When we consider this new age of construction technology, our minds typically jump first to the eye-popping innovations of recent years like automated hardware to complete tasks previously undertaken by human workers and advanced 3D visualization tools, both of which are of course extremely valuable. However, more mundane-seeming technology can be just as, if not more, important than those tools. This is made evident by a KPMG poll released in 2021, in which respondents named two project management-adjacent technologies – integrated project management information systems and the use of advanced analytics – among the top three with the potential to deliver the greatest overall return on investment in an organization. (BIM was the other answer among the top three.) The point is: Tools that streamline the everyday tasks of a job site, like scheduling and asset tracking, can make a huge difference to a firm or contractor’s bottom line.
One such company looking to make easier these often tedious, but important, tasks is Eyrus, a workplace management tool which was named as one of the 5000 fastest-growing private companies in the United States for the second consecutive year back in August. The company is looking to take their management tool to the next level, recently announcing a series of updates to their platform – which they are dubbing “Eyrus, Evolved” – to create an “end-to-end solution to help general contractors make better decisions related to progress, risk, and safety.” In the press announcement, the company notes that this new iteration of their platform comes as it reaches 7500 registered companies.
The new update to the platform includes a number of additions and improvements, with the company highlighting five specific examples in their official announcement. Those five are:
- A new onboarding and self-registration workflow which includes a QR code which workers can scan, or a link sent via text message, to register for a project more quickly and easily.
- Integrating the platform with third-party background check providers to limit the number of steps typically needed for that process.
- Digital badges working through a worker’s phone to control site access, geo-locating workers within a job site, and tracking workers in case of emergency.
- Remote badge printing to eliminate the need to hand out badges and beacons.
- Allowing workers to view and edit their time sheets to increase transparency of data collected to the worker level.
Given how complex a job site can be, with a number of different workers coming in and out from the general contractor’s team as well as with subcontractors and trade partners, a lot of the tasks described above have long been cumbersome and time-consuming. Take something like onboarding these constant waves of new workers, which includes things like signing off on training materials and verifying certifications, among other tasks. According to Eyrus, this new addition to their platform is expected to cut registration and onboarding time by 50 percent. The integration with third-party background check providers achieves a similar result, cutting the need to manage multiple systems for the process and streamlining the entire process.
The additions to Eyrus’ platform also show a flexibility to allow what individual companies feel makes the most sense for their particular situation. On the one hand, they are now providing the opportunity for firms to eliminate the need for physical badges and beacons, which Eyrus notes could result in as much as a 40 percent reduction in the cost of deploying the solution. However, they also took feedback from their existing customers, and for those who choose to keep their badges and beacons they have streamlined that process by allowing for remote badge printing.
This new “Eyrus, Evolved” launch is building off of what was already established as a project management solution in the industry. Prior to these additions to the platform, Eyrus had also offered things like daily reporting to track a project’s progress in one central location, safety measures like real-time notifications and mass communication methods, and scheduling tools to monitor deviations to the schedule and allowing companies to look ahead and make changes to avoid costly project delays, among other existing features.
On this new update to the platform, Eyrus CEO and co-founder Alexandra McManus said in a press statement, “Eyrus has always focused on being an easy-to-use, non-intrusive system that provides comprehensive workforce data and analytics. Now, we’ve taken it to a new level so that they can make the best possible decisions in real time.”
The company’s COO and co-founder Hussein Cholkamy added, “By collecting and analyzing objective and consistent data through a Centralized Workforce Database in real-time, Eyrus enables project teams to proactively respond, in dynamic project environments, to positively impact schedule, safety and cost. These new features are critical to the role Eyrus plays in supporting project teams.”
