Stavario is revolutionizing the construction industry

Josef Beneš has spent his entire life in the construction industry. When he was seventeen, he started working as an adder on a construction site. By the time he was thirty, he was already managing large projects as a manager at a reputable construction company. During this time, he also founded his own construction company, which today also implements smart homes.

As an old practitioner, he has long known what problems plague builders. That’s why, first for himself and now for other entrepreneurs in the construction industry, he has created a smart solution that saves money, simplifies administration, improves communication and provides a constant overview of projects under construction and already underway.

First take a snapshot at work, then start working

“I was responsible for about a hundred people on a construction site, where I had to control attendance.” – Josef Beneš recalls his days as a manager.

The way it usually works is that the masons themselves record the hours worked and, understandably, often cheat – the hours shown on paper don’t match the actual hours, he adds. So when he commissioned the creation of the app, the first feature he asked for was attendance lists. It’s very easy for employees to track their attendance in the Stavario app – when they arrive at a job site, they click “arrival” on their phone, the app takes a picture of them and records their GPS coordinates along with the exact time. The same goes for departure.

The solution also saves time for the site manager, who usually receives paper time sheets from workers and then enters them into an Excel spreadsheet to calculate construction labor costs at the end of the month. But even he can cheat, adding up fictitious hours worked and sharing the profit with the masons. The app rules out such cheating – it automatically calculates labor costs for individual projects. In addition, the company’s managers have it at their disposal permanently, not until the end of the month.

The new drill will not be lost anymore

Another problem Josef Beneš addressed was the borrowing of machines and their transfer between workers. And, above all, returning them. Often equipment went missing, and the company didn’t even have an accurate idea of who had recently worked with it. Stavario has an overview of the situation – when taking over a grinder, for example, an employee scans the bar code stuck on it with his phone. That way, everyone knows who to turn to in case of need. When a company buys a new machine, it can easily inform all employees via the app. 

The app also provides up-to-date inventory information by rescanning the material’s barcode when it is released from the warehouse or returned. This allows users to check at any time whether a material is available or needs to be ordered.

The company will save a lot of administration by being able to send requests and tasks to employees electronically. Using the application, they can be shown documents to read and sign, or tasks can be announced for particular days, eliminating the need for daily phone calls.

The construction log is now only electronic and online

“The construction logbook is usually a separate section. It is usually kept in paper form and recorded on several pages so that there are copies for the technical supervisor and the investor. Because of this, they have to travel to the construction site, the logs get lost, they are falsified, the records sometimes can’t even be read properly.” – Josef Beneš enumerates the problems.

So he commissioned an application to be programmed so that the construction log could be kept online.

“With the exception of some entries, such as alarm or weather entries, most of the information is generated automatically from the operations, warehouse and machinery sections. The log can be accessed by technical supervisors and the developer , who are thus constantly aware of the construction.” – Beneš says.

The ability to upload documents to the application is a huge asset for excellent cooperation between all those involved in construction. As a result, everyone is always working with an up-to-date version of the project documentation. The company also uses the app to send the developer a contract, informing him of multiple tasks or amendments, while he has the opportunity to sign these documents. Stavario monitors construction many years after its completion – an alert can be set in the construction log, for example, which will notify the investor in five years that one of the revisions needs to be renewed.

For companies, their employees and investors

The application exists in three interfaces. For employees and subcontractors, it is available in a mobile version for Android and iOS operating systems. The construction company uses a web interface through which it performs administration and handles processes from payroll to asset tracking to investor communication. The investor then accesses the app through its own web interface 

“There are several similar applications on the market, but unlike ours, they all rely on the construction manager entering data into them. Often he doesn’t have the time to do this and registers late, sometimes he even makes something up. In addition, competing apps always focus only on one area, such as asset tracking or attendance records, so they are not as comprehensive as ours. We were the first to put the app in the hands of masons.” – Beneš states.

Saving up to 11% of project costs

The Stavario application, according to Josef Beneš, can save a company with an agenda of twenty employees to two employees and save up to 11% of construction costs. Targeted at small and medium-sized companies with ten to two hundred employees, but can also be used by large companies . Somewhat surprisingly, even companies outside the construction industry have already taken an interest in it – Stavario, for example, serves a sheltered workshop in Liberec, which uses it to manage inventory, attendance records and asset management. Corporate customers, pay a one-time installation fee of ten to fifty thousand crowns. This is determined by the size of the company. Another cost is a monthly fee of two to six thousand, depending on the amount of data stored in the cloud. Before purchasing, interested parties can try a demo version for free.

The app for builders also caught the attention of the jury of the regional round for the Ustka region of the T-Mobile Rozjezda competition, which awarded it second place.