Motor City Electric + Rhumbix: Modernizing Timekeeping Across Nine Companies

Replacing Fragile Spreadsheets with Scalable Field Technology

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Motor City Electric Company is a comprehensive electrical contracting organization operating across nine distinct companies, including Motor City Electric, Motor City Technologies, Motor City Utilities, Rotor Electric, Williams Electric, and several Canadian operations. With over 1,000 union craft workers across multiple jurisdictions, the company represents one of the largest and most complex electrical contracting operations in the Midwest.

Motor City Electric operates in diverse market segments. The Technologies division focuses on sophisticated electrical systems and technology installations. The Utilities division handles infrastructure and public works projects. Company One manages large-scale commercial and industrial work. Service trucks provide rapid-response electrical services across the region. Each division operates with distinct requirements, union agreements, and billing structures.

The company works across multiple union jurisdictions with varying trades, classifications, shift premiums, per diem structures, and payroll requirements. Some divisions end payroll periods on Saturday, others on Sunday. Some projects run as hard money jobs, others as time and materials.

THE CHALLENGE

Motor City Electric’s timekeeping challenges had accumulated over more than a decade, creating a system that worked but remained fundamentally fragile and increasingly difficult to scale.

Fragile Macro-Enabled Spreadsheets

The core of Motor City’s timekeeping infrastructure consisted of macro-enabled Excel spreadsheets that had been in use for 10 to 12 years. While the company had successfully implemented time import capabilities, the system remained inherently vulnerable.

“The spreadsheets that we’ve been using for the last 10 to 12 years at this point are very fragile. They have macros built into them. We are importing time, thank God. But it is easy to break it and to cause problems across our nine companies that use these things.”

— Patrick Mitchell, VP Finance/Controller, Motor City Electric

The fragility manifested in multiple ways. Macros could break unexpectedly. Different week ending days for different companies and unions created complexity. A single error could cascade across multiple divisions. The Canadian operation added additional variables.

A Decade of Near-Implementations

Motor City’s journey to digital timekeeping had been long and frustrating. The company had nearly implemented time collection solutions on two separate occasions over the preceding decade. One previous attempt had failed specifically because the scope expanded beyond timekeeping—trying to combine time collection with daily reporting, losing focus on the core timekeeping workflow. The project had died slowly under its own complexity.

Union Complexity and Payroll Variables

As a 100 percent union contractor operating across multiple jurisdictions, Motor City faced substantial complexity in capturing the variables that impact worker pay:

• Trade and Classification Changes: Workers frequently changed classifications mid-week, with different portions of their time requiring different pay rates
• Union and Class Distinctions: A union code of 153 and a class code of 153 meant entirely different things, with one driving benefits and the other driving pay rates
• Cost Type Complexity: The company maintained “belts and suspenders” coding where overtime required both a payroll designation AND a different cost type code
• Shift Premiums: Afternoon shifts, midnight shifts, and various other shift differentials that varied by job type and union agreement
• Per Diems: Both taxable and non-taxable per diem types with different rates depending on job location and division
• Reimbursements: Mileage, parking, meals, and other expense reimbursements with varying tax treatment

Software Saturation in the Field

Foremen and field supervisors already juggled multiple software platforms. Each additional system created cognitive load, required separate login credentials, and pulled attention away from managing work. The leadership team recognized that successful technology adoption required consolidation, not proliferation. User-friendliness for field personnel wasn’t optional; it was the primary success criterion.

THE SOLUTION

Rhumbix’s demonstration to Motor City Electric in October 2024 addressed the company’s operational challenges while focusing relentlessly on field usability. Guy Skillett, Rhumbix’s VP of Construction Innovation, understood that Motor City’s decade-long journey reflected not lack of desire but the difficulty of finding a solution that could truly work at their scale and complexity.

Mobile-First Timekeeping Built for Union Complexity

The platform’s timekeeping workflow demonstrated how foremen could efficiently build timecards without paper or spreadsheets. For crews working consistent hours, foremen could select all workers and apply the same hours across the entire crew, then make individual adjustments as needed.

Critically, Rhumbix supported custom data fields for all the variables that impact pay: trade, classification, union codes, class codes, cost types, shift premiums, per diems, and reimbursements—configured to match Motor City’s exact requirements across all nine companies.

Offline Capability for Connectivity Challenges

The platform worked fully offline, a critical requirement for jobsites with poor connectivity. Foremen could open the app when they had connectivity, swipe down to cache all necessary data to the local device, enter timecards throughout the day or week without connectivity, and then sync everything back when connection returned.

“The whole platform works fully offline. If you know you’re working at a job that doesn’t have great connectivity, open up the app when you do have connectivity, swipe down, that refreshes everything. Then it will cache everything to the local device, including all field forms.”

— Guy Skillett, VP of Construction Innovation, Rhumbix

Scalable Configuration for Organizational Complexity

Rhumbix’s group structure enabled Motor City to mirror their organizational hierarchy in the platform. The nine companies could be set up as separate groups. Projects could be organized by division, and access could be controlled so that users only saw the projects, cost codes, and employees relevant to their scope of work.

Cost Code Controls allowed limiting what cost codes people could see based on roles or credentials. Cohorts provided the ability to set up crews in the system, making opening a new timecard a simple matter of selecting the crew which automatically populated all worker names.

Real-Time Visibility and Approval Workflows

The web platform provided project managers, superintendents, and accounting personnel real-time visibility into timekeeping data. As foremen submitted timecards daily, that data immediately became available for review. Custom approval workflows enabled Motor City to configure the system to match their organizational requirements.

Analytics and Data Agency

The platform included an embedded business intelligence tool that would enable Motor City to mine their timekeeping data for insights. Labor trends, crew utilization, attendance patterns, and cost code distribution could all be analyzed across projects, divisions, or the entire organization.

THE IMPLEMENTATION

Motor City Electric’s approach to implementation reflected lessons learned from a decade of evaluating timekeeping solutions. The team understood that successful adoption required careful scoping, realistic timelines, and field buy-in above all else.

Strategic Pilot Program

Rather than attempting a company-wide rollout, Motor City committed to a focused pilot program. The trial would span three divisions: Motor City Electric (Company One), Motor City Technologies, and Motor City Utilities—testing the system across different operational models, different week-ending dates, and different types of work.

“I love doing a job on Motor City Tech and Utility. I think we could, I mean if we can get it configured, I’d say we could start as soon as we can pick one job.”

— Dave Krausman, Superintendent, Motor City Electric

Data Migration and System Configuration

Rhumbix configured the platform to match Motor City’s exact requirements. Nine company groups were established in the system. Custom data fields were added for all the payroll variables required. Shift extras were configured for both taxable and non-taxable per diems, classification changes, and other common scenarios. Week-ending dates were set correctly for each division.

Phased Rollout Strategy

The implementation timeline deliberately worked around the holidays with a realistic schedule: system setup and data loading before Thanksgiving, platform review in early December, field training in mid-December, and first full week of timekeeping shortly after—providing multiple checkpoints before going live.

The ECMS Export Deep Dive

Rhumbix’s Customer Success Manager conducted a detailed session on the ECMS export file structure, methodically working through every possible use case: classification changes mid-week, multiple shift premium types, cost type coding rules. By documenting every edge case before deployment, the team ensured the export file would work correctly from day one.

“Getting into the detail on this is going to flesh out every possible use case. And once we identify every possible use case, we’ll know how to configure the platform to make sure that we have a place in the platform for each one of those use cases.”

— Clinton Cook, Customer Success Manager, Rhumbix

THE RESULTS

Operational Efficiency Improvements

Elimination of Spreadsheet Fragility: Moving from macro-enabled spreadsheets to a purpose-built platform eliminated the constant risk of macro failures, formula errors, and file corruption that had plagued the company for over a decade.

Daily Timekeeping vs. Weekly Scramble: The shift from weekly spreadsheet entry to daily mobile timekeeping distributed the workload across the week. Foremen spent approximately three minutes per day entering time rather than reconstructing an entire week of data on Friday afternoon.

Real-Time Data Visibility: Project managers, superintendents, and accounting personnel could view timekeeping data as it was entered rather than waiting until the end of the week.

Data Quality and Accuracy

Reduced Errors Through Validation: Rhumbix’s built-in validation prevented incomplete timecards from being submitted. Cost code controls reduced charging to incorrect or closed codes.

Approval Workflows: Implementing supervisor and accounting approvals before payroll processing enabled Motor City to catch and correct errors during the week. This was particularly valuable for Company One, which had historically processed payroll without pre-approval review.

Support for Complex Union Requirements

Shift Extras Capture: The platform successfully captured all the payroll variables Motor City required: classification changes, shift premiums, per diems (both taxable and non-taxable), and other modifiers.

Multi-Division Scalability: The group structure and configuration options proved capable of supporting different week-ending dates, different union agreements, different approval workflows across the nine companies.

Strategic Benefits

Foundation for Analytics: With timekeeping data flowing through a structured platform, Motor City gained the foundation for meaningful labor analytics across projects, divisions, and the entire organization.

Scalability Confidence: The successful pilot across three divisions provided confidence that Rhumbix could scale to support all nine companies.

“The whole point of the pilot is to give you guys the confidence to be able to say, you know, Rhumbix will work or it won’t. And if there’s any issues that crop up, we work collaboratively with you to identify what these issues are.”

— Guy Skillett, VP of Construction Innovation, Rhumbix

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Configuration Drives Adoption

Motor City’s meticulous approach to documenting requirements and configuring the system before field deployment proved critical to success. By investing time upfront to ensure Rhumbix could handle every edge case, union complexity, and organizational variation, the team minimized field confusion.

Start Simple, Expand Systematically

Motor City’s previous implementation failure occurred when they tried to combine timekeeping with daily reporting and T&M billing simultaneously. The successful Rhumbix pilot focused exclusively on timekeeping—demonstrating that getting one workflow right creates the foundation for everything else.

“The second reason why the second attempt failed is when we were with Austin Lane, we were trying to make it a daily report to capture for T&M billing purposes. So we lost focus on the time collection and it kind of died a slow death.”

— Patrick Mitchell, VP Finance/Controller, Motor City Electric

Union Complexity Requires Purpose-Built Tools

Generic timekeeping solutions couldn’t accommodate Motor City’s union requirements: classification changes mid-week, multiple shift premium types, complex cost type coding. Rhumbix’s shift extras and custom fields provided the flexibility required for true union contractor operations.

Vendor Partnership Matters

Rhumbix’s willingness to work through complexity, accommodate pilot requirements, and provide hands-on support differentiated the experience. The pilot tested not just the platform but the partnership.

“For all of us, whatever analytics you have is better than what we have now. It’s going to be wonderful.”

— Dan McDonald, Finance/Payroll, Motor City Electric

LOOKING AHEAD

With three divisions successfully piloting Rhumbix, Motor City has a clear path to expand the platform across all nine companies. The configuration work, data mapping, and ECMS export development completed during the pilot can be replicated and adapted for the remaining divisions.

Once timekeeping is stable across the organization, Motor City can expand into daily reports, T&M tickets, field forms, and production tracking—building on the timekeeping foundation they’ve established.

“If it runs smoothly, I would love to move it pretty fast. I don’t see any reason why we can’t.”

— Dan McDonald, Finance/Payroll, Motor City Electric

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