By Don Talend, Contributing Editor
Depending on who is responsible for writing daily progress reports, project superintendents/managers or foremen will tell you that this is an essential task but a time-consuming one that normally takes time away from their core responsibilities of observing, supervising and coordinating jobsite activity. Jimbo Bunnell, vice president of operations for new construction at Dallas-based TDIndustries, a mechanical, plumbing and HVAC contractor, says the company identified the need to reduce daily report writing time several years ago.
“It was really a matter of productivity and time,” Bunnell says. “I had foremen and superintendents who were handwriting notes, making copies of them, and sending them to customers every day.” He estimates that report writing took 15 minutes of valuable time that could be spent actually getting projects completed. Also, those 15 minutes added up to much more time when a superintendent oversaw more than one project in a given day. Native Spanish-speaking …