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Construction & InfrastructureROI: 360%10 weeks
Ironbridge Construction Success Story
Ironbridge manages 18 active construction sites with 800 field workers, many of whom move between sites daily. Paper timesheets could not verify which workers were at which site, leading to $540K in annual payroll disputes, 9 prevailing-wage compliance violations, and foremen spending 90 minutes per day on manual time verification. GPS attendance data did not exist, making Davis-Bacon certified payroll a manual nightmare.
800
fieldWorkers
0
violations
$540K
savings
The Challenge
Ironbridge Construction is a commercial and infrastructure contractor based in Denver, Colorado, specializing in government-funded highway, bridge, and public facility projects across the Mountain West region. With 800 field workers — carpenters, ironworkers, electricians, laborers, and equipment operators — spread across 18 active project sites, the company performs $120M in annual revenue, predominantly on prevailing-wage projects subject to Davis-Bacon Act requirements.
The field employee tracking problem was fundamental. Workers frequently moved between sites during a single day — a concrete crew might pour foundations at one location in the morning and move to a different site for afternoon work. Paper timesheets recorded self-reported hours by project, but there was no mechanism to verify that a worker was actually at the claimed location. Foremen were supposed to verify every timesheet entry, but with crews of 40-60 workers under their supervision, the verification process was superficial at best.
Prevailing-wage compliance was the company's highest-risk exposure. Davis-Bacon requires that workers on federally funded projects be paid the locally prevailing wage for their specific trade classification, with detailed documentation of hours worked by project and classification. Ironbridge had received 9 compliance violations in the previous fiscal year, totaling $127K in penalties and triggering a Department of Labor warning that further violations could result in contract debarment. The root cause was always the same: paper timesheets could not prove which workers performed which classification of work at which location during which hours.
The payroll team spent 3 full days every two weeks generating certified payroll reports (WH-347 forms) from handwritten timesheets. The process involved manually cross-referencing worker classifications, prevailing wage rates, fringe benefit calculations, and project codes — a task so complex that errors were inevitable. Payroll disputes between workers and the company averaged $540K annually, and three disputes had escalated to formal Department of Labor complaints.
The Solution
Track Nexus was deployed as a comprehensive field employee tracking and geofencing time tracking platform. Each of the 18 project sites was configured with a GPS geofence boundary — a virtual perimeter that defined the project's physical footprint. When a worker opened the Track Nexus mobile app and tapped 'Clock In,' the app verified their GPS coordinates against the geofence boundary. If the worker was within the boundary, the clock-in was accepted and timestamped with verified GPS coordinates. If they were outside the boundary, the clock-in was rejected with a notification to both the worker and the site foreman.
The geofencing time tracking capability solved the multi-site verification problem. When a concrete crew moved from Site A to Site B during the day, each worker clocked out of Site A's geofence and clocked into Site B's geofence, creating an auditable trail of exactly which workers were at which location during which hours. The GPS data was stored with tamper-proof timestamps, making it admissible as evidence in compliance audits.
The Davis-Bacon compliance module automatically applied the correct prevailing wage rate based on the worker's trade classification and the project's geographic jurisdiction. When a worker clocked in, they selected their classification for that shift (the same worker might perform laborer work on one project and carpenter work on another), and Track Nexus applied the corresponding wage rate from the Department of Labor's published schedules. WH-347 certified payroll reports were generated automatically from the GPS-verified time data, complete with fringe benefit calculations, apprentice ratios, and classification breakdowns.
Foremen transitioned from paper verification to a digital approval workflow on ruggedized tablets. At the end of each shift, the foreman reviewed the day's GPS-verified clock events, approved legitimate entries, and flagged any discrepancies for investigation. The process took 12 minutes compared to the previous 90-minute paper review, freeing foremen to spend more time on job-site safety and quality management.
Implementation Timeline
Completed in 10 weeks
- 1
Surveyed all 18 project sites to establish GPS geofence boundaries, assess cellular coverage (deploying signal boosters at 3 remote sites), and provision ruggedized tablets for foremen
- 2
Configured Davis-Bacon prevailing wage tables for all active project jurisdictions, worker classification taxonomies, and WH-347 certified payroll report templates in Track Nexus
- 3
Deployed a 3-week pilot across 3 sites with 180 workers, validating GPS accuracy in mountainous terrain and refining geofence boundary precision for irregularly shaped sites
- 4
Rolled out to remaining 15 sites over 5 weeks with multilingual training (English and Spanish) and site-specific geofence calibration by the Track Nexus implementation team
- 5
Established automated biweekly certified payroll submission, weekly GPS accuracy audits, and monthly compliance dashboards reviewed by the VP of Field Operations
Measurable Impact
Key Metrics
Before and after comparison showing the tangible impact of Track Nexus
Annual Compliance Violations
Before
9
After
0
-100%
Annual Payroll Dispute Costs
Before
$540K
After
$48K
-91%
Foreman Daily Admin Time
Before
90 minutes
After
12 minutes
-87%
Certified Payroll Generation Time
Before
3 days
After
2 hours
-92%
Outcomes
Results Achieved
Prevailing-wage compliance violations: 9 per year to zero
Payroll disputes reduced by 91% — saving $540K annually
Foreman daily admin time cut from 90 minutes to 12 minutes
Certified payroll generation: 3 days to 2 hours
“Davis-Bacon auditors used to terrify us. Last month an examiner reviewed our certified payroll, saw the GPS verification timestamps, and said it was the cleanest submission he had seen in 20 years. That is what geofencing time tracking gives you — audit-proof records without extra paperwork.”
FD
Frank DeLuca
VP of Field Operations, Ironbridge Construction
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