This is a guest post by Anders Bendix Kiel, founder of BendixKiel and an experienced Podio and Citrix partner since 2010.
When it comes to administering the finances of a building site, many managers feel a tinge of dread. The work is done manually, and can easily turn into a whirlwind of spreadsheets, a few typos and a bit of doubt in regards to the current status of things.
Saving half a day’s work each week
For Thor and his team at Rambøll, that is no longer true. With the help of BendixKiel, they were able to automatise everything using Podio and save half a day of work every week – leaving a lot more time to fully focus on the actual management of the construction site. Not only has the team saved an enormous amount of time, but Podio has helped them strengthen their relationships with their clients.
Thor works as a part of the Construction Management Team at Rambøll, a multinational company with 13,000 engineers, designers and management consultants spread across 300 company offices. As a part of the Construction Management Team, Thor manages construction sites for large corporations as a middleman between the site owner and the construction companies. He and his team manage all the aspect of the finances for the building site such as receiving & processing change orders, approving invoices, and sending financial updates to both the site owner and the construction companies.
Before using Podio, change orders were submitted by the construction companies via PDFs and were spread out in various email threads. As the site manager, it was Thor’s job to review, then accept or decline the change orders and manually enter them into spreadsheets – one to share with the construction company and one for the site owner. After a lot of back and forth, you may be able to give the construction company an OK to invoice. As you can imagine, this was cumbersome work!
The features that automatise construction management at Rambøll
Today at Rambøll, Podio has made it possible to fully automatise the financial management of their building sites. They are now able to:
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- Receive change orders through a Podio webform, so there is no confusion to where or when a change order was submitted. Also, no typos or missing information.
- Accept or decline change orders and automatically notify the construction company of this.
- Create a status page to share with each construction company so they can check up specific change orders or invoices at any time.
- Have Podio dynamically calculate reports and create forecasts of estimate at completion.
- Invite in the site owner to give them the power to see exact financials at any given time.
- Generate and send updates to the site owner with the click of the button.
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A strengthened relationship with clients
Thor says their Podio setup has brought about a better partnership with their clients, the site owners.
“Podio becomes a strong tool when we have the site owner in the workspace with us – our work becomes transparent… If we can work openly and honestly with the site owner regarding finances, well then we are able to work openly and honestly on many fronts.”
He believes that their use of Podio also has the power to do the same for their relationships with the construction companies they work with, “There is no confusion to where a specific change order is, how far it is in the process of being accepted, when it will be accepted, or when they will be able to invoice for the amount of the change order. What usually creates friction is the long processing time for each change order and the question of when they will be able to invoice the site owner for that change order. Again, it’s about transparency. It is easy for the construction company to see exactly where we are in the process. That is extremely important and also creates trust in the relationship.”
If you too are interested saving half a day’s work each week, contact us to assist improving your Podio setup.
