The Crownover family has been in the construction industry in Arkansas for almost 80 years. With four generations of builders before him, Lyle Crownover stepped into the top role at Crownover Company, Inc. in Mountain Home, Arkansas.
The custom home building company has thrived throughout all those years thanks to a commitment to quality craftsmanship, solid customer relationships, and a continuous drive to improve. This drive, plus a growing number of jumbled client text threads, eventually led Lyle to look for a construction technology solution.
A better way to communicate project details
“Communication improvements are probably the thing that led me to look for a software platform,” Lyle explained of his search for construction project management. Prior to CoConstruct, Lyle had 12 clients with over 100 text threads going. In an attempt to bring some order to the chaos he installed naming conventions to the threads, naming each thread after the contractor’s name, the project, the type of contractor, and the project task. Lyle found this approach to be a bandaid on a larger problem that was becoming too hard to manage and actually starting to cause his iPhone to not work properly.
“If lack of communication or inaccurate communications can tear nations apart it can definitely tear a husband, wife, and general contractor apart,” said Lyle. Tired of trading texts with husbands and wives together and separately, Lyle sought out a platform to house and centralize all of his construction communications. This search eventually led Crownover to CoConstruct.
Getting client buy-in
Crownover Company, Inc. creates 12 to 15 ultra-custom homes a year, many of which are for out-of-state clients. This creates additional communication challenges for Lyle since he has clients that are very invested in their new home who solely rely on him for updates. By utilizing CoConstruct Lyle transitioned from texts to a communications hub that made his (and his clients) life easier.
“By way of job logs we have a superintendent on-site every day that fills out every portion of a job log so our clients can actually see what’s transpired on their project every day,” explained Lyle. CoConstruct’s job log allows clients to see daily updates from the jobsite including work done and progress photos to always be up-to-date even if they are miles away. This did not go unnoticed by Crownover customers who also saw the value and power of CoConstruct. “Within a month’s time of engaging in a relationship with us they (clients) are a huge advocate of CoConstruct,” said Lyle.
How CoConstruct’s job log saved Crownover $10,000
In addition to helping client communications, Lyle saw CoConstruct’s job log feature directly affect Crownover’s bottom line. One project had Crownover working on an addition to a home that was constrained by a number of variables including the existing septic system. From the beginning, Lyle and his team veered clear of the septic system because they knew it would have costly repercussions if any of their work interfered with the existing system.
A month after the addition was finished Lyle got a call from the client that the septic system was having problems and they believed that Crownover was responsible and would need to pay roughly $10,000 for a replacement. Because of his team’s process of entering job logs daily, Lyle was able to go through pictures of the job site every single day and see that his crew had in fact never interfered with the septic system. Armed with this information Lyle was able to easily show the documentation to his client in a pleasant and straightforward conversation. Rather than a finger-pointing shouting match, CoConstruct’s job log saved Lyle’s relationship with his client and his company $10,000.
Lyle Crownover’s desire for continuous improvement has led his company to create better communication processes, save time, and save money by partnering with CoConstruct.
