This week, I’m pleased to welcome David DeVita, a safety expert with 20 years of experience, from Carolina Safety Consultants.

I had the opportunity to do some work outside the construction industry a few weeks ago in which I toured a manufacturing plant with an ergonomist. The manufacturing company makes and assembles small to extra-large gear assemblies for everything from small electric motors to large rock crushers.

It seems like there truly is an app for everything today. Personally, I’m pretty sure I’m downloading more apps for my mobile devices than complete software applications for my computer. This started me thinking about the difference between the two. Here is how I differentiate between apps and applications:

1. Apps are for single tasks. Download an app for your phone or tablet and chances are it will perform one primary function. Most software applications, particularly for business, have multiple features, functions, and uses.

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No matter what industry you’re in, collaboration seems to be the latest “thing.” From applications that make your meetings and webinars more collaborative to document management and social media apps to help you and your team organize, it seems collaboration is everywhere. But because it’s everywhere, collaboration has become a bit of a buzzword.

I am a believer in real collaboration – after all, we did just launch a new product created specifically for project collaboration. And nothing demonstrates a real collaborative environment more than our annual Users’ Conference. Each year at this event I’m reminded that collaboration is vital to our construction industry.

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I’m pleased to introduce Greg Wilson, CPA as this week’s guest blogger. Greg is a Principal at Mountjoy, Chilton, Medley LLP, a CPA firm with a team of accountants dedicated to construction accounting.

Just about every contractor has been there — a project starts out strong but, as it moves forward, delays and incidental added work and changes knock dollars and cents off of the bottom line. There’s a name for these situations: “profit fade.” There are also a variety of ways to stay focused in the fight against this continuing problem.

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This is an exciting week for us at Dexter + Chaney. We are in the final week of preparing for our annual Users’ Conference, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Our conference theme this year is Connection. Connection between our company and our customers, between industry peers, between contractors and their project teams. To help with our “connecting” discussions at the conference, social media and mobile communication expert James Spellos will be joining us as the keynote speaker.