Rhumbix Forms Help Foremen Do More Digitally, With Fewer Tools.

At Rhumbix, we have been building software for front-line construction operations for nearly a decade. We support thousands of field leaders’ day-to-day field reporting needs and capture time and production data for tens of thousands of craft workers. Some of the largest contractors and specialty contractors entrust Rhumbix with their daily timekeeping and production data, which is needed to get workers paid on time and accurately and generate the critical metrics that help contractors keep their projects on track. 

However, we have frequently heard from our customers that while digitizing time is a massive value-add for contractors, foremen still manage a myriad of other workflows on paper or other digital platforms. They love the Rhumbix interface but want their foremen to do more with fewer tools. That is why we have invested in a comprehensive form solution that allows customers to digitize other critical field workflows and bring them into the same mobile interface that foremen love. Our custom form solution has been used for many years to digitize key construction management processes such as daily reporting, time and materials management, and during COVID, to track worker exposure via a suite of health assessment forms, to name but a few. We have now decided to take this tool mainstream and supercharge the workflows that we include in the platform. 

Why Now? 

Well, there has been tremendous growth in contractor software options over the last ten years. When we started Rhumbix, relatively few applications were designed for the field. There is now an app for everything. The pace of change has been phenomenal for an industry often described as a technology laggard. This has, however, created challenges, with the rapid purchase and implementation of tools creating app fatigue, with foremen both overwhelmed with tools and underwhelmed by their collective performance. Construction firms are trying to make sense of costs, integrations, security, and data, to name a few overarching concerns. The challenge facing contractors is to create a platform of best-of-breed technology solutions comprising fewer tools that deliver more value and insight. 

Our response at Rhumbix has been leveraging our field form solution to build a comprehensive suite of field reporting workflows that place the foremen and their day-to-day responsibilities at the core. Our focus is, therefore, on safety, compliance, and resource management processes that help foremen keep their crews safe, their employers compliant, and projects on track. 

Initially, we are focusing on Toolbox Talks. These quick discussions are excellent ways to focus on safe work practices and behaviors. We are embedding pre-populated toolbox talks from leading safety organizations such as NIOSH into the solution so foremen can access these when needed. Once a toolbox has been delivered, craft workers confirm attendance by signing off in the app. While this may seem parochial, the benefit of having this data in Rhumbix becomes apparent when you consider the value of overlaying Toolbox Talks, job hazard assessments, and other safety and compliance workflows in the same solution as your timekeeping. Workers should only be on time cards after also appearing in toolbox talks. Foremen should only submit timesheets after submitting the necessary safety documentation. 

Eliminate Disconnected Tools or Paper

For too long, this information has been buried in disconnected tools, or on paper, with the impractical level of effort required to combine these data. The advantage of using a single tool like Rhumbix is that exceptions to management processes that would otherwise go unnoticed start to become transparent. Areas of risk requiring management attention are easily identified. We plan to build out a suite of workflows in complementary areas such as job hazard analysis, pre-task briefings, site inspections and observations, and near-miss reporting, all of which can be combined with crew data to provide leading indicators of project compliance with company policies and areas of risk. These workflows generate vast amounts of data, and with our embedded business intelligence tools already surfacing insights in the areas of labor resource management, equipment utilization, installation progress, and labor productivity, overlaying safety and compliance data atop this information will deliver incredibly powerful insights that are otherwise lost to the construction management system. 

Reduce the Foremen’s, Administrative Burden

We work with our customers to review their current workflows and to design optimizations by combining them in a single field tool. We look for data synergies and opportunities for reduced foremen administrative burden, and we bring this all together in a cloud-hosted data model underpinned with industry-leading data best practices and Solutions like Snowflake, Amazon AWS, and business intelligence tools for reporting. With Rhumbix, customers have access to a best-of-breed field tool and a suite of solutions worthy of the best data scientists in the industry. 

As we continue to evolve these tools, we seek companies looking to consolidate their solutions and supercharge their data strategies. If you would like to learn more about how we plan to change the paradigm for field data, feel free to request a demo at sales@rhumbix.com.