1. Top Mobile Apps
for Jobsites
Kevin Halter
Cofounder and VP of Business Development
at Getable

2. My Background
•
Mechanical engineering at Tufts University
•
Launched life-saving product to market for 8+ years
•
Started Getable to focus on making tool and equipment rental
easier
•
Live on job-sites ranging from $350 million to $1.2 billion in
Northern CA
•
Heavy civil and commercial job-sites
•
Saving skilled labor 1-2 hrs/week, PM’s 1-day/month, impact on
productivity and schedule

3. Problem: Profit or Lack Thereof
•
•
Razor thin margins of 1-3%
Range of 0.5% - 2.5%
Revenue ($ billions)
Profit ($ billions)
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Skanska
Obayashi
Fluor
Balfour Beatty
URS
Granite

4. Problem: Decreasing Productivity
The only non-farm industry to decrease in productivity over the past 50 years

5. Problem: Recruiting
Top firms are looking to recruit the leading construction managers,
superintendents, and foremen
Craft
Professional
26%
47%
53%
74%
Trouble Recruiting
No Trouble
Trouble Recruiting
No Trouble

6. Opportunity
Increase the productivity and efficiency of your labor

7. You have the most control over labor to
affect your profit margins
% of Total Project
Costs
10%
40%
40%
10%
Materials
Labor
Equipment
Project Management

8. How does your labor spend their time?
“Laborers spend only 29% of their day on direct wrench time, while spending 19%
procuring tools and equipment and 52% waiting, material handling, etc..” - 5 yr
construction institute strategy
Labor - Time Spend
29%
52%
19%
Waiting, prep work, material handling, travel
Tools & Equipment
Wrench Time

9. Solution:
Mobile Technology

11. Smart Device Penetration in Construction
August 2012
August 2015
% of Construction Workers on Smart Devices
iPad
iPhone
All Smartphone
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%

12. How can you reduce trips to the trailer?
Trips back to the trailer
•
“Superintendents makes an average of 2+
trips back to the trailer/day.” -Engineering
News Record
• “Walk less, save more.” -Top ENR contractor
• “If my superintendents needs some
information on the 10th floor of a structure, we
don’t want him walking back down to the
trailer.”

13. Why should I look for mobile solutions?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Your workforce is mobile! Increased productivity.
Improved communication and collaboration on-and-off the job-site
Real-time data for better decision-making
Acquiring new data from the field for enhanced reporting and analytics
Young talent wants new tools to make their lives better
Save time, save money, win more bids
Owners will be asking soon…

14. How do I go about discovering new
mobile apps?
•
ENR magazine and FutureTech
conference
•
AGC conference, CLC, and
quarterly board meetings
•
Peers
•
Job-site team—JV, subcontractors,
etc.
•
App Store
•
Innovation leads
•
Construction technology co’s (new
ones)

15. What are key considerations when
selecting a mobile app?
•
End-User Driven. Buyer should be the end user
•
Ease-of-use, adoption, and implementation
•
Speed of feature development and deployment
•
Cloud-based and SaaS billing = no large, IT investments
•
Multi-platform (iPhone, Android, iPad, desktop)
•
No Data silos, more APIs
•
Offline Mode
•
Data tracking and analytics

16. Build vs. Buy
•
Are you a software firm?
•
Focus
•
Speed of technology innovation
•
Consistent and ongoing improvement
•
Larger data pool to make informed product decisions
•
IT is there to help support and implement mobile solutions, which
are working in the field, to the entire organization. They are not
there to be a roadblock

17. How do I measure ROI?
Hours Saved x Salary = Savings
•
Industry averages (% of rework/project, etc.)
•
Cost of doing business today (paper, manpower, etc.)
•
Production time benchmarked against projects of similar size & scope
•
Mid-stream projects, before and after
•
Schedule savings ($1 million/day, etc.)

18. How do I measure ROI?
•
Analytics and reports from software provider
•
Would your employees recommend the product? (Net promoter score)
•
Does it take off within your organization? (rate of growth)

19. Sample ROI: PlanGrid
Project: 770,000 sq. ft. hospital, 2.5 years, $175 million, 13 users
Savings
Time savings x Salary
(11hrs/user/week x Salary)
$478,872
Paper Savings
$23,464
Rework Savings
(0.12 - 0.72% of project)
$294,000
Annual Total
$786,196
Project Total
$1,965,490
ROI
7753.41%
* Data from PlanGrid blog (Aug 1, 2013)

20. Sample ROI: Large Projects
•
$1 million/day in biotech
•
$40 million bonus for on-time and on-schedule for Bay Bridge
•
$5 million bonus for completing 49ers stadium on-time
•
Penalties of up to $20 million/day and $6 million/game missed for
49ers stadium

21. How do I deploy and scale?
•
Select a job-site team and project, who is open to change and
innovation
•
Find success first, build champions and evangelists
•
Share internally via field meetings, online communities, internal
case studies
•
Recognize field team with awards, bonuses, promotions
•
Share externally to clients, owners, AGC, social media, website,
construction community
•
Select technology innovation lead to bring app to other job-sites
•
Find your evangelists

22. Why should I get into mobile now
vs. later?
•
Make more money
•
Win more bids
•
Attract young talent
•
Don’t lose innovative talent to innovative firms
•
Product feedback
•
Better pricing
•
First-mover advantage
•
Use new data & mobile tools to find new ways to improve productivity
•
Free marketing, case studies, etc.

23. What are the top mobile apps for
jobsites and why?
(it’s still the early days)

24. Questions?
Feel free to reach out:
kevin@getable.com