Superior Industrial Insulation employs 200 people and specializes in firestopping, fireproofing, and mechanical insulation, tackling complex projects that carry millions of dollars in out-of-contract work at any given time. For Adam Carter, Director of Fire and Life Safety, making sure every dollar of that work gets captured, documented, and paid has always been the priority.

For specialty contractors like Superior, the industry's standard T&M and change order workflows relied on paper tickets, manual spreadsheets, and a chain of email handoffs where revenue could disappear at any step.

For Superior's field crews, every hour of extra work was documented on triplicate carbon copy tickets filled out and hand-signed on the jobsite and collected by the superintendent. Documentation could be erratic, and some tickets could get lost or misplaced, and along with them, the revenue they represented.

"You could have millions of dollars out there that you're just not aware of," says Carter. "And that's a really difficult place to be as a contractor."

Turning tickets into change orders meant manually transposing everything into Excel, entering labor rates by hand, and pricing out materials line by line. With multiple branch offices each running their own version of that process, there was never a consolidated, real-time picture of what was outstanding across the company.

"It was very difficult for ownership and upper management to keep track of what was out there," says Carter. "The whole thing was very archaic." Without a system keeping change orders moving, the cycle from completed work to issued change order could stretch six to eight months, with Superior carrying those costs the entire time.

All of that changed when Superior brought Clearstory onto their projects.



Purpose-built to help Specialty Contractors reduce risk and get paid faster on out-of-contract work, Clearstory's core product is a shareable, cloud-based Change Order Log that creates instant alignment between stakeholders with powerful tools like a mobile app for digital T&M Tags, built-in Change Order templates, instant pricing, and more.

Clearstory gave Superior something the old workflows never could: a single, real-time view of every ticket, every change order, and every bulletin across all of their projects at once. Field crews log work digitally with photos and documentation attached at the point of completion, and every billable item from labor to equipment to consumables gets recorded in the process.

"When you're looking at a time and material job, everything counts," says Carter. "Lifts, equipment, materials — every one of those costs is something the customer should be paying for, and now we make sure they are."

Reduced Admin & Faster Approvals

The time savings have been equally dramatic. Change order and ticket processing that used to consume days of manual spreadsheet work every week now takes minutes.

"Clearstory has reduced the time devoted to T&M and change orders from three days a week down to 30 minutes," says Carter. "That right there is enough justification for my company to keep doing what we're doing. I can put him back to estimating jobs or making sure manpower is meeting budgets instead."

Clearstory has also transformed how Superior aligns with its GC customers. Where Carter once received monthly emails asking for outstanding change order logs, he now gives GCs direct access to Superior's live log and sends weekly reports.

"We've got millions upon millions of dollars sitting out there on some of these projects," says Carter. "It gives them the ability to see it growing and say, we need to get Superior taken care of here so they can continue doing things for us."

The result has been a meaningful compression of the approval cycle. Work that previously took six to eight months to move from completion to issued change order has been cut by roughly four months.

Live Reporting & GC Transparency

Clearstory's reporting also gives Carter a live view of everything outstanding and the ability to stay on top of what needs attention before it ages. "What Clearstory gives me the ability to do is run those reports on a regular basis and make sure we're staying on top of what's out there," he says.

That same transparency has given Superior a powerful new tool in its conversations with financial partners. When lenders want to understand why certain jobs are carrying outstanding costs, Carter pulls a live work-in-progress report directly from Clearstory and walks them through it.

When bulletins and change events come in, Carter's team logs expected costs and manpower needs in Clearstory, giving Superior a forward-looking view of cash needs before work even begins. "We can project manpower and know exactly what we've got coming," says Carter. "And when we need to go to our bank, we've got the roadmap to show them exactly why."

Giving GC customers direct access to Superior's live log has also shifted accountability in both directions. Rather than fielding monthly requests for updated logs, Carter now gets GCs following up with their own teams.

"They can go back to their personnel and say, why aren't you signing these tickets for Superior," says Carter. "That accountability used to fall entirely on us."

Carter is direct about what Clearstory has meant for Superior and equally direct about his willingness to say so. "If there is a customer you're out there talking to and they'd like to talk to a contractor utilizing Clearstory, don't hesitate to throw my name out there," he says. "You guys have been a huge help for us. The more people that use it, the easier life's going to be in the world of construction.”