Lessons from a Vitruvi and TCW webinar on rolling out new construction management software without losing your crews along the way.
Whether your team is moving off spreadsheets for the first time or expanding what it runs in Vitruvi, the hardest part is rarely the software. Spreadsheets and old habits are familiar, even when they're working against you. That's why rolling out a new construction management platform is less a software project and more a change management one. In a recent Fiber Broadband Association webinar, Vitruvi project manager Meaghan Cann and TCW project operations analyst Charles Buffkin walked through what works, what doesn't, and why most teams need a plan before they ever log in.
Change is uncomfortable. Even when a current process is inefficient, people stick with what they know. Cann frames this as the first obstacle in any rollout: not technical capability, but resistance to doing things differently. Teams generally face two paths. Incremental change tackles one problem at a time and leaves the rest for later. Transformative change aims to overhaul the whole operation at once. Transformative change delivers the bigger rewards, with full visibility and efficiency gains across the business, but it's harder to pull off without a plan.
TCW learned this the hard way. The company set out to roll out Vitruvi across the business in one go, and ran into trouble almost immediately. One person tried to learn the entire platform, then teach it to everyone else. The result, in Buffkin's words: "it cluttered and it created almost chaos." Too many workflows went live before anyone on the team had mastered the basics. The fix was to slow down. TCW narrowed in on a single goal, production visibility, and built from there.
"Once we'd slowed down... our crews were able to start learning the app to be able to work in field, and once they started doing that, the data started flowing in... things were a lot more streamlined." - Charles Buffkin, TCW
1. Have a North Star. Know where you want to end up, and don't let it be a copy of your current spreadsheet. The goal isn't to replicate old reporting in new software. It's to get past needing that reporting at all.
2. Phase the rollout. Start with the smallest, highest-value win, usually production reporting, and expand from there. Launching financials, as-builts, and integrations all in week one is a recipe for the chaos TCW described.
3. Make the change the obvious choice. Sell the value, don't just mandate it. Training users once and sending them off rarely sticks. Reinforcing the value and checking back in does.
4. Know your alternative routes. Plans change. When the real world looks different than expected, adapt the rollout rather than forcing the original plan to work anyway.
After TCW rebuilt around a single, achievable goal, momentum returned fast. Subcontractors and drill crews now submit production reports daily, and the accuracy holds up. The company has since expanded into fiber blowing and mainline splicing, and is working toward bringing 811 dig tickets and inventory into Vitruvi too, adding each one as its own step.
"We've got a map that shows things... even our investors can just see the map and actually see what we've completed without having to look at numbers all the time." - Charles Buffkin, TCW
ROI doesn't have to mean full adoption in 90 days. Define it in small, achievable pieces. Visibility across the organization is itself a return, and it's one most teams can reach quickly. Everything else (financials, as-builts, and integrations) can follow once that first win is in place and trusted.
Watch the on-demand recording of A Change Management Playbook for Broadband and Fiber Construction Teams.