After years of steady growth, Bob Fortney is preparing his company to thrive in the new Internet economy.
The president of Fortney & Weygandt has funneled his entrepreneurial spirit into the formation of two new Web companies that complement his existing full-service construction firm.
“Our goal is to be the best and the most technologically advanced,” says Fortney, who founded his North Olmsted-based construction company in 1978. “What we’ve done in the past year here with our Web site and the new start-up with constructionbidding.com, that gives us a major advantage going into the future.”
Fortney first took his construction company to the Web with FWprojects.com, a site that lists drawings and specifications for each project the firm is pursuing in an attempt to find subcontractors and suppliers for the jobs. Today, there are 1,500 registered users and the site receives 30,000 hits a week.
Those kinds of numbers convinced Fortney to create a business-to-business Internet exchange for the industry as a whole and launch www.constructionbidding.com, an e-commerce initiative unlike what anyone else is doing in the industry. Currently in beta testing, the site is taking off with 500 users and 15,000 hits per week.
“Fortney & Weygandt has always been competitive, and this makes us more competitive,” explains Fortney. “It gives us a farther reaching subcontractor base and better marketing tools to strengthen the positive and strong position we already have. We believe this is the way of the future and will be expanding upon that and not just resting upon it.”
Fortney’s mantra has always been constant improvement in every aspect of the company. It was that self-evaluating attitude that forced the 22-year-old company to look at itself and determine what new technologies could be used to help lift it to the next level. After growing 100 percent over a five-year period, Fortney says the company hit a plateau a couple of years ago, during which he was able to implement an Internet strategy that would ensure the firm’s growth in the years ahead.
But Fortney’s vision of using new technologies to streamline projects and set his firm ahead of the pack does not stop with the new Web initiatives. He has also implemented a cutting edge project management program to assist communication with workers in the field by eliminating the daily paperwork of phone logs, timesheets and expense reports from superintendents.
Instead, each field superintendent is equipped with a laptop computer and a program that electronically communicates with office personnel. In addition, Fortney & Weygandt designs Web sites that allow owners and architects to view real-time progress at the job site.
“For the last couple of years, we’ve grown internally as an organization, so we are able to once again more easily handle what we do and make it more of a systemized process,” says Fortney. “I would think here in the not so distant future, we’re going to explode because of some of the things we’re doing now.” How to reach: Fortney & Weygandt, (440) 716-4000, www.fwprojects.com
Jim Vickers ([email protected]) is an associate editor at SBN Cleveland.
