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How a Texas Electrical Contractor Streamlined Jobsite Attendance for 3,500 Workers with Truein
About Walker Engineering
Walker Engineering, Inc. is a leading electrical contracting company headquartered in Irving, Texas, with regional offices across Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio.
As a specialty trade contractor, they specialize in providing comprehensive electrical services for industrial, commercial, and residential projects across Texas.
100+
Sites
3500
Staff
United States
Country
Construction - Electrical Contracting
Industry
Initial Brief
What was required
Walker Engineering needed a scalable time and attendance solution to replace their existing biometric system that was struggling with their large workforce. With 3,500 employees spread across 100+ construction sites throughout Texas, they required a system that could handle unlimited worker enrollments, function reliably at remote locations without internet connectivity, and seamlessly integrate with their existing safety and payroll workflows.
Challenges
What we solved
- Hardware Limitations: Their existing biometric terminals could only store 800 fingerprint profiles per device. With 3,500 workers, large projects needed multiple machines per site, adding cost and complexity.
- Offline Attendance Issues: Biometric terminals required live network connections. On remote sites without connectivity, workers couldn't clock in, forcing supervisors to track hours manually on paper.
- Manual Data Processing: Teams had to export punch data and manually feed it into separate applications for safety questionnaires and site checklists, delaying payroll processing.
- Unauthorized Clock-ins: Workers could punch in from home or unauthorized locations, leading to compliance concerns and attendance fraud.
- Inefficient Job Costing: Allocating hours to phase/cost codes was tedious - users had to select each line individually with no bulk options, significantly slowing job costing workflows.
- Manual Correction Process: Invalid punches required emailing support teams for corrections, introducing delays and approval bottlenecks.
Solution
How We created Opportunity
- Unlimited Enrollments: Cloud-based platform supported all 3,500+ workers on single devices, eliminating the need for multiple terminals per site.
- True Offline Capability: Workers could clock in/out at sites with no network connectivity, with automatic sync once connection was restored.
- Integrated Safety Checklists: Built-in clock-out questionnaires made safety prompts mandatory, with pre-selected defaults to speed supervisor approvals.
- GPS Geofencing with Auto Job Codes: Upon crossing a site's GPS boundary, Truein auto-populated only relevant job codes on each kiosk based on geolocation, eliminating manual lookups and errors.
- Regional Site Mapping: Grouped 100+ locations under four regional sites (DFW, Austin, Houston, San Antonio) for seamless crew movement while maintaining management visibility.
- Device-Level Fallbacks & Defaults: For older tablets with unreliable GPS, each kiosk was configured with fixed job codes and defaults, allowing crews to simply tap "Clock In" for common tasks.
- Seamless API Integration: Out-of-the-box REST APIs connected directly to existing ERP and payroll systems, automating workflows end-to-end in days rather than weeks.
- Flexible Policy Framework: Truein's policy engine handled edge cases like minute-level grace rules, auto-rounding, and multi-step approvals for complex attendance scenarios.
Truein Rollout
How it Worked
Walker Engineering initiated a focused two‑week pilot, rigorously testing offline kiosk attendance, punch‑checklists, and geofencing across both urban and remote sites. Confident in performance and ease of use, they then bulk‑uploaded 1,500 profiles and went live within one week—with virtually no IT bottlenecks.
Results
What was achieved in the end
- 30% Reduction in Site Admin Time: Automated safety checklists with pre-selected defaults significantly reduced supervisor approval time.
- Complete Elimination of Offline Issues: Reliable offline performance resolved major gaps that previously forced manual tracking and payroll delays.
- Zero Hardware Investment: Worked seamlessly on existing aging iPads (7+ years old), enabling smooth rollout without additional costs.
- Dramatic Improvement in Job Costing Accuracy: Automatic job code population reduced time-entry mistakes and back-office cleanup efforts.
- Enhanced Attendance Compliance: Location fencing discouraged unauthorized clock-ins, bringing accountability to site-level behavior.
- Smooth Technology Transition: Cultural shift from thumb-print to facial recognition was seamless with quick enrollments and reliable operation.
- Enhanced Operational Efficiency: Truein brought location-aware accuracy and visibility across sites, resulting in faster, cleaner job costing and attendance data without daily interventions.
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