Lanehart Cuts Change Order Processing Time by 90%

Clearstory helped a 120 year old, family-run painting contractor in Louisiana improve their documentation and Change Order workflows to bring processing time down from weeks to minutes.

Saving money with less admin time and better documentation

The team is processing change orders 90% faster

Professional T&M tags reduce revisions, increase approvals

Lanehart has saved approximately 334 hours in the past year

About Lanehart

Lanehart has been the greater Baton Rouge & New Orleans area’s premier commercial painting contractor for over 120 years. Their notable projects include LSU’s Tiger Stadium, Mercedes-Benz Superdome, and Children’s Hospital of New Orleans. We recently caught up with President Scott Lanehart to discuss how Clearstory transformed their change order communication.

Change Order Challenge

Change Orders and out-of-scope work represent a significant portion of revenue for painting contractors due to common occurrences like trade damage and paint touch ups. Effective Change Order communication is critical in order to protect revenue and cash flow, however relying on tools such as carbon copy T&M Tags and Excel created opportunities for information to get lost.

Lanehart's teams were spending hours of administrative time each week tracking Extra Work. Poorly documented or lost T&M Tags ultimately led to bottom line losses. "Handling change orders has always been a major pain point for us," says Scott Lanehart, President and CEO. "We were spending large amounts of time managing cost information by using Excel spreadsheets and paper tickets."

ScottLanehart_Headshot

"Our GCs love having access to the digital COR Log whenever they need it. We're always on the same page with our customers."

Scott Lanehart
President

Enter Clearstory

Lanehart Painting recently implemented Clearstory, a cloud-based solution for communicating Change Orders. "We heard about Clearstory during a round-table discussion at a Painting Contractors Association conference, and we've never looked back," Scott recalled. Lanehart now uses Clearstory to streamline their Change Order process with customers by tracking extra work and submitting Change Order Requests in real time.

90% Faster Processing

After introducing Clearstory, Lanehart was able to eliminate several steps of their Change Order process using Clearstory's automated workflows. Prior to using Clearstory, Lanehart's project teams manually collected and transported paper T&M Tags from the field to the office where they were priced manually before being submitted. Now, Lanehart's field teams create T&M Tags directly in the Clearstory mobile app, they are instantly logged in the office where they are instantly converted into Change Order Requests because of automated pricing data. Clearstory's real-time capabilities decreased Lanehart's Change Order processing time by 90%, from weeks down to days!

In the past year, Lanehart documented over 16,000 extra work hours performed and completed 400 T&M Tags. They saved approximately 334 hours by using Clearstory!

Better GC Relationships

Clearstory's digital T&M Tags are clear and consistent, which reduces back-and-forth revisions and eases approvals for their GC customers. Real-time COR Logs are available at the click of a button, so their GCs no longer have to request monthly updates. "Our GCs love having access to the digital COR Log whenever they need it," states Lanehart. "We're always on the same page with our customers."

“Clearstory's mobile app is very user friendly & intuitive. We are providing better quality documentation to our customers“ concludes Ben Spencer, Director of Field Operations