A top specialty contractor replaces gut feel with real-time data

The Challenge

For Scott Keyes, the most dangerous number was the one he couldn’t see till the end of the month. 

As Vice President of Concrete Operations for Fessler & Bowman, a top commercial specialty contractor in the US, Scott was responsible for scaling crews across regions while keeping projects productive and profitable. But without a central platform, critical field and financial data moved sluggishly through a jumbled assortment of spreadsheets, manual paperwork and disconnected systems, with key information often trapped in the front office. 

Without real-time field tracking, the team at Fessler & Bowman often had to wait weeks for finance to tell them whether a project was still on track. By the time important data reached the field, crews may already have burned through labor hours, placed material inefficiently or staffed tomorrow’s work based on yesterday’s bad assumptions. 

"To check material quantities against your production rates, you had to wait a week or two for that cycle to go through project management and finance,” Scott says. “You were always lagging — it was the end of the month before you could see how you were doing."

The lack of a central platform also resulted in inconsistent workflows, making it difficult to onboard new staff — even as the company realized it needed to double its workforce to keep pace with demand. Without standardized processes, new hires and traveling crews were often taught different procedures depending on where they were working, with inconsistent pay rates only adding to the confusion.

Meanwhile, the nature of construction was changing so rapidly that even a construction veteran like Scott knew he could no longer safely base decisions on instinct. "Twenty years ago, you just had a gut feeling that came from growing up in the industry,” he says. “Today, projects are fast-tracked, with less design completed when you start. You face compressed schedules where contractors are putting people on top of each other. Being held up for a few hours is real money that costs you production."

The Solution

To continue scaling, the Fessler & Bowman team needed more than experience and instinct. It needed a shared source of real-time data and consistent workflows that could help crews work together, identify problems, adjust resources and protect margins before projects drifted off course. 

“Keeping the field up to date before it was too late was always the challenge, so we needed something that was easy for the field, easy for the office and all-inclusive,” Scott says. “When Procore got into the specialty contractor market, we knew that was a no-brainer. We wanted to jump on it and partner with them because it is all-inclusive and gets the data and information to the field leaders."

By moving the company onto Procore’s specialty contractor platform, disconnected systems were replaced with a single source of truth that connected resource management, field operations, project management and finance, putting information directly into the hands of the people doing the work. 

The team rooted the company’s operations in mobile workflows, digital timecards and real-time production reports. Instead of waiting weeks for the front office to hand down cost and productivity data, crews could now see how they were performing against labor hours, quantities and production targets each day — and adjust tomorrow’s crew size before costs drifted further off track. 

"Crews can click on a field production report and instantly see how they are doing for the day on that task,” Scott says. “And they have embraced it wholeheartedly because they have regular access to drawings, mix designs and changes without worrying that they’re using an outdated drawing from behind the seat of the truck."

Just as importantly, the platform gave Fessler & Bowman a consistent set of workflows across its growing footprint. Whether onboarding new hires, deploying traveling crews or supporting regional offices, everyone was now working from the same playbook.

The Results

• Real-Time Unit Cost Tracking: Fessler & Bowman used Procore to dynamically track man-hour dollars and units against commitments, cutting financial lag and replacing monthly postmortems.
• Mitigated Major Concrete Rework: By putting mobile BIM and drawings directly on tablets, field teams identify rebar and anchor bolt conflicts before the concrete truck shows up.
• Industrialized Onboarding for Scale: The team used consistent workflows across safety, incident recording and submittals to build an onboarding day program that helped the company double its workforce.
• Streamlined Cross-Country Payroll: The team automated daily regional time logs, billing hours directly to cost and task codes to give executives a clear outlook on project health the next morning.

From daily firefighting to long-term strategy

Armed with real-time field data, daily logs and standardized documentation, Fessler & Bowman crews gained a powerful layer of protection against the realities of modern construction. When compressed schedules, stacked trades or jobsite delays threatened production, the team could document exactly what happened, prove the impact and protect themselves from liquidated damages or delay claims.

"We preach using the delay tool in Procore,” Scott says. “Any kind of hold-up, our guys put it in the delay log. The documentation that Procore provides is a fail-safe. If anything seems odd or might come back to bite us, they take a picture and document it. It is invaluable when you need it."

The platform also helped accelerate the development of the next generation of field leaders. Using Procore’s checklist tools, foremen can rely on standardized playbooks built from years of lessons learned.

"Procore has allowed our younger generation and new foremen to build confidence in themselves because they have a playbook that confirms that they're doing the right thing,” Scott says. “And any lessons learned from a job can easily be edited and added to those checklists.”

For Scott, the biggest transformation is how he’s utilizing his time. Instead of spending his days reacting to production issues or putting out fires, he can now focus on the future of the business, evaluating new markets, planning capital investments, developing talent and positioning Fessler & Bowman for long-term growth in sectors like data centers and energy. 

"Four years ago, I was a lot more hands-on in the field dealing with day-to-day issues,” he says. “My focus now is on three, four, five, or ten years down the road.”

“We're looking out for business opportunities, how we're going to scale and how we're developing our people,” Scott says. “We’re constantly looking ahead to stay in front of the curve."