The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation recently awarded Plenary Walsh Keystone Partners (PWKP) a public-private construction contract that will oversee the redevelopment of over 4,000 “structurally deficient” bridges, and the replacement of 558 old structures, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. PWKP, and 11 Pennsylvania subcontractors, which include Walsh Construction Group, are looking after the design, construction and the maintenance for “25 years after construction is complete,” with all bridges expected to be replaced within a 36 month period. A project of this size should take up to ten years, but the contractors look set to get the project finished within this ambitiously short time-frame, at a cost of $899 million. Such a time-critical construction project requires an efficient system to manage its subcontractor orientations. Let’s take a look.
Using Technology for Efficiency
The Walsh Group, which Walsh Construction is part of, have been leaders in design and implementation of construction projects since their founding in 1898.. Walsh Construction have what they call a fully-staffed “highway division”, which provides specific construction services for individual projects, such as the Pennsylvania bridge project. With a project of this size, pre-orientating thousands of subcontractors would be a challenge even for the most skilled training practitioners. However, by using our platform, the company was able to speed up the orientation process significantly, and reduce the overall cost of training.
“On a project of this size, spread out across the State of Pennsylvania, there is no possible way for me, or any others, to do typical new hire orientations,” said James Sallows, the Safety Manager at The Walsh Group. “So, with that in mind, it’s very beneficial to us safety managers and helps me with orientating my own subcontractors.”
According to GoContractor CEO, Sean Fennell, “Walsh construction have been at the forefront of utilizing our platform effectively for their own orientations.” The feedback from contractors using the platform have been quite impressive. Most of the testimonials centered around the efficiency of the platform and how easy it was for them to retain the information for when they arrived on site.
How GoContractor Works
Customized Platform
As a company, you can make your orientations unique to your culture and brand, by customizing our platform with your name and logo. GoContractor allows you to create a custom process, whereby your contractors can register themselves online, upload important documents, and photographs and take their orientation training before they even start work on your site. This process can also be changed and adapted to suit the location of your site and worker type. Let’s take the example of Walsh Construction, they have hundreds of projects working concurrently at any one time throughout the state of Pennsylvania. Our platform, ensures that all of Walsh’s contractors and subcontractors receive similar training, and also offers administrators (the people who operate the system), the chance to change individual training to suit each region.
Language and Dashboard
Language is also another factor we have worked into the system, with almost 20 languages it will make your orientation process a lot easier, especially if you’re dealing with Latino workers in California for instance. All of this can be managed through your dashboard and reporting tools, which allows you to easily manage all of your contractor registration and training. You can monitor your contractors on all of your construction sites, giving you the peace of mind that your contractors are safe and fully orientated.
Communicate
You can also communicate with your contractors, either directly or through the labor supplier they work for. Therefore, it’s ok if you don’t know all of their details before they arrive, they do all that for you by self-registering. All of your senior managers will also be kept up to date with all of the activity on your platform, with specific location-based notifications. Your contractors will be automatically notified if they need to undertake any new training, or if any of their documents have expired.
Prepared Workers
Finally, your contractors arrive prepared, with the knowledge to start immediately. They have gone through all the required registration steps, uploaded documents, and are fully versed on all aspects of training needed to work on site. Interactive questions on our platform ensure your contractor retains their information thus helping to make the workplace as a whole safer.
Clearly the platform has worked quite well for Walsh Construction and will play its part in rebuilding the bridge infrastructure in Pennsylvania but if you feel GoContractor could help your company with similar contractor orientations do get in touch HERE.
For more information Watch our 60 seconds Video or Take a Free Demo Today
