How Webcor Gets Double the Benefit from Using Clearstory as Both a GC and Self-Perform Contractor

Perennially recognized as an ENR 100 Top General Contractor with annual revenue eclipsing $1B, San Francisco-based Webcor also operates several exceptional self-perform craft build divisions, providing the Bay Area super contractor with a 360-degree appreciation of the opportunities and challenges facing all construction stakeholders.  

And whether they’re acting as the General Contractor on a marquee, zero-waste redevelopment in Martinez, CA or providing drywall as a self-perform Specialty Contractor on high-rise projects in downtown San Francisco, Webcor is increasingly powering up Clearstory on the job to handle Change Orders. 

Simple, Fast, Accurate Change Orders 

That’s because Clearstory has streamlined Change Orders on the GC side, providing Webcor with visibility and transparency for more confident forecasting, and has supercharged the self-perform side, eliminating carbon copy paper tracking of field-directed extra work, simplifying fast, accurate Change Order Request delivery, and providing ROI that can be felt in as little as one day. 

“All it takes is one or two big Saturday overtime tags for us to pay for an entire year of our team to use Clearstory,” says Webcor Drywall senior project manager Adam Martin, who first recognized Clearstory’s shared, real-time Change Order Log as a way to lift the self-perform team out of paper T&M Ticket and static Change Order Log chaos. 

“I did have a life before Clearstory, but it was a lot more cumbersome,” says Martin, who describes the manual process of assembling Change Orders, filling out carbon copy ticket books, hunting down signatures, scanning tickets, and building tracking logs with companion spreadsheets as basically a “hope for the best” scenario that could often become a “lost cause” in trying to align on Change Orders with GCs. 

“We're both a General Contractor and self-perform Specialty Contractor, so we're on both sides of that equation, and I think Clearstory's superpower as a construction technology is that there's a value proposition for both of those sides.”

Todd Mercer

Senior Vice President, Webcor 

With Clearstory, the Webcor Drywall self-perform team was able to instantly capture and document extra-work on digital T&M Tags, easily secure electronic signatures, and share updated, streamlined, organized Change Order Logs with GCs via a single, simple link. 

The near-instantaneous transparency and alignment on Change Order risk between stakeholders told Martin that Clearstory would be an ideal tool for Webcor’s GC teams still wrestling with Change Orders, too.

Confidence, Access and Visibility 

Alec Bangs is a Webcor senior project manager and was on the first of those GC pilots, the $75 million razing and redevelopment of the Contra Costa County administrative campus in Martinez, CA.  

In addition to the extended time lags just to process Change Orders, Bangs says the manual sharing of static and unstandardized Change Order Logs could leave unpredictable gaps in forecasting when Change Order risk wasn’t captured, acknowledged, and resolved by stakeholders quickly.

“And I think that's the best thing I get from Clearstory,” Bangs says. “Yes, speed is a factor, but I think the biggest asset to me is the confidence and peace of mind in knowing that I have access and visibility into everything that's open.”

With Clearstory, Bangs no longer has to ask trade partners for updated Change Order Logs every month. Instead, subs share design-change-driven and T&M-related Change Orders in Clearstory, so they’re automatically logged in a shared tracking log for both parties. This provides trust and transparency between trade partners, improves forecast accuracy, and dramatically boosts efficiency.  

“It’s the ability to just jump onto Clearstory, to see what's there at a glance quickly and to know  that we have one place, one repository, one source of truth that we can all go to and be confident that we’re seeing the latest and greatest information.”

Mercer says that Webcor evaluates technology on flexibility, the ability to scale, and the value that it provides to general contractor teams, self-perform divisions, and external trade partners, which have been all wins with Clearstory.

“When we see both our self-perform groups and our GC side growing with a technology, we see double the benefit, and where there’s value for our trade partners it’s easier to get them to adopt as well,” he says. “A lot of tools don’t move the needle enough. They promise a lot, but they don’t deliver. Clearstory is one of those tools that is delivering, and we expect it to continue to deliver for us.”

About Webcor 

Founded in 1971 and honored as one of the Top California Contractors, Largest Bay Area General Contractors, and Top Design-Build Contractors, Webcor is a premier provider of commercial construction services and is known for its cost-effective design-build methodology, skill in concrete construction, and expertise in building landmark projects.