Feature spotlight: Scheduling

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code.” I’m Tom Houghton.

Paul Wurth:

Hello everyone, I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

Well, it’s a warm welcome for our listeners there, Paul.

Paul Wurth:

Again, we’re changing up every time.

Tom Houghton:

That’s exciting.

Paul Wurth:

Who we got today, Tom?

Tom Houghton:

We’ll bring our guest on in just a minute, but first want to remind you that we’re taking Buildertrend University on the road. We’ll be hosting Buildertrend University in Dallas, Texas, on October 3rd, 2019. Anyone is welcome to attend. It’s a one day conference for you and your team to learn more and optimize your usage of Buildertrend. You can sign up online at buildertrendu.com/dallas. Paul and I will be there and we hope to see you there too. Now we’ll get started with today’s guest. Today we are doing another feature spotlight.

Paul Wurth:

These are fun.

Tom Houghton:

These are great-

Paul Wurth:

I’m a great fan.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, you are a big fan. Big fan of Buildertrend.

Paul Wurth:

Big fan of the features of Buildertrend.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, we got a lot of features to get through.

Paul Wurth:

I think there’s 29.

Tom Houghton:

So I think we’re on number three or four now. So we’re off to a good start.

Paul Wurth:

This is a cornerstone feature.

Tom Houghton:

This is a great feature.

Paul Wurth:

Little teaser right there.

Tom Houghton:

Ooh, that was good teaser.

Paul Wurth:

Thank you.

Tom Houghton:

So our feature that we’re going to be talking about today is scheduling and joining us is Gina Saccoman from our engineering division. Gina’s title is product release coordinator, so she is in the thick of it with getting those product enhancements released.

Gina Saccoman:

That’s right, I am, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

That is an accurate description of her job title.

Tom Houghton:

That’s what she does. I just let everybody know.

Paul Wurth:

Gina is a product release coordinator, so she does a really good job of releasing products.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

There you go.

Tom Houghton:

She’s coordinated like crazy.

Paul Wurth:

Good coordination.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Welcome, Gina, to the podcast.

Gina Saccoman:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Paul Wurth:

You were you just saying off-air, that this is your favorite podcast.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. That’s my favorite. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

That’s nice. That’s nice how these things have aligned.

Tom Houghton:

That’s true.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. I listen to you guys.

Paul Wurth:

It’s their only podcast.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. I mean, yeah. A lot of competition, I guess-

Paul Wurth:

I’ll still take it tough.

Tom Houghton:

But yeah. So she’s a long-time listener, a first time guest. So that’s exciting for you.

Paul Wurth:

Happy to have you.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah, I’m excited. Here we go.

Tom Houghton:

Good stuff.

Paul Wurth:

Should we start with scheduling or learning about Gina?

Tom Houghton:

No, we’re going to save our fun facts to the end.

Paul Wurth:

That’s right.

Tom Houghton:

That’s a nice little teaser. You got to wait till the end to hear some fun facts about Gina. She’s got some pretty fun facts.

Gina Saccoman:

Oh, boy.

Paul Wurth:

We’ll be the judge of that.

Gina Saccoman:

Okay.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, let’s not going ahead of ourselves here.

Paul Wurth:

Hold on a second.

Tom Houghton:

Okay. So just a quick note, to be sure to listen to the very end of the episode because Gina throws out a surprise sneak peek at something coming soon. But let’s dive into scheduling. First off, there’s so much to this feature, but let’s just start at the very, very beginning of why somebody should be using Scheduling.

Gina Saccoman:

Sure. Well, I mean, it’s really the place where you’re going to officially keep track of all of your projects and you can actually see on all listed jobs, all of your jobs at the same time. So your projects, from start to finish, are on the Schedule. You can easily set up your schedule items and it’s actually one of the features that you can share with the subs and the owners, so you’re communicating with everyone and they can see as much as you want them to see. I would say before Buildertrend, a lot of people are using pen, paper, their Excel sheets, maybe Microsoft Projects.

Gina Saccoman:

And so with Buildertrend you have all of that in one place, not just on somebody’s piece of paper or something that was on the job site. Everything that’s changing in the Schedule is going to be tracked right in Buildertrend. And as it changes, you can communicate with everyone that is changing, “I don’t need you today, I need you tomorrow. Or I need you to start on Monday.” So it’s just a better way to efficiently track all of your projects.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. And you can find this. This is one of our project management features.

Gina Saccoman:

It’s the first thing in the dropdown.

Tom Houghton:

So yeah. Right when you go in there dropdown?

Paul Wurth:

It’s a cornerstone feature.

Tom Houghton:

Boom, scheduling.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. It was one of the original features, the original set of features. I think we probably had nine right off the bat in 2006 when we started. Scheduling or it was refer to back then as Calendar.

Gina Saccoman:

Yes.

Paul Wurth:

Which was unique because typically scheduling in construction is off a Gantt Chart, right? If you’re using like Microsoft Project, which is probably the number one software out there, but what’s unique about us, even though it was called Calendar and that’s the first default view, each user can set whatever view they want. I think we have six different views?

Gina Saccoman:

Yep. We have.

Paul Wurth:

Or something like that?

Gina Saccoman:

Well we have month, week, day, list-

Paul Wurth:

Agenda.

Gina Saccoman:

… agenda, Gantt, baseline, phases.

Tom Houghton:

Seven…

Paul Wurth:

Boom. So-

Tom Houghton:

It’s a bonus one.

Paul Wurth:

… if you like to set your default again, sure you can. Little tip for the listeners. You can do that. And then also, Gina mentioned the all listed jobs and that’s super unique to Buildertrend because a lot of systems out there, each job live in a silo, as it relates to the Schedule and the subs and vendors that are actually on the Schedule. But with Buildertrend, you can click on all listed jobs, layer all these schedules on top of each other and then go even further, you can search for resources. So Tom, I know you know construction, so this-

Tom Houghton:

Big construction guy.

Paul Wurth:

… this is obviously going to be a little elementary for you, but if you’re using one drywall guy across 15 jobs, you probably don’t want to put him in three places at once, right?

Tom Houghton:

That’s a good point there, Paul.

Paul Wurth:

Makes sense.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

So once you go to all listed jobs, you can hit a dropdown, search for your drywall guy, see where that person is across all jobs. And even further than that, Buildertrend let’s you know when you do collision avoidance. So when you overbook your resource, so when you actually put him on the third job, if he can only be at two at once, and it notifies you right away. How about those apples?

Tom Houghton:

That’s pretty fantastic. Gina, there’s probably a lot that happens on the backend to make that happen?

Gina Saccoman:

Yes. To keep track of all of that, yeah. Yeah. Are you asking about the development of it or like keep track of all that?

Tom Houghton:

Sure, yeah give us a inside, behind the curtain?

Gina Saccoman:

Well, it’s one of those features right now, that we do minor adjustments more than anything major, because we have had the Calendar for so long. So even when I had first started here, we didn’t have the agenda view and we had an older Gantt Chart and we didn’t really have a critical… We had a critical path, but now we have an even better critical path view. You can see the critical path on different views. The baseline, the way that we calculate that for workdays versus non-workdays, all that stuff has been enhanced. So one of our dev teams is Threat Level Midnight. A really fun guy-

Tom Houghton:

Ooh, that’s a good name.

Gina Saccoman:

… really fun names for-

Paul Wurth:

Where does that come from?

Tom Houghton:

The Office.

Paul Wurth:

The show “The Office?”

Tom Houghton:

The show The Office.

Paul Wurth:

Of course, I liked the UK version better.

Tom Houghton:

Well, you would. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s like-

Tom Houghton:

But for us Americans-

Paul Wurth:

That’s like bragging, like, “Oh yeah. I like the book better.” When people say that the UK version of “The Office” –

Tom Houghton:

The book over the movie?

Paul Wurth:

Not a big fan.

Tom Houghton:

That’s what’s happening.

Paul Wurth:

They’re both good.

Tom Houghton:

They’re both good.

Paul Wurth:

That’s fine.

Tom Houghton:

Anyway, that’s where Threat Level Midnight comes from.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah, that’s where the name came from. He got to choose-

Tom Houghton:

We’ll put it in the show notes because there’s actually-

Paul Wurth:

There’s a clip?

Tom Houghton:

Well, Threat Level Midnight was the script that Michael Scott was creating.

Paul Wurth:

Oh, I see. I want to know that [crosstalk].

Tom Houghton:

Yep. And then we’ll put a link into Threat Level Midnight in the show notes. So you can take a look there.

Gina Saccoman:

They maintain the Calendar. So when anything comes up or if there’s something we’re looking to change on the product side, we work through all the things that might be an issue or things that we want to change, and then we’ll get it to dev. And that team will make sure that they’re getting those enhancements out. So whenever we get an enhancement request, we talked a little bit about UserVoice last week with Eric Fisher, and that’s where we’re getting a lot of our feedback on things that they’d like to see or changes that they want throughout the program, but on the Schedule. So we’ll keep track of that and what we can get the devs to work on, we get out to them and they get out to you or our builders.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s a great point. And on that, Gina, you are on a team of close to a hundred people, I think a little bit more, in our engineering, product, QA, basically what it takes to keep Buildertrend up running and in forward-thinking, as it relates to updating features and functionality. One of the frustrations that that team has, and it’s nobody’s fault, but that team works really hard on really cool updates and features and a lot of our clients don’t know about them. So let’s surface some really cool stuff the scheduling tool that people may not know. You’ve mentioned two of them already, which I think are important-

Gina Saccoman:

The all listed?

Paul Wurth:

The all listed, but then you mentioned the baseline view.

Gina Saccoman:

Oh, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

So I feel like I’ve always explaining our features to you, Tom.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. You can explain it to me. That’s fine.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. So the baseline view, when you start a job, a new construction or remodel or even if you’re in commercial, a tenant finish, you have a schedule, right? Let’s say that predicted schedule is 90 days. Well, with our baselines view, you set that. And then from that point on, anytime you make an adjustment, positive or negative, to that schedule, it’ll record that along with who made the adjustment and then you can put notes on it and actually reasons why. That’s important for our clients because it’s like an autopsy at the end of the job. Like how did we get to 25 days over or whatever it may. And so when you’re making changes, your best practices to say, “Change order cost us 14 more days. Weather delay here. Delivery was missed or broken stove when it got delivered, so we reorder.” Things like that. So you can see, not only just for you guys to get better, you guys being a construction company, to get better and more efficient at their schedule, but a lot of times you’re going to have somebody pretty upset with a delayed schedule. Right?

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Just like, “Here’s why.” So if you’re not using the baseline, use the baseline.

Gina Saccoman:

Yep. Baseline. And that part of that too, is linking up your schedule items, which is another piece of the best practice and really just making sure that your critical path is actually set up. And if one item doesn’t get done today and it’s going to move the other items behind it, if it’s linked up correctly, it’s going to shift everything with one shift and that will be tracked in the baseline as well. And then they can add a reason and that reason will go to all of those schedule items. So that’s a nice way to set up your schedule so that you only have to make one change and everyone that’s affected by that, can be notified. So the communication there is key, for internal users and subs.

Tom Houghton:

That’s one of my favorite features actually, when demoing the program, is when you move the event over one day and then the rest of the days just trickle down. Is just fantastic.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah, it’s beautiful.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. If you’re not using a system like Buildertrend, those are 30 phone calls you’ve got to make, if you’ve even make them. Most likely you won’t and then nobody knows when they’re supposed to be there and it’s a whole rigmarole.

Gina Saccoman:

Or chasing people down.

Paul Wurth:

Where do you think rigmarole comes from?

Tom Houghton:

Two points for a rigmarole.

Paul Wurth:

Where do you think rigmarole comes from?

Tom Houghton:

We’ll put that in the show notes.

Paul Wurth:

Kayleigh?

Tom Houghton:

Don’t… Yeah. She’s on it.

Paul Wurth:

The other one you mentioned, which I think bears repeating is phases, and that’s probably new since you’ve gotten the role.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Maybe?

Gina Saccoman:

I think I helped build that actually.

Tom Houghton:

Cool.

Paul Wurth:

Cool.

Gina Saccoman:

Actually, yeah. Right? I know.

Tom Houghton:

Look at that little plug.

Gina Saccoman:

I’ve been here a while. It’s okay.

Paul Wurth:

So what is the point of phases?

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. The phases are really more to group your items together. So if you’re in a demo phase and then you move on to the next phase, it’s a cool feature in that it groups everything together and you know when your phase one is done, you can then let everyone know that phase two is coming. It’s also cool on the owner side, if you really just want to share with the owner, just the phases, you don’t have to show them every single schedule item as is, you can choose what they see, but if you’re just showing them the phases, they’re not questioning, “Oh, hey, this guy didn’t come out today.” Because they want to know what’s going on with their job but they get that good overall view and they’re like, “Oh, plumbing is supposed to be done next week.” Not just like the bathtub is supposed to be in or something like that. So it’s a cool feature for them.

Tom Houghton:

More of a 30,000-foot view of it?

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. Yep.

Paul Wurth:

There’s another cool setting on the owner. When you set up the job, you can actually, basically I’m paraphrasing, but you can make a setting that says, “Show the owner my schedule, but only show them one week ahead at a time, two weeks ahead at a time.” So revolving, it’ll just only give them so far ahead of the time, so they don’t get ahead of themselves. Right?

Gina Saccoman:

Yes. Yes. And then they’re not so concerned about the things that are getting effected, two months down the road or anything like that. That’s not necessarily the concern. They just want to see what’s happening now.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Let’s talk about integration on-the-go because not only can you do this on full site, on buildertrend.net, but also on your mobile app, when you’re out in the field, you can see everything there is to do with the Schedule.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. You have the month view option, you have a Gantt Chart. Most of the different views that you have on full site as well. And you can change your schedule item on the go if you’re there and you know that they’re not going to be done today, they can shift that. Or if you know something got done or let’s be more positive, right, if something got done early and others know that they have to be at the job the next day or their schedule is going to change a little bit too. So you have all those views and yeah, it’s a quick, easy, make your change to your schedule right in the field.

Paul Wurth:

That’s another unique feature with Buildertrend. There’s many construction softwares out there but we are the only system out there that has basically full functionality from the mobile app. A lot of systems will, as you were referencing, just lets you view the schedule. But our system actually lets you view the Schedule in all of our views and make adjustments in whatever view you prefer, on the fly, which is really cool. Can you go to All Jobs on the mobile app?

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s really unique as well.

Gina Saccoman:

Different views though, maybe not the month view. So that would be a little overwhelming for that one. But yeah, shout out to the mobile dev team because the way that we have our mobile app set up is really, you’re not going to the Buildertrend website. You’re not going to .net and bring you to Safari and you’re looking, trying to figure out how to see that on your phone. You’re getting a real native view on the mobile app, so that also makes it simple, easy and easy to read.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s cool.

Tom Houghton:

Speaking of easy to read, I just love the color usage. You can change things by colors? Got pulled up here and-

Gina Saccoman:

Yep. The schedule items could be a specific color. Yeah. Lots of things you can add specifically to each schedule item. We talk a lot about the phases whether you can choose the phase, you can add tags, so different ways to filter for different schedule items, maybe your colors or your phases or your plumbers are green. Things like that. You can also, you an attach files, you can add comments. So anyone in the field can have access to those files that is legitimately with that schedule item, you can add comments or RFIs. Yeah. Ask questions, make sure you get those answers back and without that you can’t complete the schedule item.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. You were talking about colors. One of the thing that many people take advantage of, but if you not, pull your car over right now and listen up, which is templates. And that is something that works on a lot of different levels. So for instance, if as a business, you want a drywall always be red and paint always to be blue, or whatever you want. The only way to consistently do that, is create a template and then apply that template to the next job. A lot of people think, “Hey, well I’m at a production home builder. Every job is different. Why would I need a template?”

Paul Wurth:

The basics are, you’re either starting from scratch every time and you’re inherently going to miss some things, right? You’re going to forget about X, Y, or Z, or you think that paint’s green instead of blue and it’s eight days instead of 10 days or whatever it is, the template’s just there to give you a framework for the next job. It doesn’t have to be the exact same kitchen or the exact same home, but it’s going to be in there to make sure that you don’t forget anything. And then you can delete things off the template or extend items and assign them to people. It just helps you start a job quicker, right?

Gina Saccoman:

Yes. I mean, you have a standardized schedule, like you said, no matter what job you’re doing and having that set up, we also have a cool feature that has to do with the job site details too. But if you want to assign it to sub A or you want to assign it out as a template, you don’t know who’s going to be on it, you don’t necessarily have to assign a specific person to a schedule item. And then once you actually import the template into your job, those schedule items can be reassigned to anyone. So you can switch out internal users, you can switch out subs. So that’s a fun, a super user button on the internal user and sub details.

Paul Wurth:

So is that like a placeholder?

Gina Saccoman:

Yep. It’s like a placeholder sub. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Paul Wurth:

Let’s say that I had five schedules and the schedules are about to go live and I had a placeholder just called Drywall Placeholder. I can go to my subs, pick A1 drywall and then it automatically throws them in all five places?

Gina Saccoman:

You would be in a job.

Paul Wurth:

Or is it job to job? Job to job? It’s still very valuable though.

Gina Saccoman:

Yep. And you can also use the mass actions on the Schedule too, so it doesn’t have to necessarily be all of the users, but you can select the five things that that person’s going to do and reassign it to them right there. So that’s a cool list view feature.

Paul Wurth:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tom Houghton:

So we talked a little bit about super users, how they can benefit from this feature. But I think it’s also important to note if somebody is just starting out with Buildertrend, this is a great place to start. I can’t tell you how many I’ve talked to who said, “The first thing we did was scheduling.” And I mean, maybe you can talk to the ease of use behind it and … I don’t know.

Gina Saccoman:

Sure. I mean, honestly, to add a schedule item could be as easy as literally putting, we have a quick add option on the month, week and day views and you could put in just what it is and when you’d like to do it and just one item at a time. A lot of people that do have their projects in Excel or Microsoft Projects, we have a data entry team that helps out with that. So they can actually import it for you. So you get that base without having to do every one of them on your own. But yeah, the Quick Add and Templates, it’s just easy to get your Schedule just set up.

Tom Houghton:

So that data entry team just takes my, if I’ve got my stuff like you said, in Project or Excel, they’ll take that data and put it in Buildertrend for me, so I can get off the ground even faster?

Gina Saccoman:

Exactly. And so you’re going to have that base and then, like Paul said, you can delete what you don’t need, you can change it. You can actually template and copy your template. And as your job’s going, you can create that as a template when you actually have a job set up where you’ve really liked the schedule, you can make that a template. So there’s lots of cool features to that, to make it even easier to get your schedule set up. Yep.

Tom Houghton:

I think it’s a great way to get buy-in from the team too, because I think it’s really easy to see it, it’s visually appealing to look at, they’ll look at all the colors and they’re all laid out, all nice and pretty there. But I think that way everybody can get on board with Buildertrend and see like, “Hey, this is a benefit.” Because everybody can see and stay up to date with it.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. And so you’re talking more about the month view, but the list view is also very similar to an Excel sheeter or Project management. So those who don’t love the colors and don’t love that, we also in the list viewer, it’s just listing out what’s happening and what’s next and what should come before it and things like that. So you can choose what your favorite is. The other cool part of the Schedule is that it links to a ton of other items. So there’s a filter that you can have on all the time, if you want, but you can add in your other items like your To-Do’s and your daily logs and any due-dates that you have on change orders and bills and POs. So everywhere you have that link to a deadline toggle, if you see those, it’s literally a toggle, you can link it-

Tom Houghton:

Nice.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. Right. You can link it to before or after a schedule item. And then you’re going to see that on your Calendar. And you’re going to know that that’s coming up and you can be notified of those too. So it really, as you take to the rest of the program, it takes it all back to the Schedule.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Schedule, to Tom your point, is one of the first things you learn, but also we always talk about those, like the big three, like Schedule, To-Do’s and Day Logs and that’s to Gina’s point. And so when you’re in the Calendar view, you definitely want to go to the dropdown and select what other things you can view, because it’s not like viewing what’s there. But if you’re a business owner, you can see on Wednesday, the 25th, that we were doing framing and then there was a daily log posted and two photos at it. And it’s all going to be in one Calendar for you. So it’s basically like a full scope of what will happen on the job that day.

Tom Houghton:

That’s great.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Great feature to use. Everybody should be using this right now.

Gina Saccoman:

Get on the Schedule.

Paul Wurth:

Great feature.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. If you feel like we’ve missed something, we want to know about it. So give us a call at our phone number on the hotline at 402-596-6437. You can leave us a message if you feel like we’ve missed something. We’ll bring it up in a future episode on Schedules. 402-596-6437 or shoot us an email at podcast@buildertrend.com and we’d love to hear from you on your thoughts on the Schedule feature.

Paul Wurth:

I love it. We’re going to get voicemails.

Tom Houghton:

Of course.

Paul Wurth:

Let’s go.

Tom Houghton:

Come on, call in. We want to hear from you.

Paul Wurth:

We’re like a real life show now.

Tom Houghton:

Now we’re like a real deal. Yeah. Two steps away from live, still. So if-

Paul Wurth:

I think I heard about this, but I was just, I was genuinely surprised that you just said that. What’s the number again?

Tom Houghton:

402-596-6437.

Paul Wurth:

I’m going to call in, in my disguise voice.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Paul Wurth:

You can pick which one.

Tom Houghton:

Well, we’ll see. There you go. We’ll see.

Gina Saccoman:

I like the Southern one.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. There you go.

Gina Saccoman:

Country.

Tom Houghton:

Okay. Awesome. Gina, thank you so much for coming on and talking about Scheduling. Before you go, we want to talk about you a little bit to get to know you a little bit more. We’ve got some fun fact questions to ask you. I think first off, one thing that we missed at the very beginning is, you’ve been here for a while, Gina, here at Buildertrend?

Gina Saccoman:

Six years and a couple of weeks.

Tom Houghton:

That’s pretty awesome.

Gina Saccoman:

I started in CS and was on the phones and was training builders on how to use the program and then ended up in product a year later and have had a few different roles in product. And yeah, now as the product release coordinator, just trying to help coordinate everything, from product to dev, and make sure that we’re working on the right features and getting them done in a timely manner. And then communicating that out to our internal and external users.

Tom Houghton:

And you had a special connection with one of our previous guests on the podcast, Michael Lee?

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. I did say that. I was his onboarding… Or his coach. I heard they call it a coach now. So yeah-

Tom Houghton:

Originally started.

Gina Saccoman:

… I was Stephen’s coach. Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Gina Saccoman:

Pretty cool.

Tom Houghton:

That’s pretty cool.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Okay. Well, let’s get to know you a little bit more. So first question for you, Gina, you’re known around the office for doing handstands.

Gina Saccoman:

Truth.

Tom Houghton:

And that’s because your background is in gymnastics, correct?

Gina Saccoman:

Yes.

Tom Houghton:

Maybe you could share a little bit about your gymnastic background.

Gina Saccoman:

Okay. I started when I was seven. I’m actually from Minnesota and I went to Twin City Twisters, shout out to them-

Tom Houghton:

Okay. Yeah.

Gina Saccoman:

… everyone listening.

Tom Houghton:

They’re big listeners to the podcast.

Gina Saccoman:

Probably. Probably. Yeah, and I did that and competed through JO Nationals and then I made it to Nebraska. So I competed for Nebraska for four years, 2000 and 2004 was my time there.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Paul Wurth:

So what was your event?

Gina Saccoman:

So I was a two-time All-American on vault.

Paul Wurth:

What?

Gina Saccoman:

It was fun. Yeah. But I really did love doing floor. I had fun floor music. My dad used to make my floor music for me and so I got to choose and “Welcome To The Jungle” was my senior year-

Tom Houghton:

Was your jam?

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Is your dad Axl Rose? I’m confused.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah, he sings those songs.

Tom Houghton:

He’s doing a live cover? Way to go Dad.

Gina Saccoman:

No, my dad’s not Axl Rose.

Paul Wurth:

How does your dad make music for you if it’s just like a song from Axl?

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. You can use the songs and put them together.

Paul Wurth:

Oh, he mix it?

Gina Saccoman:

He was like DJ Dad.

Paul Wurth:

So he got in the lab and like…

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Okay.

Tom Houghton:

Back in the day.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Right. Like one of the… CDs and things like that.

Tom Houghton:

Nice. Way to go dad. Two time All-American. So we’ll put a picture of you in the show notes with your All-Americanness.

Gina Saccoman:

Okay.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. So check that out.

Gina Saccoman:

I’ll help you pick that picture probably.

Tom Houghton:

That would be good.

Paul Wurth:

Editorial approval.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Now for everyone who doesn’t work at Buildertrend, Gina has a soundbite that she plays and is known for around the office for using this. Gina, want tell us about that?

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. I was like-

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, you do that.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah, air horn. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Your air horn, all the time.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. I always have it. Well, because-

Paul Wurth:

New feature’s come out. Yeah.

Gina Saccoman:

… you have to get excited when there’s a new feature.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, that’s it.

Tom Houghton:

One more time. There you go.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. Yeah. Because we want to get excited and people to appreciate when something comes out because we do. We’re doing something every day. So everybody puts a lot of effort into that. So it comes all the way from CS, all the way out to back to the builders. So we want to just celebrate a little bit.

Paul Wurth:

Nothing wrong with celebrating.

Tom Houghton:

I love celebrating.

Paul Wurth:

You’re a big fan.

Tom Houghton:

I’m celebrating right now.

Paul Wurth:

What does that even mean?

Tom Houghton:

Just happy to be here on the podcast. Wow. There we go. Nice. Last question for you, Gina, what’s your favorite feature of the program, besides scheduling?

Paul Wurth:

Good question.

Tom Houghton:

Thanks. Uh-oh.

Gina Saccoman:

I don’t know- [crosstalk].

Tom Houghton:

She’s like, “I like them all.”

Gina Saccoman:

I know, because I want to say that I love the ones that I did but-

Tom Houghton:

Oh, well then you should say that.

Gina Saccoman:

… but I actually really like To-Do’s, because it is just a heavily used feature and we have enhanced it so much from the beginning. I was actually part of the beginning of To-Do’s too.

Tom Houghton:

Nice.

Gina Saccoman:

We took on tasks and wanted to enhance that and make sure that it worked in and out of the Calendar. And now you can, I think you already had a spotlight on To-Do, so that they know all the secrets of what you can do with that. But it’s a really cool feature and you can use it, no matter who you are.

Tom Houghton:

Love it. Make sure you check out that episode. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes.

Gina Saccoman:

I feel like I should have talked about, I have a sneak peek of a feature that’s coming out. Can I talk about it?

Paul Wurth:

Let’s do it.

Tom Houghton:

You do?

Gina Saccoman:

I know.

Tom Houghton:

Whoa, what is this? You’re holding back on us, Gina.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. I didn’t know if we had time.

Tom Houghton:

We’ll make time for a sneak peek.

Gina Saccoman:

Okay. There’s time. So we are working on a feature that we’re calling Slack on the Schedule.

Tom Houghton:

Slack on the Schedule? Okay. Not like Slack isn’t like Slack Chat?

Gina Saccoman:

No, a lot of people don’t use…

Paul Wurth:

Like Float?

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. Like Float, a little wiggle room.

Paul Wurth:

Slack. Wiggle room is better.

Tom Houghton:

It’s good.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. I wanted to call it Wiggle. That was my vote. But yeah, it didn’t work out.

Tom Houghton:

But it didn’t. Instead it went Slack.

Gina Saccoman:

Slack, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

It’s probably probably better.

Gina Saccoman:

It’s an industry. It’s fine. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Let’s be honest.

Tom Houghton:

It’s a good call.

Gina Saccoman:

But it’s basically another type of predecessor linking and the number of work days of an item can be… Let me try that again, of the number of workdays an item can be delayed or extended before it actually forces the item after it to shift with it.

Paul Wurth:

So, Gina, explain to Tom why a construction company would want Slack or Float inside an item like framing?

Gina Saccoman:

Well, it would help them to not waste days of work or push anything back that didn’t actually need to be pushed back, because if it is something that you could have started today, because they would have done something for a couple more days, but the next thing can start before that third day is over, they should still be on the job that day. So right now, there are workarounds but we want to get rid of those obviously. And then with this, you can have that wiggle room to say, “You’ve got two extra days to get this done but my other guy’s going to be there and doing his job as well.” So it’s just trying to be more efficient with your Schedule.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Just the realities of construction is that nobody really knows how long things are going to take. There’s a general idea but just because something took… You scheduled it for 10 days and it ended up being 14 days, does not mean the schedule is behind because many contractors have that Float bit already baked in. So 14 days will be the schedule item, but they’ll probably have four days of Float. So-

Tom Houghton:

Or Slack.

Paul Wurth:

Or Slack. What do we want to call it?

Tom Houghton:

We’re calling it Slack.

Gina Saccoman:

Slack. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

I feel like there’s another Slack that owns that.

Tom Houghton:

I know. That’s why I was bringing it up. Right?

Paul Wurth:

I think it should be Float.

Tom Houghton:

Well, I guess stay tuned to see what the feature ends up. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Let’s see who wins. Actually, we should vote.

Gina Saccoman:

I’m just going to put in Wiggle.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Paul Wurth:

We should put it on Twitter or something for like a-

Tom Houghton:

Or we’ll either put a vote on the show notes or just call in or email us?

Gina Saccoman:

Ah, there you go.

Tom Houghton:

podcast@buildertrend.com.

Gina Saccoman:

Use your voice. Use your voice.

Tom Houghton:

Well, or I guess you could use our official channels.

Paul Wurth:

No, let’s go with podcast. Yeah. I want every listener to vote. Should this new feature be called Slack or Float or if you have a better idea? Send us an email. We will count them up. And next episode we will tell you who the winner is.

Tom Houghton:

Fantastic.

Gina Saccoman:

This is how I get in trouble upstairs.

Tom Houghton:

This is upstairs, yeah. We have a whole engineering team who’s tapping their feet, it’s like, “What is happening down there?” Awesome.

Gina Saccoman:

No, it’s good. We want to make sense. So it would make sense to have that come out right the first time

Tom Houghton:

There you go. Absolutely. Well this has been fantastic. We really enjoyed having you on, Gina. Thanks for coming on and sharing your knowledge about the scheduling tool. And then also, just about giving this sneak peek. I’m excited about that.

Gina Saccoman:

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Paul Wurth:

You bet. Thanks Gina. Appreciate you.

Tom Houghton:

You want to share a suggestion for a future guest, have a question about Buildertrend that you’d like us to discuss or a topic that you’d want us to cover on the podcast? Let us know by calling and leaving us a message at 402-596-6437. That’s 402-596-6437. And who knows? You’ll maybe hear yourself on the podcast. Love what you heard? Don’t forget to rate and subscribe to our podcasts so you can hear for more guests that will benefit your business. Also, please check out our show notes page for more information on what we discussed on this episode. You can find it at buildertrend.com/podcast. Thanks for listening. And we’ll see you next time on “The Building Code.”

Paul Wurth:

Appreciate you.