Case Study
How Fountain Electric Saved 30+ Hours a Week on Submittal Review
See how Fountain Electric cut its submittal rejection rate from 40% to 20% and reviewed a 500-page lighting submittal in hours instead of days. Book a demo.
Ready to transform your submittal preparation process?
Overview
Company: Fountain Electric
Role: Patrick Bloodsworth, Shared Services Manager
Project Type/Size: Commercial and industrial electrical contracting across Western North Carolina, the Piedmont and Metrolina regions, and the Upstate of South Carolina
Fountain Electric had three to four procurement staff spending a combined 60 to 90 hours every week checking vendor and subcontractor submittals against a manual checklist.
Since bringing in BuildSync, the team's submittal rejection rate has dropped from roughly 40% to around 20%, submittal review has fallen from 60 to 70% of their workload down to about 30%, and a 500-page lighting submittal that once meant three lost days now takes two to three hours.
The Challenge
Fountain Electric is headquartered in Spindale, North Carolina, with offices in Charlotte, Hickory, Asheville, and Greenville, South Carolina. That footprint means a steady volume of commercial and industrial work, and every job brings submittals from vendors and subs that somebody has to verify line by line.
Before BuildSync, that verification was a headcount problem.
"We had 3-4 procurement folks manually reviewing every vendor/subcontractor provided submittal with a checklist. Across 3-4 people we were likely spending 60-90 hours of labor a week reviewing submittals and completing checklists to show everything checked."
That's the equivalent of a full-time position and a half, spent entirely on checking documents. And the work still wasn't catching everything. Roughly 40% of submittals came back rejected, which meant a second pass through the same cut sheets, a second round of coordination with the vendor, and a schedule waiting on both.
Submittal review was also crowding out everything else Patrick's team was responsible for.
"60%-70% submittal review and the rest a mix of buyouts and coordination."
Buyouts and coordination are where a shared services team actually moves the needle on a project. Checklists were eating two-thirds of the time available to do them.
Why BuildSync
Fountain Electric needed something that reads the cut sheets, not something that moves them along a workflow.
BuildSync pulls the technical characteristics off every product in a submittal and checks each one against the plans and specs, which is the part of the review that was costing Patrick's team 60 to 90 hours a week.
The Solution: Deep Technical Analysis on Every Cut Sheet
BuildSync breaks a submittal into its individual products, pulls every technical characteristic off each one, and checks each characteristic against the plans and specs. On a lighting package, that means lumens, wattage, CRI, mounting type, brand, and every other value buried in the cut sheets, each returned as a pass, a fail, or an unknown with the reason attached.
For Patrick, the difference showed up the first time he had to cover someone else's desk.
"On one large commercial project an instance sticks out in which I was filling in for a supervisor in charge of submittal review. In her absence I received a roughly 500 page lighting submittal. Of course around this time the General Contractor reached out asking us to have it to them within 2-3 days despite her absence."
He knew exactly what that used to mean.
"In the past this would have meant me kicking 90% of my typical responsibilities aside and spending the majority of the three days cross-eyed checking every aspect of every cut sheet and having nightmares about mounting selections."
Instead, he ran it through BuildSync, worked the flagged failures, and handed the review sheet itself to the design team.
"Instead, I used BuildSync, reviewed the fails indicated on the results, and even provided the architect the BuildSync review sheet. I was able to only spend 2-3 hours on them instead of 2-3 days and the Architect turned the submittal back approved as noted in record time."
The depth held up under scrutiny on a package that size.
"Large submittal package and lumens, brands, mounting, CRI, wattage, and other details were all clearly checked."
Results & Impact
Rejection rate cut in half: roughly 40% before BuildSync, around 20% now
Review time on a 500-page lighting submittal: two to three hours instead of two to three days
Workload rebalanced: submittal review dropped from 60 to 70% of the team's time down to roughly 30%
Design team turnaround: "the Architect turned the submittal back approved as noted in record time"
Depth of check: "lumens, brands, mounting, CRI, wattage, and other details were all clearly checked"
The ROI Moment
The GC's deadline didn't move when the supervisor was out. A 500-page lighting package, a two to three day turnaround request, and nobody available to do it the old way.
Patrick sent the BuildSync review sheet along with the submittal. It came back approved as noted. That single package returned roughly two and a half days of a manager's time, and it kept a large commercial project moving on the GC's schedule instead of Fountain Electric's staffing schedule.
User Feedback
Fountain Electric didn't hand the whole process over, and that's deliberate. New hires still do their first several reviews by hand.
"Some are still manual (shop drawings for example) and our new hires are forced to do their first few manually to understand what to check that BuildSync is catching, but still a time savings."
That approach fits how BuildSync is built. It gives project engineers a guiding hand on what to look for on each equipment type rather than taking the judgment away from them. Fountain Electric's people learn the checks first, then work faster with the tool. Shop drawings stay a manual review, which is exactly where BuildSync draws its own line.
Final Word
Asked what he'd tell another electrical contractor or GC:
"Try it out. You can still train your PEs or submittal folks on checking submittals then graduate them to BuildSync. If your PMs are doing submittal review, then what are you waiting for?"
