YOU DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS, BUT HERE YOU ARE.
Read this before training. What changes in your day, what doesn’t, and where to get help.
YOU’VE DONE
THIS BEFORE
Before I became the owner of a construction technology company, I spent 30 years learning everything I could in the construction industry.
After my first week on the job, my dad asked me who the least important person on the jobsite was. I named off everyone but me.
In his own polite way, he set me straight. “You’re the least important person here,” he said, “because you don’t physically build anything. Without the trades and the workers who show up every day, there’s no building. Don’t ever forget how important the guys in the field are.”
Think about the first cordless drill someone handed you. It probably felt wrong. You worked off a cord your whole career, and the cord did the job fine.
But nobody kept the cord. You got used to the new one because it was better.
So let me be straight with you: just like that cordless drill, SMARTBUILD will make your life easier. It’ll take some getting used to.
All we’re asking is that you give it the same couple of weeks or months you gave the drill.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
03 / 15THE REASON FOR CHANGE
They were thinking about you but didn’t bring you into the room.
Why your company bought this
SMARTBUILD puts all the project information in one place that is easy for everyone to get to!
Your company is changing. Paperwork has become more important and keeping track of it has never been more important.
Right now, the same information gets written down more than once, is stored in places that are hard to find, and a lot of times lost or forgotten. People are playing the telephone game to get information and getting to the facts/truth is harder.
What this decision is about
Bringing in new software is a decision about process, not a decision about people. Your leadership looked at how work moves through the company and decided the process had to change.
How does SMARTBUILD help me?
SMARTBUILD is like having your own dedicated assistant to organize your information, remind you of things you need to take care of, and share information with all of your team.
SECTION 0104 / 15ADDRESSING CONCERNS
Is this about cutting jobs?
No, and you don’t have to take our word for it. Look at what your company is doing. They are paying for this platform, paying for you to be trained on it, and giving up your working hours while that training happens.
Cutting people is cheap and quiet. This is neither.
Why keep a record of everything?
For the same reason a timesheet does. A record is what settles it later.
Everything that goes in carries a name and a date. It records what got done and when, not where you are or how long you sat on a screen. What that gives you is a trail.
When hours go missing, when extra work gets done on somebody’s say-so and nobody remembers agreeing to it, or when a delay lands on the wrong crew, the answer is in the system instead of in somebody’s memory.
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Do I need to be good with computers?
No. Most of it is tapping buttons and taking photos, and the platform walks you through it as you go. Everything for one job sits in one place, in the order you’d do it.
Training works the same way. You do your own work, in your own account, with a trainer beside you the whole time. Ask as many times as you need to.
Nobody in your company is good at this yet. The office is learning it the same week you are.
What if I make a mistake?
You will, and so will everyone else. Most of what you enter can be corrected.
However you’ve been working until now, the same work has probably ended up living in a few different places: a timesheet, an email, somebody’s spreadsheet. You fix it in one, and the other copies quietly stay wrong.
Here, you enter it once. There’s one place to fix it, and the fix carries everywhere that work went.
The platform also stops a lot of mistakes before they start. It won’t take a date in the wrong box or let a report go out half empty.
SECTION 0206 / 15WHAT CHANGES FOR YOU
Most of your day does not change. Find your role below and read that table.
If you work in the office
If you are a project manager or supervisor
SECTION 0307 / 15WHAT CHANGES FOR YOU
If you work in the field
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THE LEARNING PROCESS
These are hands-on learning sessions. You will be in your own account, doing your own job.
YOUR TRAINING SESSIONS
You will have more than one session. We build the training plan tailored to your company. Training is built around five groups:
Each group learns different parts of the system and moves at a different pace, so you are not sitting through training for somebody else’s job.
SECTION 0409 / 15HOW WE TRAIN
Problem Based Learning means you learn by doing the job, not by watching somebody else do it.
We give you a real task: “Submit an RFI”, “Log today’s hours”, “Send a daily report”. You carry it out in your own account.
Our training guide is there the whole time. Getting stuck is part of the method, not a sign that you are behind. The task is what makes it stick.
SECTION 0410 / 15PREPARE TO LEARN
SECTION 0411 / 15WHAT HAPPENS AFTER
Once training is over, it is on you to keep using it. Don’t try to master the platform in one day. Pick a section and move at your own pace.
WHAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE
SECTION 0412 / 15THE CHALLENGES ALONG THE WAY
Every software adoption has its challenges. None of this means you are failing at it.
SECTION 0513 / 15GETTING HELP
YOUR INTERNAL LEAD
Your company has already named someone to lead this internally. They are your first call for anything. If you are not sure who that is, ask your manager.
HOW TO OPEN A SUPPORT REQUEST
There are three ways to reach SMARTBUILD support.
REPORTING A PROBLEM IS EXPECTED
Telling us something is broken is not complaining. It’s part of our job.
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See you at training.
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