Centralized Rate Management, Strong Field Adoption, and Less Revenue Leakage

Rate management has been one of the biggest wins. Heavy civil projects live and die on accurate rates, and the exposure from getting them wrong adds up fast.

“Clearstory’s ability to solve a very common problem — the different rates that we are constantly updating — is huge. You get on projects and they may have their own custom rate sets that you need to be beholden to, accurate to a penny. You have union rules, you have certified payroll rules. Typically that’s just solved with a bunch of spreadsheets and things get lost,” Ridino says. “That’s where you’re going to see revenue leakage from incorrect rates and underbilling, which the counterpart is going to be all too happy to sign off on.”

Ridino ran the numbers. The impact was five to six figures in previously missed revenue. Now he manages rates centrally, and each job gets the correct rate file at setup, no PM memory required.

“In Clearstory, I can manage the rates centrally and ensure that each job during setup gets the correct rate file, and not rely on a PM to remember to use a certain spreadsheet.”

Adoption across the field came easier than expected. Clearstory’s integration with HCSS means that when a foreman tags work as extra in the field, it flows directly into Clearstory for the project team to price and approve.

“It’s a very well-designed application, so getting it in the hands of a foreman or a project engineer — they love it,” Ridino says. “There’s no questions around that. There’s a ton of great support.”

Because McGuire & Hester operates as both a GC and a sub, being on Clearstory creates value on both sides. Several of the largest contractors in the country are already on the platform, which means McGuire & Hester shows up to those jobs already fluent.

We’re subs to some of the biggest contractors in the country, and they’re on Clearstory, we’re on Clearstory, so everybody’s happy,” Ridino says. “As our sub tiers get in there, we build up the whole network and it becomes the normal way of doing a project.”

Three years in, what keeps McGuire & Hester committed isn’t just the product. It’s the way Clearstory operates as a partner. That responsiveness reflects something Ridino sees as fundamental to how Clearstory was built in the first place.

“Clearstory was clearly built for the purpose it’s trying to solve,” Ridino says. “The team has experience coming from construction companies, and so they understand the problems that our foremen, project managers, and project engineers deal with.”

For a company with a hundred years of history, that kind of understanding goes a long way. “For the first time in the company’s 100-year history, we have an actual process when it comes to getting Change Orders approved.”