PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Construction Site Accounts

Site Contacts and Superintendents: Who to Call on Every Construction Porta Potty Job

The Super Is Your Real Customer on Site

The contractor's office signs the agreement and pays the bill, but the superintendent decides whether your company looks good. The super sees the units every day, hears the crew complain when one is full, and is the one who calls when a unit is in the way of a concrete truck. If you followed the setup steps in One Contractor Account, Many Job Sites: Setting Up Porta Potty Clients the Right Way, each job site already has room for its own contacts. This article is about filling those in well and keeping them right.

A site without a good contact is a site where your driver stands at a locked gate at 6:45 in the morning, calling the contractor's main line, which does not open until eight.

Who Belongs on the Site

Start with the superintendent and their mobile number. That is the person who can open a gate, move a pallet of block out of the way, or tell your driver that the units were moved to the other side of the building yesterday.

Add an assistant super or a foreman if they are the ones who are on site early. On larger projects, add the safety manager if they control site access. Keep the list short and useful. A site with eight contacts is almost as bad as a site with none, because the driver does not know which one to try first. Put the first person to call at the top, and use the note on the contact to say who they are, such as "Super, on site 6am to 4pm."

The project manager and the accounts payable contact usually belong on the client record, not the site, because they cover every project the contractor runs.

How the Driver Uses the Contact

On the driver's phone, each stop shows the address, the units, the placement notes and the access notes. When something is wrong on arrival, the driver needs to know who to reach. Many companies prefer that drivers report to the office and the office handles the conversation, so the driver can keep moving. Either way, the right contact has to be on the site.

When the driver taps Skip on a stop because the gate is locked or the units are buried behind a stack of lumber, a short note on the skip tells the office what happened. The office then texts the super, gets the problem cleared, and puts the stop back on the board.

Two-Way Texting With the Super

Supers live on their phones but rarely answer calls from numbers they do not know. A text works better. With two-way texting from the office, you can send a message to the site contact and see the reply in the same place, tied to the client. The conversation history stays with the account, so anyone in the office can read what was already said.

Use it for the routine things: confirming a delivery window, asking where to place additional units, or asking for a gate code that changed. Two-Way Texting With Site Supers: Fewer Missed Calls on Construction Porta Potty Accounts goes into more detail on texting habits that work with site supers.

Texts count against your plan's monthly text allowance of segments sent and received, so keep messages short and clear. Extra texts are available if a busy construction season needs more.

Keeping Contacts Current

Superintendents move. A super who ran the site in the spring may be on another project by summer, and a new one will be standing at your units wondering who you are. Build a habit around changes:

• When the contractor's project manager mentions a new super, update the site that day.
• When a driver reports an unfamiliar person running the site, have the office confirm and update.
• When a super moves to another of the contractor's sites, move them there too.
• When a project ends and the units come off, leave the contact on the closed site for history.

It takes a minute each time, and it keeps the next driver from calling a number that leads nowhere.

Alerts That Reach the Right Person

The customer app and automated texts work best when the right person receives them. Contacts can choose alert preferences: the night before, when the crew is next, and when the tech arrives. A super who gets an arrived text knows the units were just serviced, and one who gets a night-before text can make sure the gate is open in the morning.

Some supers want every alert and some want none. Ask them, set it once, and respect it.

Why It Pays Off

Good site contacts cut wasted trips, missed service and frustrated phone calls. They also build a relationship with the person who most often decides which porta potty company the contractor uses next time. A super who knows your office answers texts and fixes problems the same day will ask for you on the next project.

To see how site contacts fit with job sites, access notes and monthly billing, visit PortaPottyBossPro construction porta potty rental software.