Background
Culliton, established 1932, is a multi-trade contractor performing construction projects of all sizes in the areas of Mechanical, Electrical, and HVAC.
Culliton is uniquely skilled in the trade contracting business, working in both Construction and the Service and Maintenance phases. The company builds for its clients, delivering large, fast paced, tightly scheduled Mechanical, Electrical and HVAC projects, transitioning from the construction phase to support through to service and ongoing maintenance of clients facilities. Hundreds of customers count on Culliton every day for service and maintenance to operating facilities.
The Challenge
Culliton’s dozens of foremen are out in the field every day, managing multiple projects using a proprietary project management approach known as SIS, which ensures projects adhere to the originally scheduled timeline and make efficient use of assigned resources.
The company was looking to create a system that would assist the foremen with their daily project management tasks, as well as let the main office receive updates from the field in a structured way that would allow for consolidated managerial reporting.
Foremen needed to be able to work independently while in the field, including in areas where online connectivity was not available, maintaining dozens of tasks and associated resources, and communicating their progress to the main office.
The Solution
Using FileMaker as the selected software solution, we built iCulliton, a project management system used by both the main office and field personnel. iCulliton allows the office to communicate projects to the field, while receiving updates from the field on an ongoing basis, and generating managerial reports based on consolidated data.
Main office personnel uses desktop based FileMaker Pro to define users and projects and assign projects to one or more foreman users. Foremen then use iPad based FileMaker Go to login and retrieve their assigned projects from the FileMaker Server. They can then go on using iCulliton on their iPads, without the need for internet connectivity – the iPad app is completely independent and capable of performing all required work flows while disconnected from the server. Foremen create tasks, define and assign personnel to tasks, track task status and updates, and whenever communication becomes available, synchronize their iPads with the FileMaker server to push project updates to the server and pull new information provided by the main office.
Office personnel assign to different users appropriate levels of access to data (from foreman, through supervisors with wider access to data, up to executives and admins with full access to data). The IT department is able to access the FileMaker server via ODBC to generate managerial reports using Culliton’s preferred reporting platform.
The system makes extensive use of FileMaker Server side processing for improved performance and execution of server based activities such as interaction with MS Excel and server side email processing.
