If you haven’t already started using the HCSS Community, now is a great time to get involved. The benefit to finding yourself in unknown territory, with questions, is that we have all been there at some point. The community forum exists to help you draw from experience, make connections, contribute, and learn how others are thinking on their feet.
Tim Zeglin, Vice President Frontier Environmental Services, realized early on that COVID-19 could affect daily construction operations, and wanted to be able to track the impact it would have on his company. He logged into the HCSS Community and asked what the best approach in HeavyJob would be to keep track of COVID-19 related impacts, like the Families First Act.
Mike Williams, HCSS Senior Product Manager, replied with a method that he helped develop for Granite Construction, using features that were released in HeavyJob 2018. With over 20 years of experience at Granite Construction, Mike joined HCSS this year as the most proficient HeavyJob user in the company. He explained in his reply how Granite developed this process that could be used to track any kind of business impact they needed to report on.
Another suggestion would be to use a System Tag [Note Index] which could be added to any Diary or Cost Code Note. The advantage of the system Tag would be the ability to use the Claim Review Report to gather data related to the Covid-19 impacts. The only drawback might be training foremen to add a cost code twice if some of the time was impacted and some were not. This avoids the need to add additional cost codes to accounting and gives you an easy method to track the impact. The report is very customizable, with different options to show the cost, and combine in an ‘and/or’ option with Cost Code Tags. Unless you modify your export to payroll, these details would be in HeavyJob only (but that could work for most situations).
Mike Williams
–HCSS Senior Product Manager
In a previous HeavyJob Monthly Webinar, Mike gave us an in-depth explanation of this method beginning at the 44-minute mark – One huge tip comes with how you can review the Claim Review Report to provide an order of magnitude for what you are tracking.
“You can use System Note Indexes to add to any diary or cost code, and then track it using the Claim Review Report.,” says Mike. “If you go to setup, and set up a note index, it is available globally to your entire business unit for foremen to use.” First, you should create a group such as “delay issues,” and then add a tag inside that group, such as “COVID-19 Impacts”.
On the time card, add the cost code twice, and use one of them to track the impact of COVID-19, and the other for in-scope work. If you look in the “Note*” just below the cost code, you will see the added system tag listed as a “Note Index”. Adding the note index amends the Company Note [Private] with that tag, and it is expected that you add additional details. For example: “We were waiting for the crew to check for temperature and symptoms of COVID-19. Therefore, we lost an hour due to this.” By simply adding this note index for this cost code, you add the ability to report on it.
Claim Review Report
Go to the Reports Menu, Cost Section, and open the report called Claim Review. This screen gives so many options to generate this report. You can set the date for today, or you can report on a specific date range. You can select a specific foreman or all foremen; all cost codes or specific cost codes; gather information based on a cost code tag or a note index, or you can gather both.
For this example, you can select the note index, “COVID-19 impacts,” and decide if you also want to search diaries and material sub expenses if they had also been tagged. You can report on cost, no cost, actual cost (pay class rate), T&M rate, by pay class, or employee. You can include the company notes provided by the foreman, and show a summary of the resources at the end of the report.
It Runs Fast
This Claim Review Report gives your company an order of magnitude. Many large reports take time to gather information, but this report is fast. You can look at a year’s worth of time cards for a large date range, and it cranks it out in just a few seconds. If I need to discuss with my owner the impact of COVID-19, I can show them that on this one day: “We lost 3 hrs of labor, 2 hours of equipment time, and $252 just to get people checked into the job.” It is so thorough, you may be asked to run this for a week or a month – the report can do that.
Report on Any Impact
This method can be used for tracking any kind of impact you want to show on your job with either a note index, cost code tag, or a system tag. Get your tag set up, get your foreman adding it to timecards or diaries, and run the claim report. You will be amazed at the results. You can send the report to excel, print it, or save it as a PDF. This report can also be helpful to show attorneys involved with claims. It starts the discussion for issues you are tracking and provides detailed facts during discussions with your owner.
We appreciate your involvement in the Community. Take some time today to explore what others are talking about, and share how you solved a problem someone else has right now.
If you need any help getting any of this setup, feel free to contact our support at 800-444-3196
