The ROI is massive. It will pay for itself in two months!
Dynamic Systems (DSI) is a leading mechanical contractor based out of Austin, Texas. With 1,800 employees across ten locations nationwide, DSI delivers advanced design, preconstruction, and construction expertise with a strong focus on high quality. As the company expanded operations, including an Off Site Manufacturing (OSM) shop in Houston, leadership needed to rethink how procurement could better support growth. Randy Smith, CPA at DSI, explains how Field Materials AI helped them meet their goals.
Field Materials AI streamlined our procurement process by getting the field teams engaged and eliminating the need for three different systems (SmartSheet, Outlook and Vista). It has saved our purchasing department countless hours.
Before Field Materials AI, DSI handled material requests across multiple systems. The purchasing team first reviewed the field requisitions in Smartsheet and then emailed suppliers to request quotes. Once they received a supplier quote, they went back to Smartsheet to enter prices and then created a purchase order in Viewpoint Vista. That constant switching across 3 platforms significantly slowed down the whole material procurement process.
The company also didn’t use any construction inventory management software. Materials were often delivered to the shop without being clearly assigned to a specific job, so items bought for one project could end up being used on another. Receiving orders was also a highly manual process that made it very time consuming to find the right purchase order for each packing slip.
Finally, being part of Quanta Services, Inc., a public company, DSI also needed to implement much more rigorous internal approval controls. Before a purchase order is sent to a supplier, it requires two approvals, including a sign-off from the project manager. It was very difficult to enforce these approval controls with procurement practice spread across 3 disconnected tools.
Field Materials AI is highly scalable. We are rolling it out to all of our divisions one division at a time.
Once Field Materials activated its integration with Viewpoint Vista, the DSI team imported their jobs, cost codes, cost types and vendors at a click of a button. Then, they set up in minutes the required two approvals per PO (including the mandatory project manager sign-off) to ensure compliance with corporate governance requirements.
Field Materials AI quickly became the system of record for DSI’s material procurement needs. No more jumping between SmartSheet, Outlook, and Viewpoint Vista. Both the field and office staff now use Field Materials AI to create purchase orders, process packing slips, receipts, and manage warehouse inventory.
Foremen submit field requisitions with the FM mobile app. The purchasing team can easily split a field requisition by material type into separate requests for quotes that they send to the chosen suppliers for pricing. Once a quote comes in, they drag and drop it into Field Materials, where the AI automatically creates an itemized order for the purchasing team to review. Once approved, the purchase order is automatically sent by Field Materials to the chosen supplier and exported into Viewpoint Vista as a cost coded PO.
Many of DSI’s orders contain lots of items. Not all items need to be delivered at once. This is why it is common for field crews to receive multiple deliveries for the same order that either include partial quantities for the same items or different items in each delivery. Foremen use the mobile app to snap a photo of a delivery slip and the AI does the rest - automatically matches it to the right PO and identifies in the PO which items and quantities are being delivered. This makes it a breeze to see how much was ordered and received, helping the operations team monitor actual vs. budgeted costs in the Job Costs report.
The adoption of the FM construction inventory management software also had an immediate impact on DSI’s procurement practice. For the first time in the company's history, everyone has visibility into inventory stock across multiple warehouses. Field crews can now use the mobile app to search for a specific material and see available stock at each warehouse, how much of that stock was allocated to specific jobs, and what to order in case of depleted stock.
Field supervision can see the status of their requests in real-time, making them much more efficient.
DSI’s leadership sees multiple benefits in Field Materials AI - streamlining procurement, enhancing field engagement, strengthening supplier relationships, and improving financial oversight at scale.
