AirToolz Hammers Out Wireless Scheduling Service

The solution provider, which was formed as a joint venture between a computer consulting and training firm and a cement company, provides a hosted service that gives construction personnel,from foremen to contract workers,a centralized location to check schedules and update work progress, said David Dean, director of marketing at AirToolz, based here.

The software, called AirWavz, is designed to take the place of phone calls, faxes and spreadsheets that are exchanged among people working on home-construction projects, Dean said.

On any given project, a construction supervisor, or contractor, will be working behind the scenes to guide a crew of specialists, including builders, plumbers, electricians, painters and tile setters.

Failure to apprise everybody involved with a project of schedule changes can prove costly, Dean added.

For one thing contract workers can hit builders with a "trip charge" of $100 to $200 when they show up at a job site but are unable to complete a day's work. In addition, contractors can be held accountable for the theft of equipment that may be scheduled for delivery but sits around a job site until it can be installed, Dean said.

Even a simple homeowner request can throw off a job schedule, he said.

"Say a contractor is building a house, and the tile guy is scheduled to install 400 feet of tile," Dean said. "He finds out that the homeowner has asked for another 300 feet of tile that will take an extra day to install. Someone has to notify the plumber, carpet layer and other workers that they won't be needed for another day."

The AirToolz solution saves the contractor from having to call every worker each time there's a project delay, according to Dean. Instead, the contractor uses a wireless handheld device to update the work schedule. Then each worker who would be affected by a change receives a wireless e-mail or fax with project updates.

The supervisor and other construction workers can access the online schedule either through a portable device or from a standard Web page. The schedule is displayed on all devices using standard HTML.

On Palm devices, AirToolz uses a Palm Query Application (PQA), which creates a bookmark of the URL so portable users can access it at any time.

While supervisors can manage the master schedule, the AirWavz system also allows them to provide other people on the job with pertinent information, such as when equipment has been received, if equipment is late, when a project is completed and whether a project has been postponed.

AirWavz's return on investment becomes evident in a number of ways,reduced number of cell phone calls, increased productivity and early project completions, to name a few, Dean said.

"It's become very evident that since we've implemented the AirToolz solution, the building process is moving much quicker," said Dan Johnson, construction manager at Amberwood Homes, a builder based in Mesa, Ariz.

AirWavz has cut an average of three weeks off the average home building time of five months, and it has also saved on trip charges imposed by contractors.

Construction companies can save additional money on phone charges, Dean said, adding that clients have reported a 20 percent reduction in the 4,000 average phone calls that are made for each job.

On the average, home- building companies are saving $350 per house, Dean said. "That can really add up when you're building thousands of houses," he said.

AirToolz's system can work with PocketPCs, Palm handhelds and smart phones, and RIM devices, using IBM's DB2 and DB2 Everyplace for portable devices. Although the Java-based software design can work on virtually any platform, home builders have been relying so far on the Palm i705 or Kyocera Smart Phone, which also uses the Palm operating system, Dean said.

"The entire back end of AirWavz was written in Java using that development environment," said Jeff Jones, director of strategy at IBM Data Management Solutions, San Jose, Calif., which collaborated with AirToolz on development of the solution.

Pricing for the AirWavz system is based on how many houses are being built and starts at $70 per house based on a 200-house project load.