L.T. McGuinness is a third-generation family construction company that has led the successful redevelopment of many leading and landmark buildings in Wellington. After years of utilising a mix of various systems to manage its construction projects, the company wanted a solution that would enable them to pull together numerous business processes under one central system.
Procore's cloud-based construction management system has enabled L.T. McGuinness to streamline processes, including tendering and RFIs. L.T. McGuinness also has realtime visibility and collaboration which means key project team members are working off the most current set of drawings and specs.
L.T. was the first New Zealand construction company to implement Procore. Despite the distance at the time, the adoption “was pretty seamless,“ said McGuinness.
“We were very well supported, we had excellent after-sales service despite the fact that Procore wasn't physically here,“ added McGuinness. “We were the first ones to get Procore. It was quite a leap of faith. It wasn't long after we realized we made the right decision.“
Fast forward three years later: L.T. uses Procore on all of its projects. Procore's easy to use platform, and unlimited user access plan gives everyone on the project team access to all the information they need to get their job done.
“If you can use email, you can use Procore,“ said Elliot Bickers, Project Cadet for L.T. McGuinness. “Five minutes with a subbie gets them up to speed and using it effectively.“
Currently, half of Procore's top users on L.T. projects are made up of project team members from outside the company.
“We did it through the Bidding Tool. That's how we got the buy-in from the subcontractors,“ said Nick Morris, Quantity Surveyor for LT McGuinness. “In just a few minutes with a subcontractor or consultant they can see it's a lot easier to use Procore than what they're using now. It doesn't take a lot of convincing.“
With Procore's core set of construction project management tools, L.T. can run the entire lifecycle of construction from start to finish. Among the most utilized by L.T. and its subcontractors, is the Drawing Tool, which enables users to manage drawings and specs in real time.
“Document control is critical,“ explains Nick. “Prior to Procore our process involved getting an email with the latest document from the consultant. It was then up to us to go to the FTP site and make sure we had the latest documents and then issue them out to subcontractors, and then print out hard copies and make sure they were available to everyone. We can now count on Procore to ensure our teams are working off of the most current set of the drawings.
Procore has allowed greater connectivity to the physical jobsite and the ability to work offline has been a big win for L.T.'s teams. Accessing the job's drawings, communications, and documents from anywhere can be done easily and instantly.
In the business of construction, when you need information you normally need it now. With Procore's RFI Tool, L.T.'s employees and external Procore users get the right information, at the right time.
“Having Procore is the equivalent of having an extra person in the site office at all times. Procore is always working in the background, always making sure the RFIs are being chased up for you,“ said Nick. “It's like the equivalent of having someone making sure everything is being done properly and efficiently, not only in the office, but on site too. All you have to do is pull out your phone and all your docs are there.“
Next up for L.T. is using Procore's Construction Financials. “It's opened up a new side of Procore for us and we're looking at how we can start using it.“