Fieldwire
A Construction App Designed for the Field

You don’t join the construction industry by mistake. Yves Frinault always had the passion for building tangible things that led him to study construction at Stanford University. With his past knowledge of the industry, Frinault started Fieldwire, a task management platform tailored for construction sites. “We saw an opportunity to build tools targeted at the foremen, supers and engineers on the jobsite. While a lot of technology has gone in construction over the last 30 years, it hasn’t fundamentally changed the way construction is managed in the field,” says Yves Frinault, Founder and CEO, Fieldwire. Based in San Francisco, CA, the company makes the process of collaborating onsite effortless; making sure craftsmen spend their time doing high value tasks, not paperwork.

“The recent surge in mobile technology is changing the way people communicate on site. People are already sending each other’s texts, emails and pictures. While this is great to track work on a small site, it usually breaks down on larger construction projects,” adds Frinault. Most commercial projects involve a large number of workers from multiple companies building together or close to each other. It’s really hard to manage this process efficiently. Fieldwire, an application developed by the company, solves this problem even if you have hundreds of workers on site. “We organize all the communications generated on a project by location and trade. Construction is a task driven business, and we make sure to always give you the context of a task,” remarks Frinault.

The solution provided by Fieldwire enables customers to view their plans directly on mobile devices including the old versions of those plans as well. The platform includes a robust version control and OCR engine to manage and distribute up-to-date drawings to all the project members; making sure that everyone is looking at the same set of plans. The mobile application can display large PDF blueprints instantly and also allows teams in the field to add markups, annotations, Request for Information (RFIs) or progress photos.

The application is also complemented with the unique capability to report, document and track issues on site directly on mobile devices. The tool streamlines the process of carrying out punch lists, safety inspections and walkthroughs. Users can quickly take a couple photos, add notes and assign an item to a given trade or person. Everything is shared immediately and relevant team members are notified. “Inspections and walkthroughs can be very time consuming on a site, especially if you have to spend hours putting together a report by hand in the field office. With Fieldwire, you can generate that report in one click,” comments Frinault.

While a lot of technology has gone in construction over the last 30 years, it hasn’t fundamentally changed the way construction is managed in the field

Those capabilities also extend to tasking and scheduling crews on site. From the foreman meeting to a given workstation on site, Fieldwire helps individual subcontractors plan their day and manage team members across multiple sites. “Fieldwire’s solution is sought by clients in the construction landscape mostly for its speed and efficiency in addressing very specific challenges,” beams Frinault. “We bring visibility and clarity in the construction operations of many clients.”

The distinct functionalities of the Fieldwire’s offerings are key factors that help the company thwart market competition. “We invest a tremendous amount of attention and time in our technology to ensure that the applications works fast at all time and customers’ data is always secured,” says Frinault. Moving forward, Fieldwire plans to continue expanding to new markets worldwide while remaining focused on its core use cases. “We simply want to make the best product to run field operations on a construction site.”