Case study · University housing
Elford gave its supers their day back.
On a $106MM university housing build in Central Ohio, Elford replaced hours of manual daily logging with a three-minute phone call, filed straight into Autodesk Forma.
Unbane1:10
Housing Development Plan Phase II, Ohio University. Rendering courtesy of Elford.
Five generations of building Central Ohio.
Elford has built Central Ohio since 1910, and five generations later it remains the region's largest privately held general contractor, known for reliable execution and a “Building Together” culture that values its onsite teams. On this university housing project, coordination had to be tight and the daily record had to be trustworthy.
The log was the last thing standing between a super and going home.
Elford's superintendents ran a routine familiar across the industry. Walk the site with a notepad, catch foremen between tasks, then spend the last hours of the day typing scattered notes into the system. Trade-partner logs came in inconsistent or late, and it cost supers three or more hours a day in front of a computer instead of leading work in the field.
An eight-hour construction day takes 11.5 hours to finish, once the 3.5 hours of daily paperwork done before and after the crews are on site is counted.
The second shift
to finish an 8-hour day
8h of work
3.5 hours of paperwork
The core problem
The daily log was built for a desk, not the field, so it slid to the end of the day, if it got done at all.
The approach
No new tool to learn. Just a phone call.
Unbane runs Elford's daily-logging process over a phone call instead of a keyboard. Each foreman spends about three minutes a day on a short, guided call. They call in at the end of the shift, and if someone forgets, Unbane calls them.
01
The call
Three minutes covering work completed, crew count and hours, equipment, and any delays.
02
The record
Entries populate in real time. The superintendent reviews and signs off instead of transcribing.
03
The rollup
The signed log files straight into Elford's Autodesk instance the same day, not days later.
Three minutes of talking becomes the record.
What did your team get done today?
Framed up walls in the east wing, finished door bucks in corridor B.
Any holdups or issues?
We're waiting on drywall delivery, it's supposed to come tomorrow.
Copy that. I'll email the summary to the usual list. Sound good?
Unbane1:10
Daily log
04:12 PM
- Work completed
- East wing wall framing, door bucks corridor B
- Crew and hours
- 6 tradespeople · 48 hrs
- Equipment
- Scissor lift, laser level
- Delays
- —
Signed off
Published to Autodesk
Each week, Unbane runs the same play for look-aheads, gathering next-week plans so leadership walks into planning with a clear picture instead of a guess.
The results
“I like it. It takes me about three minutes. It used to be fifteen. I just say what I did and think.”
Sample weekly digest
Within weeks, the daily-logging process was running on its own. Participating trade partners hit 90% record success, and the logs came in the same day, clean and detailed, instead of pieced together from memory days later. Foremen got 30 to 45 minutes back each day and superintendents one to three hours, time that moved from the keyboard back to the build. And it spread without a mandate, as foremen who tried it kept calling in because it simply saved them time.
- 90%
- record success across participating trade partners
- 30–45 min
- back per foreman each day
- 1–3 hrs
- back to superintendents each day
- Same day
- logs, filed into Autodesk
The takeaway
When the daily log runs on its own, everything downstream gets better.
Planning, sequencing, safety, accountability, owner communication. Unbane turned a desk process into a three-minute conversation, made it the default across every trade, and gave the field its time back.