Building trust in hospital construction through visibility

The Challenge

When Sean Murphy joined University Hospitals, he found a construction team that was coordinating projects rather than leading them. Without standardized processes or a central source of project information, managers struggled to provide hospital leaders with the transparency and accountability they needed—eroding confidence in the construction department.

The Solution

Murphy expanded University Hospitals' implementation of Procore with the simple goal of putting construction back in the driver's seat. By standardizing workflows, centralizing project information, and giving managers better visibility into every project, he is building a more transparent, accountable construction organization designed to earn back the trust of hospital leadership.

The Results

• Put project managers back in the driver's seat with standardized workflows and greater visibility
• Improved transparency for hospital leaders, architects, engineers and contractors
• Created a more proactive approach to project oversight and schedule management
• Established consistent governance across construction, facilities and real estate teams
• Began rebuilding trust in the construction department through greater accountability and communication

Not enough project control leads to trust issues

After years managing projects for a major builder, Murphy expected to spend his first months as Director of Construction for University Hospitals learning the nuances of healthcare construction. Instead, he found himself focused on something much more basic: giving his construction team the tools to actually lead projects.

"My project managers were more like collaborators," Murphy says. "We would assign them a project, and they would call an architect, engineer and contractor, put them in a room and say, 'We have to be done here in six months. Figure it out.' My team wasn't driving the process."

As one of Ohio's largest healthcare systems, University Hospitals manages projects across more than 240 locations, each with its own mix of construction, facilities, real estate and clinical leadership. Yet the construction department lacked a consistent way to keep all of those groups informed and aligned. Without standardized processes or a method for keeping contractors accountable, managers often lacked a clear picture of how their projects were progressing.

"I would have owners calling me saying, 'You guys told me this project would be done June 1st,' but on May 29th I would get a call from the contractor saying, ‘It’s going to be another month,'" Murphy says. "There was no accountability, no transparency."

By the time Murphy arrived, that lack of control had taken a toll on the relationship between his team and hospital leadership. “When they ask us for quotes, our pricing, our timelines, we don’t always have the transparency they’re looking for, so they haven’t always had confidence in us.”

For Murphy, earning back that confidence became his top priority. "My biggest thing right now is instilling trust back to our architects, engineers and contractors, but also the hospital leaders who depend on us every day," he says. 

Putting construction back in the driver's seat

When Murphy arrived in 2021, University Hospitals had already invested in Procore, but had yet to fully implement it. Murphy, who was familiar with Procore from his years as a contractor, saw the under-utilized platform as his opportunity to give his managers the tools they needed — and to rebuild the trust his team was lacking.

"Procore is the kind of integral software that we've been missing to really tie our entire platform together," he says. “And I knew that Procore had made a real commitment to move into the owners’ side of the business.”

Today, Murphy is leading a phased rollout that is reshaping how the construction department manages projects. One of the first priorities has been creating standardized workflows that bring the right people into projects at the right time.

“We now have an action plan that requires a sign-off from every relevant department to advance a project,” he says. “For example, if someone proposes an improvement on a facility that we’ll be closing in a year, Real Estate will step in. Having that buy-in before we advance anything has been a huge improvement.”

"Historically, healthcare construction, facilities and real estate have operated in silos,” Murphy adds. “Procore allows construction to be the leading edge of communication, ensuring every internal stakeholder group has visibility and buy-in before a project advances."

The bigger change is project managers having the authority, and information, to truly lead projects. "Procore is helping me put the tools in their pockets to be able to have them drive that process and not rely on other partners,” says Murphy. 

That control is particularly visible in scheduling. Before, Murphy's team often learned about delays only after contractors raised the alarm, leaving little opportunity to intervene or manage expectations with hospital leadership. Procore gives project managers a way to monitor progress themselves, helping them identify warning signs while there's still time to respond. 

"We can actually put the CM schedule into Procore and track it on a weekly basis," Murphy says. "If drywall was supposed to take two weeks, and two weeks in we're only 50% of the way through, that tells us that something is off schedule. It's time to act on this instead of waiting for the contractor to tell me a month later."

Putting patients first

In a healthcare setting, construction management is about more than delivering projects on time. Every renovation or expansion has to be planned around the people delivering—and receiving—care. Shared visibility into project status helps hospital leaders understand where work is happening and how it may affect the spaces patients depend on.

"Instead of people walking around wondering where construction is happening, Procore is going to show every active project and exactly where it stands," Murphy says.

"Procore has been everything that I've wanted it to be so far," Murphy says. "It's giving stakeholders throughout the system a new level of transparency into what we do, and I think it's really going to instill that trust that we've been missing."