Western Specialty Contractors recently received the 2022 Trimble Viewpoint Construction Award for Best Use of Trimble Construction One Technology by creating a custom human resources information system (HRIS). Trimble’s annual awards honor the technological achievements of North American contractors as exhibited through the growth and improvements of their projects, people, and processes.

Along with the Best Use of Trimble Construction One Technology award, other categories included Most Outstanding Project and Most Impressive Human Resource Achievement. The Trimble Viewpoint Construction Awards were evaluated by a panel of judges including select Trimble Construction executives and Manohar Damle of Basic Resources, Inc., who won last year in the Best Use of Technology category.

“While project demand has been high, inflation, supply chain volatility, and high material prices have forced many contractors to become more innovative and creative in order for their projects to be completed on time and on budget,” said Lawrence Smith, Vice President and General Manager of Trimble Construction Management Solutions. “For our construction award winners, technology proved to be the best way to gain the agility and flexibility needed to respond to today’s ever-changing business conditions. As a result, they didn’t just improve on processes momentarily but developed new workflows and efficiencies that will help them scale and grow for many years to come.”

With headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri and 30 offices across the country, Western Specialty Contractors specializes in masonry, concrete restoration, waterproofing, and facade restoration. Trimble Construction One aided Western in the development of its custom HRIS, along with centralizing and streamlining many of the company’s workflows. The HRIS supports everything from safety training to performance management.

“What [the HRIS] does is it brings data and [makes] it available for people to easily reference and easily see,” said Shawn Nichoalds, Western’s Senior Director of Technology. “You know, our people, our employees, they want to be able to see the data and not have to call somebody who calls somebody that sends you a report. … Three years ago, our CEO asked to make HR more streamlined, make HR more incorporated with Viewpoint. And now today, we're looking at the HRIS using Trimble Construction One, and that I think speaks a lot about the company. They're willing to invest in technology for the better of the future.”

Trimble Construction One connects the planning, doing, and managing of construction projects by offering role-based access to real-time information across the entire organization. In addition to the HRIS, Western also utilized this technology to create a compensation dashboard that provides an accessible view of each employee’s salary history, streamlines the merit increase process, and allows managers to see a consolidated salary view.

“[Prior to the creation of the compensation dashboard,] the managers always had to call and ask for this information or that information,” Nichoalds said. “Now it's one stop, and we have all the employees’ information. [We are] able to go to one spot and see all these measurements and all these training records of an employee, and then when all the raises are passed out, hitting one button populates and sends the new raise to Viewpoint. That just is an extreme efficiency gain, and the power is back into people’s hands so they can make decisions quicker.”

Using the compensation dashboard, a process that used to take weeks to complete, now takes only a few minutes.

“What a great accomplishment and a team effort,” said Tom Brooks, Western’s Chief Operating Officer. “First by human resources for identifying a need and conceptual solution, followed by our technology team working with Trimble Viewpoint to create a turn-key solution. We could not be more pleased with the outcome; definitely a win for Western’s employees.”