Headquarter’s Objections to Jobsite Digital Management

by | Mar 30, 2023

Headquarters Isn’t Pushing Jobsite Digital Either

We Are Good Enough – Complacency

The company is doing fine, we are making money, so don’t rock the boat. Don’t worry about competition, our customer base is loyal.

Our jobsite supervisors don’t want to change. Or won’t. They don’t retire for another ten years. Guess we’ll hire somebody younger in five years or so.

We’ve used the same vendors for years. They are old news technology, but they’re cheap. None of our competitors are winning more business even if they are making more money via digital technology and workflows.

If the local economy grows and our customers don’t stop building, we’re OK. Those are our biggest business drivers anyways, not new management techniques and workflow technology.

Safer to just wait until a competitor makes a big move and proves digital on the jobsite can really work.

Costs of Changing to Jobsite Digital Are Not in our Bids

Competitive bidding for projects means that any cost of change must be left out. Project costs are estimated but not costs of process or technology change. Bidding continuous improvement will be a competitive disadvantage.

Costs of Jobsite Digital Are Never in our Estimate to Complete

There’s never a good time to start incurring these digital project costs. Our project estimating models don’t include consultants, training or other costs not directly project related. 

And including such costs in corporate overhead reduces profitability. So if you cannot fund your digital project from project cash flows, don’t ask me for more money.

ROI on Capital vs Expense Accounting

Unless you can guarantee the results will raise efficiency, any additional costs must be passed through to the project and funded from current cash flows. We’re not done depreciating the last tech upgrades to our email servers. Now you want me to expense these cloud services? 

Vendor Claims about Cost and Value Are Always Oversold

Vendors always downplay their pricing. And they always pretend there are no costs of conversion. But there’s always something that goes wrong and we end up paying the price. 

Our Workforce Is Not Ready 

Our workers are not digital natives, even if they do have smartphones. The training estimates are always too low. The unions will come up with new rules or compensation demands. Heck, they rejected pandemic solutions even as their families were getting sick or dying.

Our Subcontractors and other Vendors Are Not Ready

Subcontractors want to make their own technology decisions. Our standard contracts don’t require them to change their workflows just because ours did. They don’t bid the cost of changing either, and will want more money. And if they won’t change with us, we’ll lose a big chunk of cost savings.

Risk Reduction is Unquantifiable

Even if this digital would reduce risk of fines and claims, we’re no worse than our competitors. Unless there’s a big headline death, fines and claims are part of doing construction. Our insurers aren’t offering any premium discounts if we use digital to reduce risk. Are they?