PLOT Publishes Swinerton Case Study on Construction Procurement Software

Illustration: a project team reviews procurement status together on site.

Illustration: procurement tracked on paper and spreadsheets in a jobsite office.

Illustration: a scheduled material delivery arrives at the site gate.

Swinerton's three-person team replaced its Excel procurement log with PLOT on San Diego State's Evolve project and estimates 14 to 16 hours saved weekly.

WICHITA, KS, UNITED STATES, November 5, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- PLOT, construction procurement software for general contractors, published an Oct. 6, 2026 case study in which Swinerton's three-person team on Apartment 2 of San Diego State University's SDSU Evolve student housing project estimates that using PLOT saves 14 to 16 hours per week; the case is available at https://www.getplot.com/latest-news/swinerton-102m-student-housing-project.

The publication documents a change in everyday procurement coordination. Swinerton replaced its Excel procurement log, the tracking record for project materials and their progress, with PLOT, bringing material tracking, technical approvals, schedule dates and delivery scheduling into a shared view. Trade partners, the subcontractors responsible for individual scopes of work, update procurement information directly. Project engineers can see those changes alongside the dates governing installation.

The team began using PLOT in early May 2026. The October case follows the work from manual spreadsheet maintenance through software selection, integration and use by both Swinerton and its trade partners. Its account centers on the three-person team's workflow and the information needed to keep materials aligned with construction activities.

From Field Experience to a Shared Procurement Record

Apartment 2 is an 11-story building with nine apartments per floor. Each apartment includes three individual bedrooms, shared living and kitchen areas, and full bathrooms, according to PLOT's case study, which notes that procurement on the building involves dozens of trade partners working to a compressed timeline.

Rico Quinta, senior project engineer at Swinerton, brought field experience to that work. He began as a general laborer in 1999, became a concrete foreman on bridge projects in Canada, then returned to school for civil engineering. After graduating, he joined Swinerton. His responsibilities on Apartment 2 now focus on procurement.

"It was all manual data entry," Quinta said in PLOT's published case. "We were relying on subs to provide us with their updated procurement logs, and then having to manually enter that into our spreadsheet so we could track it."

The team also had to match dates in Primavera P6, its scheduling software, with material delivery dates. Submittals, the technical information submitted for review before related materials proceed, lived in Autodesk Forma, formerly Autodesk Construction Cloud. Keeping the Excel log current meant moving between those systems and checking details manually.

The broader problem of finding project information has been documented separately. FMI Corporation and PlanGrid's 2018 report, "Construction Disconnected," surveyed 599 construction industry leaders, including 500 in the United States. Respondents estimated spending an average of 5.5 hours per week looking for project data or information.

PLOT's Swinerton case describes a specific response to fragmented procurement information: give the project team and trade partners a shared record connected to the schedule and technical review process.

Selecting for Daily Use

Monika Iannone, project executive at Swinerton, and Kian Kemp, project manager at Swinerton, led an evaluation of four procurement software options before selecting PLOT. Their criterion was how the people responsible for procurement would interact with the software each day.

"We looked at four options, and the question for us was simple: How will our teams interact with this tool daily?" Iannone said in the PLOT case study. "PLOT gave us the visibility we needed without the complexity that slows adoption. It also provided a hub that encouraged subcontractor collaboration. We wanted a simple, effective solution that felt intuitive, while reducing risk and providing clarity around procurement."

Quinta described the same requirement from his field-to-engineering background. "Someone like me, a former trades person with minimal experience in technology, needed to be able to easily input items and track them on a daily basis," he said.

That published assessment places daily participation alongside the ability to represent construction dependencies. Iannone also addressed the relationship between technical reviews and materials: "The system adeptly handles the many-to-one and one-to-many relationships that are typical between construction submittals and material procurement," she said in the case study.

Linking Approvals, Materials and Installation Dates

PLOT defines a construction procurement log as a centralized record of the materials, equipment and services a project requires, including quantities, responsible parties, delivery dates and current status. The log gives project engineers and managers a way to follow each item's progress toward the work that needs it.

In PLOT's workflow, a Submittal is the technical information sent for review before related materials proceed, such as product data or drawings. The Material Orders feature tracks commitments for those materials. Lead times describe the duration allowed for the material to progress toward delivery. Installation Activities identify the scheduled work that depends on material being ready.

PLOT's Procurement Log links one Submittal to multiple materials and one material to multiple Installation Activities, reflecting the many-to-many dependencies described in PLOT's procurement documentation. Many-to-many means that a record can connect to several related records on either side of the workflow. A single material may need several approvals, while one approval may cover several materials.

PLOT's product explanation also addresses phased deliveries. Material committed at one point may arrive over several months, divided by floor, zone or building. A spreadsheet row built around one approval, one delivery and one installation date requires additional handling to represent those relationships. The issue grows when revised dates must be carried across separate logs.

PLOT connects procurement items to the critical path method, or CPM, schedule: the project plan that links activities and identifies the sequence governing completion. Required on Jobsite is the date material needs to be available for its linked construction activity. Working backward from that date, lead time establishes a material release deadline; the review duration establishes when the related Submittal must enter review.

PLOT's procurement documentation describes automated email check-ins that prompt trade partners to confirm status, along with detailed change logs recording updates. Those features support the continuing work of maintaining procurement information as commitments, review status or project sequencing change.

For a facade package, for example, PLOT describes a status question answered through linked facts: whether Submittals are approved, material commitments are in place and deliveries are scheduled against the work. The purpose of the linked record is to make those dependencies visible together during project coordination.

Connecting the Existing Project Systems

According to PLOT's Swinerton case study, replacing the Excel procurement log meant trade partners updating dates directly in PLOT while the project team uploaded revised schedules and linked activity codes so associated material dates updated automatically.

The Swinerton team connected PLOT to its existing Autodesk Forma environment, where trade partner and Submittal data already resided. Before the connection went live, Swinerton's IT department reviewed how PLOT would interact with that system. Chris Callen, founder and CEO of PLOT, joined a call to explain the data path. As documented in the case, PLOT reads data from Forma and never writes back to it.

The schedule workflow uses revised P6 uploads and linked activity codes. PLOT's broader integration documentation also lists Procore connections for trade contractor and user information, Submittals and schedule activities. Those are platform capabilities described by PLOT, separate from the Forma and P6 workflow documented on Apartment 2.

Since the team's initial integration review, PLOT has completed a SOC 2 Type II audit covering the Security trust services criteria, according to PLOT's security announcement. This form of audit examines how controls operated over time. PLOT states that an independent auditor tested its operating controls, and that the report is available under a nondisclosure agreement to qualifying organizations evaluating the platform.

What Changed for the Project Team and Trades

PLOT's case study reports seven trade partners updating procurement dates and 10 trades scheduling deliveries in PLOT, alongside the three-person Swinerton team's estimated 14 to 16 hours saved per week.

The published breakdown attributes the time estimates to that same Swinerton team:

- An estimated eight hours saved per week in field management and trade partner coordination.
- An estimated six to eight hours saved per week in office and back-office processes.
- An estimated 10 minutes saved per hour of meeting time.

In the PLOT case, those estimates accompany a change in how meetings run. Procurement status, Submittal status, scheduled deliveries and installation dates appear in one view. The team can review the relationships without switching among P6, Forma and Excel to assemble the current picture.

PLOT also pulls Submittal status from Forma and flags items at risk of falling behind. The case describes these reminders as part of the team's technical acceptance workflow, extending the shared view upstream from delivery tracking.

Wes Hills, project manager at trade partner A.O. Reed & Co., explained the change from the subcontractor side in PLOT's case study: "I like it mostly because it allows you guys to update the schedule directly and more often, rather than me waiting for a monthly schedule update and then having to extract the info I need to update my big ugly Excel spreadsheet that just tries to do the same thing as PLOT."

The Procurement Work Behind the Case

For general contractors, construction procurement connects Submittals and approvals, material release, lead times, delivery and installation to the construction schedule; PLOT provides construction procurement software for that linked workflow.

In PLOT's published explanation, "Procurement Management: Four Key Processes You Can’t Ignore," Callen describes planning, selection, administration and closing as a connected process. Planning translates project scope into material requirements and dates. Selection establishes partner commitments. Administration follows review, fabrication, shipping and delivery progress. Closing brings delivery records and handoff documentation together.

The Swinerton case makes the administration work concrete. Information supplied by a trade partner feeds the same procurement record the general contractor uses to check schedule readiness. A revision to an installation activity changes the associated material dates. Review status remains visible alongside those dates, allowing the team to discuss the dependency that needs attention.

Callen's published PLOT guidance also describes the review cadence behind a live log. Project managers, engineers and key trade partners review variances, assign responsibility for risks and establish follow-up dates. A material release awaiting a design response becomes a specific dependency with someone responsible for resolving it. Delivery planning then follows fabrication and transit timing, with arrival windows adjusted as shipping commitments become firmer. The record connects the office's review work to the field's capacity to receive materials and provide unloading space or equipment. These are the handoffs PLOT's procurement and delivery workflows are designed to coordinate.

PLOT presents this procurement-log approach for commercial projects across sizes. The underlying coordination work follows the materials and installation sequence: project engineers need approval status, lead times and delivery commitments whether a scope repeats across several floors or occupies a smaller portion of a building. The three-person Apartment 2 team illustrates the daily work behind the case.

"Most commercial projects run procurement through the same chain of approval, release, lead time and delivery," said Chris Callen, founder and CEO of PLOT. "PLOT ties that chain to the schedule so the GC and the trades see it together."

PLOT also maintains an open-source procurement log spreadsheet template for contractors working in Excel. Published on getplot.com, the template can be downloaded, edited and improved. Version 1.0, dated Feb. 9, 2025, supports imported CPM schedule activities and Submittal information, using identifiers to connect material records to activity start dates and review status.

The PLOT template permits either a manual required-on-site date or a date linked to a schedule activity. It calculates material release and submission deadlines backward from the durations entered, assigns a subcontractor to each material and uses colors to distinguish overdue, near-term and later deadlines. Version 1.1, dated Feb. 17, 2025, added a material status column driven by actual milestone dates.

Delivery Coordination as Site Activity Increases

PLOT's October publication identifies delivery scheduling as the next area of expanding use on Apartment 2 as more trade partners come on board. Quinta described coordinating truck arrivals, crane windows and traffic control as practical applications for the delivery scheduler as site activity increases.

The Swinerton team had also shared its PLOT setup with another Swinerton project team in preconstruction, walking through onboarding and practices developed on Apartment 2. In the published case, Iannone links broader use to executive oversight, staffing planning and access to data that can help teams identify procurement risks earlier in project planning.

About PLOT

PLOT is a construction technology company founded in 2021 by Chris Callen, a second-generation contractor. PLOT provides construction procurement software for general contractors and trade partners, combining procurement and delivery workflows. Its live, collaborative Procurement Log links Submittals, Material Orders, lead times and Required on Jobsite dates to the CPM schedule. PLOT also provides delivery scheduling and site logistics mapping, iOS and Android apps, and integrations with Procore, Autodesk Forma and Primavera P6. Website: getplot.com.

Chris Callen
PLOT