How To Support Field Work Crews and Teams: Challenges and Strategies
When it comes to field work, teams and crews carry out essential work on a daily basis. From construction crews and telecommunications installation teams to field research units and groups of surveyors, teams and crews often tackle some of the most complex and logistically challenging field work.
Because of these complexities, it’s important for companies to deploy teams and crews thoughtfully and strategically or else they risk downsides such as misaligned schedules, unnecessary downtime, and frustrated workers and customers.
In this article, we’ll provide an overview of what sorts of responsibilities field work crews and teams handle, common challenges of managing teams and crews, and best practices for addressing and preventing those challenges.
What Are the Top Challenges of Managing Field Service Teams and Crews?
Though many different industries rely on field service crews and teams, the challenges of field service operations tend to remain the same across industries—particularly for companies that rely on large workforces to serve their customers and communities.
An ineffective strategy for managing mobile crews and teams leads to wasted time and missed deadlines, underutilized and disengaged employees, and dissatisfied customers. Let’s review the most common roadblocks to managing field crews:
Assembling the right team
Simply understanding and identifying who needs to be on the team you’re deploying is one of the first and most important steps. This requires knowing the details of the job, what skills and credentials it requires, and which workers fit that criteria.
For instance, if your company builds fiber optic infrastructure for areas, it’ll be difficult, if not impossible, to actually install fiber optic cables without a full, properly assembled team. If, say, the initial installation crew doesn’t include a splicing technician, getting individual buildings properly connected to the main cable line becomes a significant challenge. As a result, the project is not completed or is delayed—and experiences cost overruns—until a qualified technician is available.
Creating a unified schedule for multiple technicians
Another significant hurdle for supporting field service teams is creating an appropriate schedule for everyone on the crew—and the more individuals who make up a field team, the more complex scheduling becomes due to the higher number of variables for schedulers to consider.
Some of the most common variables a scheduler might have to account for include:
- Travel time – Depending on the mix of projects on their plates, some crew members might have to travel farther to a work site than others.
- Project order of operations – The majority of projects have specific dependencies that require a specific sequence of actions.
- Experience of field workers – Particularly for complex or highly technical projects or stages of a project, field workers might need a certain amount of experience in order to effectively work on that project.
- Credentials – Specialized roles—like a CNA on a mobile clinic team or a forklift operator for a utilities project—require active credentials on file.
Consider: In construction projects, there’s a specific order of operations that crews need to adhere to in order to properly do their jobs. Generally speaking, the foundation team needs to dig out for the foundation and utility lines first, then pour the foundation, let it cure, waterproof it, etc. Then framers can come in and put up the frames for walls, floors, and the roof; install plywood bases for all of those components; wrap the exterior with waterproofing membranes; etc. Once the framers are done, installers are then able to put in the windows and doors. Then, siders and roofers can start installing their components, while heating and air system technicians, electricians, and plumbers come in and install their components. Next, drywallers can come in to put up drywall, after an inspector approves all of the plumbing and wiring.
Because of the complexity, dependencies, and scale of a project like this, it’s easy to introduce complications and frustration.
For instance, if the drywallers show up on site while the electricians are still installing wiring, the drywallers are forced to wait around and waste time until the electricians are done—or in many cases, they will leave for another job until the site is ready for them to get to work. This causes delays in the steps after the drywallers are done, and the cycle continues.
Specific job requirements make this even more challenging. For example, a building project might require special cement board siding from a particular brand. In order to keep the warranty valid, installers must have a certification from that brand. To avoid the cost of a rework, schedulers need to know who is a certified installer to keep the warranty valid and meet the customers’ needs.
Adapting to changing schedules and conditions
A great deal of field work is dynamic and requires workers to adjust to unforeseen blockers on the fly. For example, a mobile blood testing laboratory might be scheduled to end their hours in one location by 1 p.m. so they can move to their next location for the day. Around 12:45 p.m., a handful of patients arrive who don’t have the correct intake information ready. While these patients are busy tracking down the necessary information, the lab’s hours end and the crew has to push back departure and, subsequently, starting hours at their next location.
These adjustments can have cascading, detrimental impacts on a team’s schedule—particularly if 1) a crew or team’s schedule is more staggered and 2) a company lacks smart scheduling and mobile-friendly communication tools to make real-time adjustments.
Ensuring worker safety
Even in groups, field workers are at risk of health and safety hazards on the job. Field service leaders and schedulers need to know when workers arrive on site and check in; when they leave a site and check out; and when they have an emergency update or urgent question. Some groups of workers, like utilities crews, may also have specific safety notices to read and accept before starting work.
Give Your Crews and Schedulers the Right Tools To Succeed
Skedulo’s field service management platform is built for the field and customizable enough for any team-based work. Mobile-first capabilities enable on-the-go communication and real-time access to vital data. Smart scheduling and job matching ensures the right people take on the right jobs at the right time.
Skedulo offers AI-powered tools to automate and optimize scheduling for field service crews. Consider a wide range of factors—worker location, certifications and licenses, and more—to create custom smart scheduling strategies for your business.
Skedulo manages field team management easy with these features:
- Customized workflows: Skedulo offers custom logic and optimization “recipes” to meet specific business needs. For example, field service companies can group together the same team to work multiple different jobs together with a custom “recipe” for job dependencies and continuity in scheduling.
- Field team enablement: The Skedulo Plus mobile app and API allow companies to create custom user interfaces, forms, and workflows based on unique business goals.
- Digital transformation: Turn paper-based processes into streamlined digital record-keeping with Skedulo custom forms, digital signatures, and integrations with other tools.
- Smart scheduling: Automated scheduling and AI-enhanced schedule optimization help Skedulo users make the most of workers’ valuable time in the field.
See how Connexin, a UK telecommunications company, used Skedulo to level up their field service: pulling together engineering forms into one worker-friendly app, enabling self-service scheduling for customers, and scaling up in major new ways.
