top priority for the company is safety, so Linares also needed to find a system with a flexible feature that company safety reps could use to review data entered from job site safety audits. The company’s goal is to track employee compliance and quickly address on-the-job safety issues.
“Our Safety Team creates a safety plan for each new project,” said Linares. “In addition to random job site safety audits, we also
conduct regular on-the-job safety training for field employees, and compliance is a condition of employment.”
Linares says that a good safety record is good for business. As a sub-contractor, DRI Companies must compete for contracts and general contractors favor companies with a strong safety history.
“Our employees value the company’s commitment to safety and they are fully invested in it,” said Linares. “They know that a safe work environment is good for them and good for the company.”
The company found that mJobTime delivered everything they were looking for – a fast, secure, scalable time tracking system with wireless access from the job site that included a powerful and flexible daily log feature. And, it was customizable.
Although the program worked well out of the box, DRI needed to make modifications to adapt mJob-Time to its unique needs. The development staff at mJobTime worked with DRI over several months to ensure a smooth transition to the modified system. On the job sites, safety reps use Motorola EDAs to input audit details. The data is synchronized with the company’s enterprise resource planning software system, creating safety and training histories for each job and employee.
“The mJobTime system has made our safety audit process easier and more efficient,” said Linares. “With the data collected by the safety reps on the Daily Log, we can generate reports to track training delivered on job sites as well as monitor individual safety performance. It’s a tool that contributes to our success.”
