eSUB on the Road: Interview with Anthony Moore, Operations Director with Fuller Electric
eSUB on the Road at NECA
Q&A with Anthony Moore, Operations Director
Fuller Electric, Inc. in Federal Way, Washington
Tradeshows are an excellent time for us to spend some time with our customers. During the recent National Electrical Contractor’s Association conference and tradeshow in Seattle, our eSUB team caught up with Anthony Moore, Operations Director for Fuller Electric, Inc.
Fuller Electric services the Puget Sound, Washington, area with full-service electrical construction and services. They focus on commercial construction, restoration and tenant improvements, and multi-family and large residential construction projects. Most notably, FW Dodge Northwest Construction Magazine rated Fuller Electric 17th out of the top 20 electrical contractors in Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. Fuller Electric has been using eSUB for over two years.
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Can you tell us a little bit about your process before your team implemented eSUB?
Prior to our eSUB implementation, all of our Project Managers utilized their own filing system for logging their project documentation. All of our RFIs and Change Orders were on paper. When our Project Managers were away from the office, they did not have any access to that information to reference while they were at a job site unless they physically brought it with them.
Additionally, our Foremen completed their daily reports on paper and then had to find a way to get them to the office. Either the Foreman or Project Manager had to drive the Daily Reports to the office.
How has eSUB benefited your organization?
eSUB consolidates all of our project documentation. Our Project Managers can now easily keep track of RFIs and Change Orders—wherever and whenever they have an internet connection. They can keep track of what is going on in the field while they are in the office.
Managing our employee’s time in the field has been a lot easier with eSUB. Our Foremen complete their Daily Reports from the job site, and the information is instantly available to the Project Managers in the office.
What is your favorite eSUB feature?
We definitely have a few favorite features. The Daily Reports saves a tremendous amount of time for our team in the field. They write down exactly what they have been doing during the day, the completed work, and any issues at the job site. This keeps our team in the office in the loop at a 30,000-foot level. They no longer need to call the Foreman and ask about details on the job site, because they can see all that information from the eSUB Daily Reports.
Transferring timecards to QuickBooks is another big timesaver for our team. Prior to eSUB, we did not code our time properly because it was too time-intensive for our team. Our field team would work on four different cost codes during the day but recorded work to only two cost codes. And the Accounting team would only code the work to one cost code.
eSUB digitizes all of our timecards and automates the process to relieve the burden of manual data entry in the office. In the Daily Reports, the Foreman captures exactly what the crew was working on and for how long. With eSUB, our Accounting team can now process 30-40 timecards in minutes. Before eSUB, timecard processing would take half a day.
Any recommendations for other electrical contractors looking to improve their operations?
With eSUB and a few other technology partners, we have digitized our entire office operations. Now, we are running multi-million dollar projects from an iPAD in the field. We are truly a paperless environment, but everyone on the team knows exactly where to find information.
Technology is our force multiplier. Fuller Electric is the largest small commercial electrical contractor in the Washington area. However, we are able to do the same projects as a larger contractor but with a smaller workforce. eSUB and our digital process help our back office team manage it all.
Having eSUB is a helpful tool to digitize your processes. If you do not currently have a process to manage documentation, eSUB is a good place to start. It established a process for setting up an RFI log or a Change Order log. If you do have a process currently in place, eSUB helps your team focus on what you need to be doing in order to improve and establish document control and project management best practices.
