Job Cost Accounting | Project Management | Scheduling
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Building Success Story

Our "Building Success Stories" profile how FOUNDATION for Windows construction accounting software has helped contractors to improve their accounting, job costing and overall financial management.

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Customer

Lighthouse Electric Company, Inc.

Corporate Profile

Headquarters
Canonsburg, PA

Type of Business
Commercial, Residential, Industrial Electrical

Number of Employees
300

Annual Revenue
40 Million

System Profile

Foundation Software
Modules In Operation

Job Costing
Payroll
General Ledger
Accounts Receivable
Accounts Payable
DataGenie Series

The Benefits

Flexibility in workflow.

Customized reporting that enabled massive improvements in change order processing and tracking.

Modifiable data entry screens that allowed the creation of custom fields.

Increased business volume - nearly 50% attributed to improved information and technology.

Large electrical contractor capitalizes on FOUNDATION’s flexibility

Ron Felix accepting the Silver 2003 Vision Award

For over nineteen years, Lighthouse Electric has provided electrical construction services with a focus on commercial, institutional, and industrial projects. The company, located in Canonsburg, PA, is a union shop employing over 300 workers.

Lighthouse Electric was founded in 1984 by Anthony “Tony” Mikec and his three sons, Todd, Mark and Neil. Their first job came from one of Tony’s neighbors whose church needed new parking lot lighting. Equipped with only hand tools and a pickup truck, Neil, Tony’s middle son, began to dig the trenches and lay the pipe. When it came time to set the poles, there was no boom truck to lift them into place. Tony recalled seeing a sign crew installing a new sign at a gas station just down the street from the church, so he paid them a visit and made an offer they couldn’t refuse. With their help, the job came to a swift and profitable conclusion. That was the humble beginning of Tony’s award-winning company.

Lighthouse Electric has come a long way from its early times, now supplied with all the right people and heavy equipment. However, as in days past, the challenges to be faced are constant. Chief Information Officer at Lighthouse Electric, Ron Felix, summarizes his views on today's construction market. "The face of construction has changed. With a sluggish economy and sharpened competition, it's no longer sufficient to work harder, every element of the company must work smarter. New demands necessitate improvements on work flow processes, and post-project reporting and analysis must drive further improvements. It is essential for us to understand and control every job's costs to the last cent."

To remain competitive, Lighthouse Electric needed to perform as efficiently as their larger and more adequately-staffed counterparts. They needed to take a hard look at workflow and processes, and ensure that they used technology to its limits, rather than letting technology drive how they worked. They needed to improve job costing and management.

The Challenge

Lighthouse was using a technologically outdated accounting system incapable of addressing their expanding requirements.

After an extensive search, FOUNDATION for Windows was selected. "FOUNDATION had many advantages over the other systems we researched. The areas most critical for us included flexibility in work flow, powerful reporting capabilities and customizable data entry. No other system even came close to FOUNDATION in these three categories."

Since FOUNDATION runs on Microsoft SQL Server, Lighthouse was ensured that the technology could be customized to meet the nuances of their work flow. Every bit of data entered is date sensitive, and the open database allows data collection through familiar interfaces like Microsoft Excel and Access.

"As we looked at areas to improve, we determined that a better system for processing and tracking change orders could increase profitability. Like many contractors, we (Lighthouse) often completed change order work before receiving approvals. Because FOUNDATION allowed us to create custom fields on change orders, we could track important data. We identified key information such as the estimator, source of change, target completion date and percent complete for each change order and were able to create custom fields for tracking it," comments Felix.

The Solution

The David L. Lawrence Convention Center Project

Lighthouse scheduled the conversion for year end to minimize data entry, and set aside two months to load data, test entries and run parallel. The transition went smoothly, which they attribute to planning, real-time support and dedicated personnel.

Felix continues, "During FOUNDATION's implementation, we were able to evaluate and streamline our processes. FOUNDATION provides impressive reporting flexibility, allowing us to create reports in their DataGenie report designer or from third-party products like Crystal Reports or Microsoft Excel. We wrote reports that pinpointed details needed to track each change order from information-request to approved contract- increases. We quickly found that estimators' time and work loads were managed better, management stayed aware of the full life-cycle of each change order, and each document was generated quickly and with the same format. Updating the percentage of completion for each change order allowed us to better leverage the approval process, and reporting on both approved and pending change orders allowed us to better evaluate job costs. Now, final project negotiations are done knowing the full cost and profit implications."

With the new technology and work flow in place, Lighthouse has full control of the change order process. Felix summarizes, "We can't place a value on the confidence this provides our project managers. That benefit alone creates a marked improvement on our bottom line. More quantifiable, however, is the increased business volume - nearly 50% over the past few years. This growth is directly attributed to better technology, aggressiveness and improved financial information."

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Building Success Story Our "Building Success Stories" profile how FOUNDATION for Windows construction accounting software has helped contractors to improve their accounting, job costing and overall financial management.