Scaling Software Solutions that
Improve Field Operations
What is Voyage Control?
Voyage Control is a proven software solution for managing site logistics including deliveries, optimizing on site resources, and proactively tracking material inventory. It has been deployed across the world and is accessible via desktop, tablet and mobile devices for use by general contractors, trade partners, developers and owners.
Who is Suffolk?
Suffolk is a national enterprise that invests, innovates, and builds. Suffolk is an end-to-end business that provides value throughout the entire project lifecycle by leveraging its core construction management services with vertical service lines that include real estate capital investment, design, self-perform construction services, technology start-up investment and innovation research/development.
Suffolk is a privately-held company with $4 billion in annual revenue, 2,500 employees and main offices in Boston (headquarters), New York, Miami, West Palm Beach, Tampa, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. Suffolk serves clients in every major industry sector, including healthcare, science and technology, education, gaming, transportation/aviation, and commercial.
Voyage Control's Journey With Suffolk
Our work started out in an organic manner, beginning with Suffolk field teams in Boston at the end of 2015. By 2019 Voyage Control was adopted as an enterprise solution, championed by the Construction Solutions Team at Suffolk HQ and established as a best practice for sites across the US.
Voyage Control has been deployed on a variety of projects in the Suffolk portfolio; commercial high rises, hospital projects, education facilities, a casino, and even at a ski resort.
One exemplary project that has adopted Voyage Control in a particularly tight and challenging job is the world renowned hospital for children located in Boston. In the first year of using the platform, the site managed close to 2,000 deliveries to the constantly changing site, sitting within the confines of an active hospital. The platform has seen strong success because end users find it easy to use, provides real-time visibility into site activities, drives accountability for the parties involved, and automates reporting of the day’s activities.
What factors have contributed to Voyage Control being successfully adoptedon so many Suffolk sites?
EASE OF IMPLEMENTATION of the Voyage Control platform allows the benefits to end users to become clear quickly. The platform is customized for each site’s setup so that training is straightforward for the Suffolk team and trade partners.
ACCOUNTABILITY is established for trade partners entering deliveries because Suffolk is able to ensure the timely use of the loading gates and unloading resources, such as tower cranes and hoists. If trade partners are consistently late or don’t show up, Suffolk can provide a record of the planned delivery schedule and discuss it with them to reset expectations and improve future performance.
VISIBILITY into real-time data is critical for the site team so that they don’t need to go to a physical whiteboard on the job site to check and see what the schedule is. Schedule changes made in Voyage Control are updated instantly, and the appropriate parties are notified and can access the data from anywhere across devices. To facilitate visibility, Suffolk has also started to put TV screens on their job sites at loading docks and in the field offices to show the daily schedule.
REPORTING on actionable data is important for Suffolk HQ’s Construction Solutions Team to understand what is going on across sites nationwide. Automating this data flow for each site by enacting a direct integration into Procore’s Daily Log and Submittals is valuable to Suffolk, who require the Daily Log be filled out on all projects. Removing the need for duplicative data entry through this integration is important because it ensures that data is entered accurately and in a timely manner that can be audited later if needed. The Procore integration contributes to Suffolk’s strategy of joining siloed data and provides a direct cost savings to them through time savings and risk mitigation through thorough data capture.
“This software took the antiquated process of manually scheduling deliveries and allowed me to be able to double my role as a logistics superintendent and an area superintendent while providing additional supervision to two other groups on site.”
– Site Super, Boston Casino & Hotel Project
“Particularly with reporting, the integration between the Voyage Control and Procore platforms is essential to streamlining data flows and eliminating the need for duplicate data entry. We can continue to leverage Procore as the central project management data source, while simultaneously optimizing the advantages of Voyage Control.”
– Construction Solutions Director, Suffolk HQ
How has the partnership with Suffolk helped Voyage Control?
Positive Feedback Loop
We’ve established a team dynamic where Suffolk’s feedback helps inform product roadmap decisions. Through quarterly surveys sent to site teams and regional check-in calls, we’re able to understand which features the sites like and what we should improve upon next to make Voyage Control even more valuable for the project teams and trade partners.
Valued Partnership
Suffolk has become a key partner of ours, helping us inspire innovation by hosting our Society for Construction Solutions meetings at the Los Angeles CoLab. They also enable us to establish standardized practices that can be useful to all Voyage Control clients.
How has the use of Voyage Control benefitted Suffolk on an enterprise level?
Management Cost & Time Savings
A detailed survey was sent to key Suffolk sites in the North East, South East, and West regions of Suffolk’s portfolio of projects to identify time and cost savings generated from the use of Voyage Control on their project.
Aggregated Management Cost & Time Savings
» $360,000 - Current Annual Savings
» 10,000 hours - Hours of Labor Saved
» $500,000 - Total Savings to Date
“The automations between the two systems make it easy to enrich regular daily reports with details on bookings originating in the Voyage Control system. These automation value streams are then passed down through the organization, where we can easily gather enterprise-level data and compare trends, value drivers, and best practices across our portfolio of projects.”
– Construction Solutions Director, Suffolk HQ