Back when the company Dexter and Chaney was just starting out, (in 1981) the two owners had other jobs first. They worked for a consulting business, and in their businesses you did not see a lot of technology in their work spaces, or on the work site. When the owners decided they wanted to start the Dexter and Chaney company they decided they wanted to create construction software, but they still lacked a lot of technology for many years. They even made a pamphlet called “Why Your Contracting Business Could Use a Computer.”
Construction software did not take off right away but that was not because we were afraid to change our technology, or because we were refusing to change. It was more because employees in the construction field are rational. The construction field has always been a private work, that need a secluded work site, a large multi-talented team of employees that all come together to show that they know what they are capable of. This would not work well for a computer that (at the time) was not portable.
A non-portable computer did not stop the need for construction software to stop growing, executives soon found out that a computer was worth more than having a costly typewriter or storage cabinets. A good example of how the construction software was growing with computers is the software that Dexter and Chaney was creating could take your information and input it into the system in a way that was helpful to your executives. WIP and documents about how much you will need to budget to finish your job could be made easily and kept up to date.
Using the computers for the information that was back at the office was great and very helpful, at the time, but it did not help your team that was at the job site and needed to enter in data as it was found. This would lead to delays because the workers would have to wait until they went to the office to input information, data usually will end up lost this way.
If you look back about five or so years ago technology and inputting information into the cloud has grown a lot. Construction software developers could now look into a whole new area to grow their software applications. The new software would allow for those on the job site to enter their information in right away. Now, just because this is a great new invention not everyone wanted to jump into it right away. A lot of companies would not buy the new technology just because it is the newest thing out there.
Being able to input data onto the cloud and mobile information continues to grow we see that there are a few things that stand out that will help us make our construction software better. The first is, allowing for our software systems to be accessed everywhere that our teams need them to be and by any employee we need. So let’s say for example, that you have an employee on the job site with an iPad they could access the same data that another employee in their office on a desk computer would be able to access. The second is, in order for companies to be interested in this software system it had to be easy to understand and operate, and it couldn’t just allow access to documents. It needed to help the employees maintain their jobs and what they were doing.
Taking a look at the Spectrum Construction Software, the designers could have taken the “easy” route and used a software that was already made and named it “Cloud Enabled,” but instead they decided to make a whole new one! They had to change a few things, but it was turned into a software that is mobile-friendly and can be used in a cloud computing environment. It makes it easier for employees to log in on their phones (or any other technology that can surf the web) and find where they need to go to work for that day, or what needs to be done on the site that day. Construction software is continuing to grow and change into many different things, some of them you can even share, send, or get information sent to you.
You may be wondering where the title might of come from? There was a presentation of new systems at a User Conference, and there were some executives talking about the system and one of them said, “It’s pretty magical how all the pieces work together,” while the other responded with “Maybe. I’ll admit it does have its practical applications.” With that I just knew, and it came together!