Introduction

From the Projects tab in the left-hand navigation, clients can easily build and view their projects in a way that allows them to logically group contractors. Projects allow clients to pare the data for any contractors that they are working with across their projects and locations to understand and compare the risks presented by a specific subset of contractors. 

As an example, on a large $300 million construction project, a client with over 1,000 contractors in their portfolio may only be engaging with 50-150 contractors from the bid phase through contract award, preconstruction, and construction completion. The Projects feature enables maintaining focus on the subset of contractors who are bidding on and working on a particular project throughout its entire lifecycle.

Projects Landing Page

The landing page that a client sees when they access Projects from the left navigation provides a high-level dashboard that lists all existing projects they have access to:

Filters

The default dashboard shows a list of Current Projects, but like all list views in the Highwire application, a user will have the ability to refine their list by toggling between Current Projects, Completed Projects, and All Projects.

In addition, you can filter your projects by market. Simply click on “Market” to open up the dropdown list of the unique markets that your company has set up in Highwire and select those market(s) that you would like to include in your filtered view. Note that if you click the “Save” button to the right of the filter, you will set that filter as your default landing.

Add Project

For current projects, you can click on any project name in the list view to be brought to the Project Workflow page for that project. To understand both the project workflow and the level of information that is captured for each project, we’ll now walk you through each step of adding a new project to your portfolio.

To get started, simply click on the “Add Project” button to open a new project form:

Step 1: Project Info 

Project Info is where you enter basic project information, project contacts, and the distribution list for any standard project reports you’ve set up.

Below is a screenshot that shows the data that is collected in Highwire for basic project information, which includes project name, address, start date, end date, project status, region, and market:

Completing the dropdowns for both Project Status (Pre-Construction, Current, and Complete) and Market (client-specified geographic areas) helps further define the project and enables more effective filtering.

The next screenshot shows where you can enter any contact information, including Project Executive, Project Manager, or Superintendent. Additionally, you can enter any Inspection Goals to give your team a specific target of how many inspections they need to complete.  

Step 2: Bid List

In the Bid List, users will begin adding contractors to their bid list. This allows the user to compare contractors that are bidding on the same scope of work. To start your bid list, simply click on the “Add Contractor” box:

“Add Contractor” will open a window with the list of your company’s connected contractors. You can sort this list by company or trade. In the example below, the contractors are sorted by trade (Masonry Contractors), and any contractors selected will be added to the bid list. Once you have selected the “Invite Contractor” option, you’ll notice that the graphs in your Bid List will change as you invite or delete contractors so that you can see a visual comparison between your bidders as you add them:

Once you’ve added contractors, you’ll see them appear within the bid list. There are a few key functions that you will be able to initiate from your bid list, including clicking on the name of the bidder to open a new window with their full profile or clicking on their flags to see exactly what risk criteria they triggered. You can also maximize any of the graphs to do a side-by-side visual comparison of specific risks like flags, safety scores, EMR, recordable rate, etc:

Step 3: Safety Approval

Safety Approval is where a client sets the safety approval status for their bidders. If a client has set up a minimum score threshold, then bidders who meet or fail that standard can be automatically set as “Approved” or “Not Approved,” respectively. Otherwise, the client can set the approval status by simply choosing from the dropdown. For additional approval statuses, some clients may also choose to have options for approval based on Corrective Action Plan Required, Needs Review, or Approved with CAP:

Step 4: Finance Approval

Finance Approval is where clients can review their contractors' financials if required. Here you can view the approval statuses from the GC or the PM. Similar to the previous section, you can review flags, scores, and update financial approval statuses. The approval status can be set to Approved, Needs Review, Risk Mitigation Plan Required, Approved with Mitigation, or Not Approved. 

Step 5: Contract Award

Contract Award is the final step in the Project cycle, where a client creates their final list of awarded contractors. This step is logically broken into two categories, “Award Contractors” and “Awarded Contractors,” as shown in the first screenshot below. The first category is essentially a summary of your bid list, and you’ll notice that once you click on “Award” next to a contractor, that company automatically moves to the “Awarded Contractors” section, as shown in the second screenshot below:

Once you've successfully added a bidder to your project. You’ll notice that the graphs now display data for only the awarded contractor(s).

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