How GFE Norcal Reduced Change Order Processing Time by 25% and Eliminated Lost Revenue by Using Clearstory

George Family Enterprises is a family owned Acoustical/Specialty Ceiling Subcontractor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 1979, GFE has supplied and installed acoustical and decorative ceiling on many iconic Bay Area projects, including the Salesforce Tower, Golden State Warriors Chase Center Arena, the DeYoung Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Clearstory reduced change order processing time by 25%, significantly decreased days aging for CORs, and eliminated lost revenue from missing paper T&M tags for George Family Enterprises (GFE Norcal). Read on to learn how Clearstory drastically improved Change Order Communication for GFE Norcal.

Change order challenges: Processing time and lost revenue

Being a small business, it is critical for GFE to be able to efficiently document and get paid for out of contract work. Before using Clearstory, processing change orders involved manually pricing/compiling the change order in excel, updating an excel change order log, and e-mailing to GC. Field directed changes, involved handwriting labor, material, equipment using paper/carbon copy tags and transporting back to the office. GFE Project Manager’s are always managing multiple projects at any given time so the administrative time involved in these manual processes often led to delayed processing/payment.

Before Clearstory, processing a change order for two hours of extra work could take two hours of administrative time! Additionally, an estimated 15% of T&M Tags were lost or unsubmitted, which resulted in lost revenue.

The Clearstory Solution

Using Clearstory, GFE’s field teams effortlessly document extra work on their mobile devices, add photos, and obtain electronic signatures. GFE’s office staff has real-time visibility to T&M tags created in the field eliminating the previous need to transport back to the office as well as eliminating the chance of the T&M tags being unsubmitted and lost revenue. GFE can convert T&M tags into priced change orders, update the COR log, and share with their customer with one click.

By switching to Clearstory, GFE has been able to streamline their change order process resulting in 25% faster processing time using significantly fewer administrative hours.

Subcontractor-Process-Graphic

"Clearstory is a game changer! I can’t even quantify the benefit of having all of our change orders and T&M Tags just one click away."

Aaron Elliott
Director of Operations

Remote Work Spotlight

The 2020 COVID Pandemic and Bay Area wildfires have brought new challenges to working remotely that GFE has never faced before. Clearstory's web-based platform has allowed our teams to communicate and work remotely that would not have been possible with our previous tools and would have resulted in lost revenue. Director of Operations, Aaron Elliott, was asked by a GC for a Change Order that required an immediate response. If GFE were still using paper tags, there’s no way he could have responded to the request in time. Using Clearstory, he was able to create the tag and send him the Change Order Request in five minutes.