McCorvey automates construction manufacturing work management and elevates the voices of its experts with Smartsheet

Founded in 1925, McCorvey Companies has become a major manufacturer of custom ductwork, pipe, and plumbing across the Southeastern U.S. Smartsheet is a key part of McCorvey’s strategy to simplify and streamline its own operations, provide a customized user experience, and scale for growth.

“McCorvey is an innovative and technology solutions driven company, and we are always looking for ways to modernize and optimize business and manufacturing processes,” says Peter Datz, Technology Solutions Architect for McCorvey Companies. “With Smartsheet and other solutions, we work with both internal and external customers to improve efficiency and productivity. Smartsheet in particular provides us with a versatile tool that we can use to solve an infinite number of problems.”

McCorvey Companies specializes in commercial air conditioning, plumbing, piping, and the maintenance of these systems. The larger organization encompasses several businesses: McCorvey Sheet Metal, Way Engineering, Way Mechanical, Duct Direct, McCorvey Industrial Fabrication, and Kirlin-Way Mechanical. McCorvey’s growth has accelerated in the past decade, prompting its leaders to invest in technology to help smooth the evolution from a family-owned business to an industry leader.  

"Smartsheet enables consolidation, standardization, and automation of processes that historically would be managed differently across separate departmental silos”, Datz says. “With Smartsheet we were able work with the subject matter experts to transform and merge best practices from these siloed solutions into standard sheets, reports, dashboards and workflows, with associated automations that eliminated much of the manual work previously required. This was a win for McCorvey in all facets of the business… office, operations, manufacturing, and in the field.”

Before Smartsheet, achieving consistency and visibility was challenging. Many business and design processes were paper-based. Technology tools varied from team to team, ranging from email and PDFs to stand-alone spreadsheets and databases. The McCorvey Technology R&D department saw the need for a single platform that would integrate disparate sources of data, support workflow automation, and enable access to information from any location while eliminating the risks inherent in paper-based processes.

The first project McCorvey tackled with Smartsheet was scheduling and coordination of projects for the fabrication shop, which included digitizing production drawings to save hours of work time and thousands of dollars per year. As other teams saw the platform’s power, the organization’s Smartsheet implementation expanded quickly. McCorvey Companies now uses Smartsheet for business-critical functions like estimating, change proposals and RFIs, accounting and billing, purchasing, fabrication scheduling, field operations, and much more — a single system of record for the whole business.

McCorvey is in a transformative stage, with consistency and scalability becoming increasingly important as our growth continues to accelerate,” Datz says. “McCorvey is committed to evolving from a “mom-and-pop-shop" mentality and building up to scale with all companies that we work with, acquire, or start so that we can provide a consistent experience. The more we can align with the construction industry’s movement to standardize processes the better positioned we will be for continued success.”

Real-time access to data that saves time and money

Smartsheet saves McCorvey time and money by giving people real-time access to the information they need from any location. Processes like managing updates to production drawings are completely transformed. Before Smartsheet, if foremen at a construction site had an outdated drawing, they’d call a detailer, who would manually check the versions, coordinate printing of a set of perhaps dozens of pages of drawings and arrange for it to be delivered to the site — which could be hours away.

Now a foreman can pull up the most current drawings on a mobile device and use comments within Smartsheet to resolve specific concerns with the detailer. A process that used to leave work crews idle for half a day or more can now be resolved in a matter of minutes. Therefore, eliminating the need to print and deliver large packets of drawings which in turn saves McCorvey more than $100,000 per year.

Real-time information-sharing through Smartsheet simplifies material requests as well. 
The site foreman can simply reference a sheet or dashboard for insights on scheduled material deliveries, monitor expenditures against the budget, and implement immediate adjustments to prevent cost overruns. McCorvey also uses Smartsheet to cut costs for tools, consumables, and equipment rentals. Project management teams incorporate tool planning into the project plan so they can procure only the tools that are needed rather than stocking a large reserve, “just in case.” Through buying and renting fewer tools, as well as avoiding late fees on rentals, McCorvey has saved an additional $50,000 to $100,000.

“With standard dashboards, reports and forms, foremen have consistent information at their fingertips at all times for any project they are working on, “Datz says. “They are able to communicate with field and operations partners more efficiently to get the tools and resources needed to do the job. And with Smartsheet if a new requirement emerges, it is generally a fairly simple exercise to build and deploy a solution… no complex software development skills are required.”

Scaling effort and saving time with Control Center

Smartsheet Control Center helps McCorvey standardize how project information is collected and reported across the organization, enabling top-down insights and efficient planning. With hundreds of active projects going at any given time, overseeing work that ranges from a few weeks to nearly two years, the ability to scale and automate changes is crucial.

“We used to copy folders to use as the template sets,” says Matt Walters, Strategy and Operations Leader for McCorvey Companies. “But as our sheets got more advanced, we wanted to make this process self-service. IT can use Control Center to process the changes that product owners want, and we don’t have to go through and make an update every single time.”

By capturing a wealth of detail for each project, McCorvey has created a data resource that can be used to identify larger issues and solve problems. For example, an analysis of the materials request process discovered that a large proportion of requests were for same-day or next-day delivery. Managers were able to find out whether those short turnarounds resulted from lack of planning, delays in receiving estimates or specs, or other factors that could be improved. Walters estimates that using Smartsheet has created a 60%-70% increase in efficiency of workflows and accessing information — and in communications alone, a 400% increase in efficiency as teams cut delay and confusion out of collaborative processes.

Finding and learning from the experts within the company 

Not only has McCorvey saved time and money by implementing Smartsheet, it’s also given voice to the people who have years of experience across the organization. The push to capture and standardize best practices has led managers to the people who have the greatest expertise and insight to offer.

“While Smartsheet isn’t the hammer for every nail, it is an extremely flexible and intuitive solution that can be understood and applied by just about anyone. Ever since Smartsheet’s introduction to McCorvey, we’ve identified employees who have experience and great ideas that had not been accessible before,” Datz says. “Smartsheet allows us to identify new experts, evaluate and work with them to implement newer ideas. For our industry we have many very experienced people who aren’t necessarily tech-savvy. Smartsheet is an excellent way to quickly transform this experience into something that can be built, reviewed, and modified. It has driven innovation throughout the company from people who are extremely passionate about what they do and want to invest themselves in the company.”

For more information about this story, please see our case study.