How We Use Fieldwire: BEI Construction

This week’s Customer Spotlight: BEI Construction, a NorCal-based company specializing in electrical and data infrastructure as well as solar power design and installation. Administrative Support Manager Rachel Pomeroy (pictured above) and Project Engineer Danielle Lee both use Fieldwire to communicate with their project team in the field from their office in San Leandro.

Current projects

Medical center client: fiber optic network installation; on-site data center upgrade

Tech client: project management support; security installations; cabling and A/V for multiple offices

Why they chose Fieldwire

Danielle: “We do a lot of big projects with a lot of items that need to be completed. We chose Fieldwire because we could customize it to our processes to make the company run more efficiently.”

Rachel: “We looked at PlanGrid, Construction Viz, BuildingBlok — all the majors ones that we were seeing GCs using. One of our criteria was that it needed to solve for the gaps in our office-to-field communications — OSHA, change orders, problems that needed to be communicated to the PMs on other projects or in the office. Before Fieldwire, we were texting, making phone calls, and of course things would be forgotten.

“We also wanted it to be easy for our guys in the field to adopt, that we wouldn’t need to get into too much training. It needed to be something anyone can adapt to and be into even if they aren’t so tech savvy.

“Compared to the others, Fieldwire is the most intuitive and user-friendly. It continues to be user-friendly for new users.

“We also like the adaptability of tasks. We get creative with the base templates — they’re really flexible and can be tweaked depending on the project."

How they use Fieldwire

Danielle: “Fieldwire has so much functionality and it works with our other process that we use to make sure things run smoothly. We use it to work through issues that come up in the field and coordinate with our different divisions — we can make sure that any issues that arise get addressed.

“The forms help our teams make sense of what needs to be done when they’re out in the field. We use tasks like a ticket system — everything is documented in a task with a checklist. We can see who’s assigned each task, its status, and what’s been completed — we get notified in real-time when anything changes and everything’s documented.

“We use Excel spreadsheets with links to tasks for everyone to see and to make our work quantifiable. They’re useful for scheduling and look-aheads — we get a general view of our projects and technicians see which rooms they’ll be working on next."

Rachel: “For our medical center client, all the rooms we’re working on are scheduled through Fieldwire. We screenshot the calendar and send that to all the PMs so they can see what each department is working on."

“I love how I can customize reports to communicate exactly what we need to when there are issues — and it helps protect us in a legal sense. We’ve had situations where we used the reports with timestamped photos to show where we’ve run into issues, ‘We can’t move on these, here are ten drawings with the pics linked.’ The reporting is exact, concise, and very professional. I don’t know how we could’ve done it otherwise.

“It’s exciting that we’ve started using Fieldwire for tailgate topics, weekly safety, anything that needs to be signed off on. We upload files and use the share function to make sure everyone gets them — they’re not loose documents we hope to get filled out, instead we get real-time feedback.

“It’s also fun to see how Fieldwire adoption bubbles up over time. How much use it gets depends on how savvy the crew is. Some are good at tech — AV teams adapt really well. We find some field workers that are disinterested in tech, but when one or two people get excited about using it, their enthusiasm is contagious.”

Interested in learning how Fieldwire can help you? Contact us today!