Abby Hoffman | UX Designer

Mitigating construction financial risk with Procore's Embedded Insights

Using historical data, Procore Embedded Insights built a user experience to mitigate the risks and pain points of managing the general condition funds on a construction project. On every construction project is a general condition fund in the General Contractor’s budget. These funds are reserved for things required to maintain a job site – labor, trailer rentals, fencing, portable toilets, temporary power in addition to unforeseeable events (e.g. weather or site surprises). Arguably, a very important part of the budget but lends itself to many challenges.

Timeframe: Dec 2021 - June 2022
Role: Senior Product Designer
Product team: Cate Knuff (Product Manager),  Stephanie Elie (Content Designer), Daniel Pierre (Front End Developer), James Pita (ML Engineer), Ripple Goya (ML Engineer), Josh Newland (Data Scientist), Taylor Klüdnt & Ryan D'Orazi (UI Designer)

Problem

Project Managers and Company Executives have explained that the general condition funds in a budget are the hardest to manage and the part of the budget that is most likely to go over. If the funds are not properly managed, it can result in a loss of profit for the General Contractor and a poor relationship with the Owner.

Through discovery user research efforts and some team members' lived experiences, the following pain points were identified as contributions to this problem:

  • When a job is won, there can be a mismatch between the Estimator's and the Project Manager's expectations.
  • During construction, it is hard for the Project Manager to predict the exact staffing needed across many months and years of job.
  • Unexpected issues come up along the way due to weather or other unforeseeable factors that require reactive, corrective actions in the budget.

Solution

A new predictive, risk analysis data model and user experience embedded into customers' budget, portfolio and Procore projects that enables Project Managers and Company Executives to evaluate risk of overspending, catch abnormal spending, and predict funds needed throughout all courses of construction.

This solution brings never before seen information to Project Managers and Company Executives in real-time without any report-building efforts. Details include:

  • Benchmark of similar projects' past general condition spend.
  • Last month's total spend.
  • Top 5 cost codes with highest monthly spend.
  • Risk score.

Contributions

  • Organized, facilitated, and participated in a cross-discipline 4-day design sprint. Included exercises to build teams’ foundational knowledge in the user problems, areas of opportunity, and prioritized course of action.
  • Iteratively designed the user experience from concept through to development ready designs for 3 releases consecutive releases to the Pilot.
  • Built, conducted, and synthesized 3 research plans to receive feedback throughout design process before Pilot release.
  • Implemented feedback methods at Pilot release to support continuous discovery.
  • Led weekly playbacks to stakeholders to create visibility with leadership, receive feedback and ensure alignment throughout the process.
  • Built a data visualization design library for organization and worked with development to build coded, reusable components.

Results

  • Within 2 weeks of Pilot release, 120 (6%) out of 2,000 eligible companies enrolled.
  • Within 7 months of Pilot release, 480 (24%) out of 2,000 eligible companies enrolled.
  • Patent for predictive model and user experience filed.
  • Coming soon: Procore Insights product release to GA.

Of those enrolled, customer satisfaction was reported as high.

  • Majority of customers agree that the user experience enhances their process effectiveness and allowed Project Managers to mitigate risk earlier.
  • Average customer satisfaction score was reported as Good.
Feel free to say hi at abbychoff@gmail.com