The problem: Managing a multi-site project
RHSI Engineering and Project Management was given a big contract to service 50 streets in San Antonio. With hundreds of photos to manage—and a small staff—there were too many moving parts to manage efficiently.
The solution: Investing in field-friendly tech
With Raken, RHSI gives their crews an easy-to-use mobile app to document progress. Since all photos and reports are automatically sent to the office, the entire RHSI team saves hours a day—and thousands of dollars a month.
Looking for a better way to manage
For Barbara Tavares, Senior Construction Manager at RHSI, the challenge wasn’t managing a big project. Rather, it was managing a bunch of small ones—each with their own potential pitfalls.
Barbara’s team was responsible for 50 streets in San Antonio. Inspectors had to repair potholes, and seal them off to prevent further degradation. They also had to take before, after, and progress photos on each for the city’s records. And since many of San Antonio’s streets looked the same, tracking everything felt impossible.
That’s when Barbara started her search for construction tech. At the top of her list? Software that helped field crews do their daily reports—without slowing them down.
“I needed a daily that was easily reproduced, that my inspector could do in the field, and was easy enough to allow him to go to 3 different projects and do 3 different reports on the same day—without taking all his time,” Barbara said. “It also needed to be stored, because at the end of the month we use the backup to show the city what the contractors had done and approve pay applications.”
Making daily reports and photos easy
When Barbara found Raken’s field-friendly software—with easy photo management and cloud storage—it was a perfect match. Raken’s mobile app lets field crews upload project data (including photos and videos) on the go. Then, all that project info is automatically turned into a professional PDF report and sent straight to the office.
As a result, there was less emailing back and forth, and more time back in everyone’s day.
“Now I don't have to go and chase anybody at the end of the month, because we take care of everything in the field with our Raken daily reports.”
The best part? Even the least tech-savvy team members picked up Raken in just five minutes.
“The first person to use Raken was Wayne, who’s in his late 60s. He was a little nervous to use an app and an iPad,” Barbara said. "But he quickly got the hang of it, and he loves it. Now, with some of our new inspectors, it takes them 5 whole minutes to get it.”
Saving everyone time—and $3,000/month
When Barbara dug a bit deeper into how Raken affected her team, she found that they were saving even more than they’d thought.
“Raken saves inspectors 1–2 hours a day. They don't have to come back to the office, download the pictures, rename them, and put them in the right file. That saves us about $150 a day.””
That $150 a day adds up to about $750 a week, and $3,000 a month. But money isn’t the only thing that Tavares’s team saved with Raken. Barbara also started noticing that freeing up her team members’s time gives them more time for actual income-producing activities. Because reports were more streamlined, everyone could get home faster, too.
“Wayne is going home earlier,” Tavares said. “When the contractor is done at 5:00 PM, Wayne's done at 5:00 PM. We have to do our dailies every day, so he used to have to go home and work at it in the evenings."
For Wayne, more time back means more opportunities for career growth. “We're a small firm—we don't have the manpower to chase little things. Raken has freed up time for more professional development. We just hired two new guys, and Raken has given Wayne more opportunities to pass on his knowledge to them and actually be their manager. Daily report writing isn’t an income-generating activity, and Raken frees up his time to do more of them,” said Barbara.
Streamline projects (and build more of them) with Raken
Fast forward a few years, and the city’s maintenance program was expanded to 250 streets in San Antonio and RHSI Engineering and Project Management was chosen to lead the inspection efforts and track costs. As the depository for all the data, Barbara brought two more inspection firms to Raken—and now has streamlined their daily reports from three separate processes and documents into one.
To learn how you can improve field data and reports, just like RHSI, schedule a demo today.