Transcend HC History

The origins of Transcend PM (TPM) and Transcend HC (THC) span back more than 15-years. The programs began with work performed on some of the largest hospitals in Southern California and throughout the years have evolved based on best practices and experience through Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Some of the SMEs have been in the healthcare industry for more than 50-years. Through collaboration with many individuals, THC and TPM have been refined to where they are today. They provide a solid system for any managing organization irrespective of portfolio size.

TPM has been utilized on tens of thousands of healthcare construction projects and began development in 2009. The Transcend PM program encompasses all project team members including: Owners, Construction/Project Managers, Designers, General Contractors, Subcontractors, QA/QC Inspectors, Special inspectors, Materials Testing and Geotechnical Laboratories, Authorities Having Jurisdiction (AHJ), and Consultants

Lesson Learned

Between 2015 and 2017 the two programs were going through a robust strategic planning and evolution cycle since of our founders worked with Ascension Health/Medxcel Facilities Management as a Regional Director managing almost 25% of the Ascension portfolio at that time. To maximize efficiency and transparency, this leader tried to implement several solutions outside of the Transcend HC and Transcend PM platform. One such solution was to create a program that would use “low code” technology. This “low-code” technology is known as PaaS (platform as a service) and they utilized one of the largest PaaS companies at the time.

The PaaS had “applications” that were existing for FM but they were created by other organizations. To be able to take these applications and copy or edit them for our use was not as simple as had been advertised. Unfortunately, when they began to get down into the details of what was needed the code changed from “low-code” to a complex situation where we needed to hire a special programmer who knew this specific “low-code” language/system. To implement across more than one facility was a larger project than the PaaS approach could handle. However, the appeal of this approach was that it was advertised as easy to use, easy to create and the user could have what he/she wanted within months. However, in reality, this was not the case.

After some time, this leader moved on to another position with another extremely talented organization as a VP of Facilities and Construction. This organization was a five-time award-winning Truven recipient. During this period, we were able to learn and apply the requirements of the “Certificate of Need” (‘CON”) laws which are in place for 35 out of 50 states.

These requirements were applied to Transcend PM. Starting with the most stringent requirements allowed us to trim down the system for non-healthcare organizations utilizing the same robust back end. Transcend FM is ideal for managing the facilities and assets for education (schools, universities, colleges, etc.), commercial, industrial, residential, and government.

Transcend PM began as a SaaS coded approach and was developed to solve many issues that were encountered utilizing other programs. Unlike the programs built by large corporations, eBuilder, Procore, Prolog, etc. Unlike those programs, TPM is not stuck in doing something one way which excludes many project team members and reduces flexibility. Some of these programs are centered around one main entity, typically a General Contractor and sometimes an owner. This causes many gaps in service and transparency. With Transcend PM we have solved that and many other problems of these legacy systems.

Builder’s leverage comes from being able to process payments from an API to an organization’s accounting programs. Fortunately, this is common practice in GAAP accounting methods and is easily integrated within any company’s accounting program, if the customer so desires. The unfortunate side of eBuilder is that customers get locked into a 1990’s platform and believe that it is insurmountable to evolve their program to the next level. Procore is a better system for capital projects, but it is focused on the GC and misses the mark for everyone else in the program. Microsoft Prolog is another 1990’s platform that is lacking quite a bit when it comes to total construction project management.

With the current healthcare and facilities management programs on the market today, a common problem is that none of them can integrate capital project management into Facility Management Operations. What does this mean? The user has two different platforms that do not talk to each other. If one needs to know what the scope, schedule, or budget is for a specific project that is being managed by a Planning Design and Construction (PDC) side of the house, the user needs to wait for the PM from Planning, Design, and Construction to tell the user what is taking place. One cannot go to a Capital Project page and see all projects at one time, regardless of whether they are managed by PD&C or by the Facilities Department. None of the other capital project SaaS Programs have a PCRA, ICRA, or ILSM connected to them automatically because this is a typical FM function that these other programs do not have because they are GC-focused.

Transcend HC/Transcend PM and Transcend FM/Transcend PM was created around a dedicated, centralized approach. We designed it to ensure that the complex controls and processes for Capital Construction Program/Project Management are in place but ensured the system could “talk” to Transcend HC or Transcend FM. This allows the FM side of the house to have high-level visibility over “Scope-Schedule-Budget” (SSB) but keeps the project management controls with the PD&C Project Managers.

All of the Transcend PM and Transcend HC features roll up into a single collaborative administrative dashboard allowing the senior leadership to see beyond the single-site level, so the user can see how the teams are doing in real-time. No other program allows user/management this level of visualization, let alone the number of modules and capabilities that Transcend PM/Transcend HC and Transcend PM/Transcend FM has.