TOUCHPLAN SOFTWARE OFFERS TRANSPARENCY ACROSS THE TEAM, FROM BOOTS ON THE GROUND TO C-SUITE EXECS
BY DEBRA WOOD
When looking to save time and money on projects, several AGC member firms see several benefits in utilizing Touchplan.
“Touchplan helps us plan work as well as track commitments: percent promised and complete,” says Aaron Geiger, chief technology officer at Alberici, a member of multiple AGC chapters. Alberici is a North American construction company serving the civil, energy, institutional, commercial, heavy industrial, manufacturing, water/wastewater and automotive industries.
Alberici piloted Touchplan one year ago and then expanded its use company-wide in late 2021. The company uses it for developing weekly workplans with all of the teams seeing upcoming tasks and participating in look-ahead planning.
The Boldt Co. of Appleton, Wisconsin, a member of multiple AGC chapters, began operations in 1889 and started using Touchplan two years ago at its weekly planning meetings. Family- and employee-owned, the company employs more than 2,800 people in 17 offices around the United States.
“Touchplan does a really good job of capturing our production strategies and help- ing us adhere to and manage the plan,” says Nick Loughrin, group manager for project delivery services at Boldt. “It gives us good data from some of the metrics it captures, including percent plan complete.”
DIGITALIZATION OF PULL PLANNING
Alberici and Boldt have operated for many years successfully using Lean principles. About half of Touchplan’s customers use Lean and its Last Planner System®, which works backward from completion mile- stones. Tasks are sequenced, so those that must be completed first are scheduled that way. That also aides in planning for deliveries or other resources. In a paper world, tasks are posted on a white board. Touchplan creates a virtual planning environment.
“Whether you follow the Lean Last Planner System® or not, you feel immediately at home with Touchplan as its goal is to deliver efficient construction planning,” says Jimmy Suppelsa, chief revenue officer with Touchplan.
Touchplan, designed specifically for the construction industry, enables the pull planning process to take place digitally on a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer. It works with master schedule software.
“It’s easy to interact with a schedule,” Geiger says. “And you are looking at short- er periods of work. You are not looking at the whole project in one gigantic plan.”
Contractors add major milestones, their end dates and the tasks that must finish first to the software. Then all involved collaborate about how they are going to meet those milestones.
“Our software allows subcontractors and foremen to talk to each other and share information with everyone else on the project,” Suppelsa says.
Instantly, everyone knows if something that must be completed first has been delayed. Rather than the construction worker waiting around for another trade to finish, Touchplan has notified those in charge that prior tasks remain incomplete and the area is not work ready. Then the contractor can make adjustments to the schedule or add more resources to keep the job on track.
“Our goal is to save people time, which is money,” Suppelsa says. “Touchplan aims to avoid missed handoffs and re- work. That leads to cost savings.”
COVID-19 PUSHES IMPLEMENTATION
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, people still needed to collaborate, but they often could not meet in person.
“We accelerated our adoption of Touch- plan during the pandemic,”’ Geiger says. “We could enable everyone to continue to be involved in the process and own their commitments but do so virtually.”
When transitioning a team from analog to digital, Alberici deploys change management education and training on the new platform.
“The feedback from our teams adopting Touchplan is very positive,” Geiger says. “Many of our team members have said, ‘I can’t go back to the analog system’ once they have used Touchplan. And it’s very easy to learn Touchplan.”
Geiger explains that Touchplan allows the company to track the accountability of every task and remove friction from the Lean process.
“If you are managing Lean process in an analog fashion, which works really well, you have a large board, and people are putting their sticky notes on the board and moving the notes around,” Geiger says. “Your Lean plan is on that board. You can take pictures of it but not easily share with everyone in real time. With Touchplan, all team members can view and interact with any Lean plan, from anywhere. It makes the process more seamless.”
DELVE INTO ANALYTICS
Alberici and its sister company Flintco depend on Touchplan’s analytics to track whether a job is progressing on schedule or not. The software tracks when each task promised for completion is finished and signed off.
“It also tracks if something doesn’t get done as planned and the reason why,” Loughrin says. “We can see those trends and can focus on the real problems and the root cause, so we can improve the execution of our projects.”
Touchplan increases the level of transparency, from the jobsite to the executive level, Loughrin adds.
Depending on the set up at each jobsite, Alberici-Flintco either prints the analytics and posts them, so everyone can see them, or makes them available on a digital board.
“Everyone can see as a team how they are doing with Lean planning and success,” Geiger says.
Suppelsa adds that “Touchplan tells you things before you would actually see them, and in construction that could save you a week. Seeing it early, you don’t have unnecessary delays.”
The holdups could be related to staffing or material delivery. Suppelsa offers as an example, Touchplan noting the need for 12 plumbers on a Wednesday, but only having six plumbers available. Knowing that, the contractor might replan and spread the plumbing work over two days.
“Within a site, there are tons of tasks broken down by room or by person to get through the project,” Suppelsa says. “Touchplan helps you know how many people are on-site and the sequencing.”
The analytics lets a contractor know if certain tasks are often delayed and whether there is a pattern.
“Some of the best practices of collabo- ration and communication can help drive performance, even for shops that are not Lean based,” Suppelsa says.
Loughrin adds that Touchplan “offers a high level of transparency across the team, from the executive level to boots on the ground. Everyone works off the same schedule.” If items start to fall behind, the entire team replans the work.
Small and large contractors alike use Touchplan and reap those benefits, says Suppelsa, who added that several contractors use the platform when bidding a job as a way to differentiate themselves.
“More and more owners are requesting construction planning software be used, because the owner community is starting to realize it improves project certainty, lowering the risk of misses, costs and other risks,” Suppelsa reports. “Many contractors put it in their bid.”
Contractors are accepting this and other new technologies, he indicates.
Geiger encourages skeptical AGC members to try using Touchplan on a small scale and listen to their team’s feedback, then tune the adoption of Touchplan to their own use of Lean and company culture.
Touchplan also allows project leader- ship to understand progress on the job and companywide. Touchplan’s dash- boards allow management to review project, operational and enterprise level data and solve problems more easily than in the past.
“We know if we are productive on our projects, our projects will be safer, with a higher level of quality and less rework,” Loughrin says. “Touchplan is helpful in us getting those results in a more predictable and consistent way.”