CWMS Entry Point at a job site
CWMS entry point at a job site
Editor’s Note: Construction Workforce Management System (CWMS) is a new APDSP Vendor Member. In order to get to know them better, APDSP Managing Director Ed Avis interviewed Elmer Rhodes, a past president of APDSP and one of the three partners of CWMS. Rhodes is also the owner of Cross Rhodes Print & Technologies.
Q: What does CWMS do?
Rhodes: We provide real-time tracking for construction personnel.
Q: Why?
Rhodes: A construction company has two things that drive cost – the cost of the materials and the cost of labor. So when a subcontractor says a particular job will take 10 workers for 8 hours a day for two weeks, the general contractor needs to know that there really are 10 people on that site. For example, the general contractor might be laying a lot of pipe one day, and he wants to make sure the subcontractor will really have 10 pipefitters on the job that day, like he promised. With our system, the site superintendent doesn’t need to go out to the site and count the people by hand. He can just log into the system and say, “Yup, I have 10 pipefitters here today.”
Another reason contractors need to track personnel is for diversity and inclusion requirements. Say a contractor in Chicago needs to include 3 percent Chicago residents, 27 percent minorities, and 11 percent women. Our system tracks all of that.
Q: How does it work?
Rhodes: Each employee is issued a badge with an RFID tag. Each badge is coded with the employee’s information, including who he works for, his trade, his demographic info, and other details. When he walks onto the job site, a sensor at the entry point notices that he’s there, and that info goes into the system. So the contractor can easily see everyone who is on the site.
Q: So what does CWMS offer to reprographics firms?
Rhodes: We are looking for independent reprographics firms to be resellers. Reprographers have to look for other ways to bring in residual income, and this is a great way to do that with a client they already talk to on a day-to-day basis. Repro people already have those relationships – the same person at the contractor making the decision about imaging is probably also managing the workforce. Reprographers might think this is out of their scope, but it’s not. It’s an easy implementation. Once you install it on a job site, you charge monthly for it.
Q: How much money can a repro firm make?
Rhodes: The reprographer pays CWMS $900 per entry point per month, and charges $1,865 per month, so it’s more than a 100 percent mark-up. That’s the only charge to the contractor – the software is in the cloud, and that’s all included. The contractor gets 250 badges per entry point. If he needs more, he can buy them at $12 each, and the reprographer gets a profit of $3 each.
Q: Does each job have just one entry point?
Rhodes: No, they normally need more than one. I have a client right now with six entry points, so I’m billing him $11,190 per month and netting $5,790.
Q: How did you get involved in this new venture?
Rhodes: In 2014 I got a call from a large client who needed help managing their workforce. I had to figure out how to do it. I reached out to a friend of mine named Jason Catchings, who owns Argos Wireless. He’s a specialist in tracking and monitoring people, assets, and inventory. Using what I told him about how construction sites work, within a month he built a program to solve this problem.
Q: And that led to the formation of CWMS?
CWMS logo
Rhodes: Correct. Jason and I and one other partner, A.J. Dahm, formed the company. We’ve been working with Michael Shaw at Jamaica Blue in New York and Go Green Document Solutions in Miami, and now we’re looking for more clients. We’ve been growing by word of mouth so far, but now we’re out there. We’re looking for other independent reprographers like us, who are searching for new sources of income.
Q: How can a reprographer join you?
Rhodes: We’ll be at the APDSP Convention in Las Vegas on October 19-20, so we’ll be happy to meet with prospective clients there and demonstrate the system. We’ll also have our new web site up and running by that time. In the meantime, people can contact me at erhodes@x-rhodes.com.