Founded in the early 1940s, J. P. Carrara & Sons, Inc. is a showcase of many concrete producers in the US. Headquartered in Middlebury, Vermont with plants in Vermont and New York, Carrara has helped build our country over the past 80 years. The company supplied concrete to build the Sidney J. Watson Arena in Brunswick, ME, Wallkill River Bridge in Middletown, NY, and The New York Wheel Parking Structure at Staten Island, NY, to name a few. The company uses a central dispatch system to manage its day-to-day operations. All concrete plants are automated.
Bob Carrara, Owner/Treasurer, had seen the need for transitioning to using paperless tickets and using an online platform to track job progress and plant/fleet productivity even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. He had seen a lot of time wasted documenting tickets by hand, organizing and checking in on drivers to check in on their status/progress. The challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the transition to go Paperless. Like many concrete suppliers, Bob quickly implemented an e-ticketing platform offered by his batch control and dispatch system supplier, hoping to streamline the entire ticketing process and safely manage tickets in digital format. However, he soon realized that the functions offered on the platform were inadequate. To replace paper tickets, Carrara needed something more than just ticket information, they needed REAL tickets.
Bob reached out to Sysdyne as soon as he learned about iStradaView, Sysdyne’s collaboration platform that offers free access to paperless tickets to all stakeholders, concrete suppliers, contractors, and inspectors. The iStradaView dashboard included in the package, also allows users to track concrete orders and deliveries in real-time. The setup is simple and easy and it works with the majority of dispatch and batch systems available on the market.
Very soon iStradaView was implemented free of charge in conjunction with Carrara’s existing dispatch and batch systems. Since implementing iStradaView, Carrara no longer needs to manage paper tickets or take pictures of batch weights to send to the DOT inspector, everything is done online! With iStradaView, producers can send PDF copies of the actual ticket by email or simply grant access to inspectors and contractors to download the information directly from the App. It has saved tremendous time and cut costs significantly.
Even though the iStradaView offer is free, Bob found it further advanced and more complete when compared with the platform he was using previously. Bob was particularly impressed by iStradaView’s dynamic mobile dashboard with key performance indicators (KPIs). It uses user-friendly graphs to display yardage ordered, delivered, and poured that allows him to analyze job performance in real-time! The order information is detailed and easy to use and customers can accept and reject loads as proof of delivery. Other benefits of using iStradaView include the ability to collaborate and share information with project stakeholders online.
“iStradaView made our delivery management more predictable, consistent, and reliable”
– Bob Carrara, Owner/Treasurer of J.P Carrara & Sons, Inc.
Bob plans to invite Carrara’s customers and inspectors to have free access to iStradaView so that all project stakeholders can view, email, and download REAL tickets with batch weights as PDFs. They will be able to track job performance and confirm delivery using the iStradaView App on their mobile phones. This value-added service will make Carrara more competitive in the market and save a tremendous amount of time to further reduce costs.
Carrara’s story successfully showed how using iStradaView is possible even with third-party systems in place and how going paperless creates tremendous value. Sysdyne looks forward to continuing to build the relationship and help revolutionize the way we deliver concrete and bring value to our customers.
