Procore Implementation Series: Building the Foundation

So, your company has made the investment in purchasing Procore as a Construction Management platform, but now you have to worry about getting your employees onboard. How do you train people? How to change your current workflow to fit Procore’s processes? Those, and so many more questions will have to be answered for a successful implementation. Procore is an incredibly complex system but with this series of blogs we’re going to recommend some practices that you can implement into your Procore adoption. This blog is going to focus on the early implementation within the first few months of Procore or if you are interested in adding Procore to your company.

Ease Yourself into It

Procore has many tools, functions, and features that will make everyone in your company’s lives easier. From automatically sending invoices, connecting your DocuSign account to allow subcontractors to sign contracts, or sending and tracking Requests for Quotes (RFQs) from a Bulletin or Change Event. We recommend not worrying about these advanced features just yet but to focus on some of the fundamentals. Some of the fastest returns on investment tools are the Drawing & Specification tools, Submittal and RFI logs, and tracking Commitments & Prime Contracts. These tools are already similar to most companies’ work processes, so it will allow easier transitioning. We also recommend signing up for a few ZenTek Procore classes, such as specific training for Field Staff & Superintendents.

Create Internal Support Teams

One of the first things we try to set up when working with our clients is having internal teams and team leaders. The size of these can greatly vary based on the size of your company, but they all work the same. You have one or two individuals from a group that will take feedback, questions, and provide some basic level support for their group. For example, one superintendent can host weekly (or bi-weekly) meetings to talk all about Procore with all the other superintendents. That individual can then go back to your ZenTek Consultants representative to have a conversation on what was discussed in their own internal meeting, and we can provide further direction and training to which he can take back to his team members. Some other groups could be Estimating, Admin, Accounting, and Project Management.

Just remember that these individuals have their own responsibilities as well, so try to not keep their regular workload and increase it further with Procore meetings as that will result in the Procore aspect of things being a bottom priority.

Use Test Projects

Procore allows users to create as many test projects as possible. These allow users to test out tools, see how they interact with each other, and see how they can possibly fail. It’s been a recent trend at some companies where they want to see a “perfect” Procore setup with everything working and in sync. It’s not that easy and it takes time. The training projects can provide critical feedback and points of failure in your processes, so you don’t have to mess with the live projects. They can also be a great basis for when you want to start learning some of the more advanced features and automation within Procore. We often find that the training projects are underutilized as a resource and most companies just expect their employees to watch the Procore training videos and become experts, but watching the videos and following along in a training project will result in much faster learning.

As you can see, implementing Procore is no easy task and takes time and resources outside of the typical Procore subscription. However, if you start with the basic tools, create internal discussion teams, and fully utilize the test projects, they will provide a very important foundation for the future success of utilizing Procore within your company. After all, we don’t construct buildings without foundations!

Next in Series: Preparing for Long-Term Success