Building Consistency across a Growing K-12 Construction Business

The Challenge

Construction management firm Nexus Solutions struggled to maintain consistent processes as it expanded. Coordinators needed to support projects spanning multiple school districts, buildings and contractor teams while navigating different state requirements and regulations. Without standardized processes, critical project information became difficult to track, increasing the risk of missed documentation, payment disputes and inefficient handoffs between team members.

The Solution

Nexus standardized its project delivery process around Procore, creating a single source of truth from preconstruction through closeout. By centralizing drawings, bidding activities, project documentation, contractor communications and closeout records within a common platform, the company established consistent workflows across offices, teams and projects. Standardized templates and digital collaboration tools helped ensure that project information remained accessible, organized and up to date throughout the project lifecycle.

The Results

• Helped reduce time spent administering bids by consolidating bidding activities within a single platform
• Helped reduce administrative labor associated with project coordination and document management through standardized, centralized workflows
• Improved access to project information and simplified handoffs through standardized workflows and centralized documentation
• Facilitated the closeout processes by reducing administrative effort required to complete them
• Improved visibility into project history through centralized access to drawings, documents and records

A construction management firm in search of consistency

Nexus Solutions is a construction management firm specializing in K-12 construction, where a single project can involve multiple schools, dozens of contractors and years of project history. Keeping all of that information organized — and accessible to teams spread across multiple states — requires a process that's repeatable from project to project.

For Brenda Schultz, Lead Project Coordinator at Nexus, maintaining that consistency is a major part of the job.

Coordinators are spread across offices and remote locations, working on projects throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and North Dakota. Team members regularly step in to cover projects for one another, while each state brings its own requirements and regulations. With so many moving parts, it’s key that every step of the process is repeatable and predictable.

"The more consistency we can have across the board, when people are out sick or on vacation, someone can fairly simply step in and take over the job," Schultz says.

Without a standardized system, even routine project administration can become difficult. A missing change request can resurface months later, or a contractor can come back long after a project is complete claiming they were never paid. Team members covering for one another can waste valuable time trying to locate documents or reconstruct project history.

"If you've got to go back and fix it, it's so much harder than doing it correctly the first time around," Schultz says.

To create that consistency, Nexus uses Procore as their single source of truth from the earliest stages of project planning through final closeout.

A single platform from design through bidding

Nexus’s reliance on Procore begins before construction even starts. Existing building drawings, floor plans and other project information are collected and stored in the platform, giving consultants and project teams a central place to access documents. As designs progress, updated drawing sets move through review milestones before entering the bidding process.

Once projects are ready to bid, Nexus uses Procore to manage contractor outreach and distribute bid documents. Instead of maintaining separate databases and moving files between systems, teams can pull from previous bidder lists, issue addenda and track activity within the same platform. 

It’s a far cry from Schultz's previous company, where bidding was handled through a separate application that required documents to be uploaded and managed independently. "We wasted so much time moving and uploading things into another system," Schultz says.

In her current role, Schultz says the move has helped reduce the time Nexus spends to administer bids. "That being all in one stop has saved probably a quarter of the time when it comes to bidding," Schultz says.

Standardized workflows, faster decisions

Once work is underway, Nexus uses standardized project templates to ensure drawings, meeting documentation, submittals and project records are organized consistently from job to job. Whether a coordinator is working on a project in Minnesota or Wisconsin, information is stored in familiar locations and follows the same structure. "Once someone knows our system, it's very simple for everyone to find documents," Schultz says.

That consistency has streamlined Nexus’ performance in the field as well. With drawings stored digitally, contractors and project teams always know that they are working from the latest information.

As a result, Nexus has nearly eliminated issues caused by outdated drawings. "Very rarely do I hear someone say, 'Oh my God, I built this off the wrong set of plans,'" Schultz says.

According to Schultz, that consistency has meant less rework and lighter administrative workloads. “I would estimate it cuts the administrative labor involved in these processes roughly in half,” Shultz says. 

Transparency from kickoff to closeout

In a business where transparency is mandated, Nexus is using Procore to keep its school district clients apprised of every step in the process. Depending on their role, owners can access meeting minutes, progress photos, plans and project documentation directly through Procore. Nexus regularly introduces clients to the platform during project kickoff meetings, showing them where information is located and how to navigate the system.

For Schultz, one of the most valuable benefits is the historical record Procore creates. School districts frequently return to Nexus for additional projects years after earlier work has been completed. When questions arise, project teams can quickly access drawings, floor plans and documentation from inactive projects rather than searching through file servers or paper archives. "It's a lifesaver for me," Schultz says. 

More recently, Nexus has extended those efficiencies into project closeout. By integrating Closeout Pro with Procore, the company has streamlined the process of assembling operations and maintenance documentation and delivering final project records to owners.

"It has made our closeout process a lot quicker, and probably taken the place of one full job position,” Schultz says.

One source of truth for every project

As Nexus has expanded into new markets and added coordinators across multiple offices, maintaining consistency has become increasingly important. For Schultz, the biggest benefit remains the same one that drew Nexus to standardize its processes in the first place: having everyone working from the same source of truth. "It's not a guessing game," Schultz says. "We're not starting from scratch every project."

"I can't say strongly enough the benefit of having everything in one location," Schultz adds. "It just makes everything easier from start to finish."

In fact, Procore has become so central to the way Nexus operates that Schultz struggles to imagine working without it. "Our whole lifeline is basically within Procore."