Durand Builders Service: WennSoft Job Cost helps a Wisconsin-based construction company manage its labor, costs and become more efficient
"WennSoft has helped us reduce our biggest expense – worker compensation costs. This saves us between $10,000 and $20,000 a year."
Mike Miles
Vice President of Finance for Durand Builders Service
About Durand Builders
Durand Builders Service of west central Wisconsin was organized in 1964 by Bert Hagness as a building materials center and general contractor specializing in residential construction. From this modest beginning in Durand, Wisconsin, they have grown to be recognized as a leader in industrial, commercial, and agricultural construction. They have extensive experience with all construction methods and materials, from conventional framing to the latest innovations in pre-engineered metal buildings and precast concrete structures. They employ their own skilled crews in concrete, metal building, and carpentry trades, all under the umbrella of a conscientious, award-winning safety program.
The Challenge
Like many companies in the construction industry, Durand Builders spent a great deal of time conducting much of its operational work by hand. They had a program based on MS-DOS to assist with some of the data, but it wasn’t effective or efficient. For example, occasionally they wanted a brief overview of one of their projects, but their system wasn’t able to produce summary reports. And while their old system was able to track some costs, the reports it produced were cumbersome and very lengthy.
The Solution
As a growing company, Durand Builders needed the ability to monitor all costs related to a
“The overlay from WennSoft to Dynamics is completely seamless, so the person entering the costs does not have to jump back and forth between screens,” said Mike Miles, Vice President of Finance for Durand Builders. “This makes the program easy to use.”
Improved Project Management
Durand Builders was experiencing difficulty getting current, useful data to their project managers in a timely manner. This was problematic because the longer it takes to identify problems the more difficult it is to resolve them. For instance, if a job gets behind schedule, the project manager needs to know as soon as possible, so they can determine the problem and take corrective action.
This was almost impossible with their old system. When they were on the MS-DOS based system, it took them up to a month to know the status of a project, because of the difficulty and time it took to produce reports. WennSoft helped Durand Builders overcome this challenge by giving their project managers effective tools. Durand Builders now has access to pertinent information readily available in several different levels of detail. The project managers can see the number of hours they worked versus the number of hours they estimated, so they can determine how they are progressing compared to their estimate.
“The fact that we can enter invoices, equipment vouchers and payroll on a timely basis enables our project managers to get better information when they need it,” said Miles.
Tracking Cost Codes
WennSoft Job Cost enables Durand Builders to track an almost unlimited number of cost codes, which allows them to create very detailed information for each building project.
“If we want to see an overview of a project, we can run a summary report; if we want a detailed report, it is right at
our fingertips,” said Miles.
Durand Builders aligns their cost codes with the CSI Code divisions. This allows them to determine the percentage of each job that’s associated with a specific division. For instance, they can run a report that lets them know all the cost associated with the General Requirements, including permits, architectural fees, job trailers, dumpsters and other items.
Job Cost also allows them to manage the labor associated with a job. By assigning labor to specific job codes, they can easily determine how much labor is being spent on a job.
“We can get very specific. If we want to know how much was spent on supervision, we can tell right away,”
said Miles.
Reduced Workers Compensation
Durand Builders has been particularly satisfied with the function in WennSoft Job Cost that tracks labor-overhead codes because it saves them a significant amount of money in Worker Compensation.
When it was using an MS-DOS based system, Durand Builders didn’t have the ability to track labor by employee,by a specific code. This caused a significant problem because of the Worker Compensation rules in Wisconsin,where Durand Builders is based. Wisconsin companies must use the highest applicable exposure code – even if portion of work constitutes only a small percentage of the job – if they can’t differentiate labor by employee, by a specific code. If, for example, they had their concrete employees loading a truck, they would have to pay the code for Concrete Not Otherwise Classified, which is approximately 15%, versus assigning it to a shop code, which is approximately 7%.
“Before we couldn’t split those costs out; with WennSoft we can, which saves us $10,000 to $20,000 a year,”
said Miles.
Better Bidding
Prior to using WennSoft, they relied on outside sources and used “a lot of pencil power” to create estimates. To gauge the time it would take to complete a specific task, they would look at industry standards. To estimate the cost of materials, they used estimating software, which provided an average cost for materials depending on what part of the United States the job site was located.
“This wasn’t a very accurate way to create estimates,” said Miles. “If you use a veteran crew, for instance, they are going to get the work done quicker than the industry standard. We’ve found that if we use data that is based on our own project experience, it is far more accurate.”
WennSoft allows them to build an accurate data base of information to identify costs for different types of projects. When they are bidding on a building project, they can draw on the data of similar projects to help prepare their bid more accurately.
“Our estimates are much more reliable,” said Miles. “In addition to creating more competitive bids, WennSoft makes us more profitable once we begin working on the project.”
Durand Builders pays special attention to tasks that can be measured by hours and volume.
“If it took us 1,500 hours to pour a 2,000 yards of concrete, we track this, which helps us build a valuable database for bidding on future jobs,” said Miles. “It’s true, accurate and reliable data.”
A Bright Future for Durand Builders
Durand Builders feels it is well positioned to handle the current business climate because WennSoft makes available a vast amount of information, which allows them to predict costs more accurately. This makes their bids more competitive and increases their confidence that the work they bid on will be profitable. In addition, their accounting process is integrated with the onsite building process, which gives them the financial reports their project managers need to make informed, effective decisions.
“We plan to keep using WennSoft because it continues to make our company more efficient in our job cost
accounting,” said Miles.