Active Oversight
Automation. Consistency. Clarity.

Famed American race car driver, Mario Andretti, once said, “If everything seems under control, you are not going fast enough.” Andretti wasn’t advocating rash driving so that you spin out and crash. He was striking at the core of people’s greatest fear: pushing the limits, going beyond what is safe and taking calculated risks. In life and business, the only way to test one’s limits is by opening the ‘throttle’ and going after challenging opportunities to achieve the impossible. Echoing Andretti’s views is entrepreneur Wayne Smith, the founder of Active Oversight, who is constantly pushing the limits of what’s achievable and looking for new opportunities to improve his team and his company’s project management competencies.

Identifying the Missing Links in Projects

While leading his services venture, Vertex Innovations— which provided communication services—Smith noticed that many of his clients in the construction industry were struggling to achieve acceptable levels of quality in their project delivery endeavors. On analyzing the situation, he discerned that the lack of connection between the different parties involved in the project—managers to field employees, vendors to customers, and everyone in between—was the root of the problem. There was no effective tool in the market that could enable the teams to be more efficient and productive. Realizing he could make a real difference, Smith decided to use the opportunity at hand to start a company that would bring a new level of transparency, response time, and quality in construction projects, while transforming ‘best practices’ into ‘common practices.’ Thus, Active Oversight was established in 2015. Today, by leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as automation and AI, the firm develops next-generation solutions, bringing a fundamental shift in how projects are managed and measured. Active Oversight is setting a higher standard for performance and revolutionizing construction processes by making everything more efficient, profitable, and, most importantly, safer.

Active Oversight’s Rise to Prominence

Active Oversight was initially recognized as Finalize but later rebranded as Active Oversight. In 2018, the firm developed a namesake cloud-based enterprise quality management system (QMS), Active Oversight (AO), to automate business processes, promote employee efficiency, and ensure accurate data collection. “We created AO to reduce rework and increase profits by streamlining the closeout processes so that our clients can complete their projects successfully,” says Smith. The following year, in 2019, Smith went on to make the software more secure, compliant, and mobile-friendly for field employees to easily navigate and manage their tasks. Toward the end of 2019, the firm refactored AO software’s code to make it robust and scalable. More recently, AO was made available in offline mode. “Now, even when there is no Wi-Fi connection or limited connectivity on the field, technicians can still perform all of their tasks using the application and be productive,” adds Smith.

This exponential growth curve of Active Oversight in just five years is reflective of Smith’s dedication, commitment, and passion for learning and building new things. These values have enabled him to place modern-day construction practices on a higher pedestal through Active Oversight’s people, processes, and tools. With his ability to drive quality management through guided project completion, Smith has established himself as a forward-thinking, problem-solving entrepreneur, and is now striving to transform the construction industry.

When we developed AO, we built it to solve the automation problem for every user within an ecosystem—the customer, the customer’s vendors, the vendor’s vendors, and the employees,” states Smith.

Enhancing Project Visibility

The firm takes a consultative approach when it comes to offering services and implementing solutions for clients. The whole process starts with a formal webinar engagement. During this stage, the team uncovers the unique pain points of a client by collecting data on their projects and then tailoring the AO software accordingly. Following this, they collaborate with the system admin from the client’s side to train and demonstrate how AO can dramatically improve their operational efficiencies. In three to four weeks, the client is ready to go about on their own. As far as usability goes, the AO software is intuitive. The platform can also be integrated with project management tools like Quick Base. Moreover, since AO is template-based, it is easy to scale the rollout to meet specific business needs.

"At its core, the AO QMS platform is built upon the company’s brand value: ‘consistency plus clarity equals quality"

Active Oversight is the resulting innovation of over 16 years and thousands of projects managed in construction, utilities, and telecom. The benefits of the software can be seen across the entirety of Active Oversight’s client engagements. In an instance, a real estate investment trust, which builds 5G network infrastructures, was struggling with their project deployments. The company was handling over 500 projects simultaneously and was using Excel spreadsheets to track each implementation. As a result, most of the data was poor and inaccurate. Active Oversight collaborated with the client and deployed the AO software in the client’s ecosystem. “We built over six different templates and optimized the deployments for the client. It also made it easier for them to find information on any project in realtime—all from one place,” explains Smith. With AO in place, the client was also able to accelerate the closeout process. Every time a project was completed, AO automatically generated the closeout package, which was ready for client review at the push of a button. Through successes like these, Active Oversight is carving a niche for itself in the construction industry.

The Path Forward

The injection of automation is providing businesses with the boost they need to experience growth without increasing operating expenses. To that end, Active Oversight is dedicated to enabling the growth of the construction industry that is continually improving in all aspects— efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability.

Steering ahead, the firm will continue to add features such as geo-tracking, geo-fencing and voice command recognition to enhance the capabilities of the AO software. This will help an employer know, in realtime, how many hours a person spends on a project. Alongside, Active Oversight is also working on making AO compatible with wearables. “This will enable on-field workers to take photos or make notes instantly,” says Smith. That being said, with the outbreak of COVID-19, organizations of all sizes are now quickly adjusting on a global scale so that they can continue running their businesses with a reduced workforce. Many companies are, in fact,turning to automation as their means to address the shortage of labors across all departments. A future that relies on automation was already coming, and with the COVID-19 pandemic, it has only led to the acceleration of the process. “‘The future is now’ when it comes to implementing automation, and companies that don’t implement technology right now are likely to suffer,” states Smith. Active Oversight is proving to businesses—and the world at large—that it is possible to increase quality without increasing costs.