Hoover Construction

About Hoover Construction

Hoover Construction is a family-owned heavy highway construction company based in northeastern Minnesota. For over 50 years, Hoover has built a reputation for delivering high-quality work with a steadfast commitment to safety, efficiency, and excellence. Hoover specializes in everything from heavy grading for earthen dams to award-winning highway construction and commercial site development.

Buy or Build?

“As a fourth-generation owner at Hoover Construction, I’ve always looked for ways to simplify our work and cut down on paperwork headaches,” explained Nicholas Johnson, Owner of Hoover Construction. “I actually first tried to build my own tool—a website that could fill out forms and output a PDF. I knew the idea was possible, but I didn’t have the time to make it work the way we needed. That’s when I went hunting for a better solution and found GoFormz.”

Like many construction companies, Hoover historically relied on carbon copy books for field reporting. “We historically have had all kinds of forms,” Johnson shared. “When I first started, we had carbon copy books where a supervisor in the field would fill them out, and one copy went to the customer, another went to the office, and so on. Now, we’ve more or less migrated all of that to GoFormz.”

This shift addressed one of the company’s biggest frustrations: lost or damaged paperwork. “I was looking for a digital solution because things just got lost,” Johnson explained. “A supervisor would fill out a form, it would end up on the floor of a pickup, trampled on, maybe ripped or stained, and by the time it finally made it back to the office, it was almost unusable. That was something we were constantly dealing with. It wasn’t a single moment where I said, ‘we must have this,’ but more a realization that the technology existed, it should be better, and we needed to take advantage of it.”

After experimenting with building his own custom solution and evaluating several systems, Johnson ultimately found GoFormz to be the best fit. “GoFormz had the best price point and the right features for what we were trying to do,” noted Johnson.

Over time, Johnson and his team explored other offerings as new technologies entered the market, but none matched the flexibility and reliability they had found with GoFormz. “Now, every software vendor seems to offer some digital form solution, but they just can’t match the capabilities that we’ve come to rely on GoFormz for.”

Streamlining Safety, Compliance, and Project Workflows

At Hoover Construction, paperwork isn’t just an administrative task — it’s a critical part of safety, compliance, and customer communication. Historically, this meant supervisors were handed a “black box,” a small tote filled with paper copies of the 27 unique safety and compliance forms required for insurance, government, and internal reporting. Supervisors had to keep track of each document, make copies, and ensure they made it back to the office — a process that often proved cumbersome. “They’d fill them out in the field and then either scan, take a picture, or bring them into the office to copy, depending on what technology we had at the time. That was just how it used to work.”

“With GoFormz, that whole system has been digitized,” explained Johnson. “We still refer to it as the ‘black box,’ but now all those forms live in GoFormz. It’s easy to search, retrieve, and file them digitally. A lot of those forms are just record-keeping requirements, so once they’re submitted, we simply print and file them in employee folders. It’s efficient, consistent, and nothing gets lost.”

Beyond safety and compliance, GoFormz also plays a central role in Hoover’s project workflows. “Every project and every customer seems to bring their own unique set of forms — progress reports, status updates, you name it,” said Johnson. “With GoFormz, we can quickly adapt and create the forms each project requires, then route them wherever they need to go.”

Depending on the form, data might be pulled into Google Sheets using a Zapier integration, emailed directly to customers, or filed internally. “We have an array of use cases and GoFormz has been flexible enough to handle all of them."

Project Organization within GoFormz

GoFormz helps Hoover Construction stay organized by making it easy to manage form templates across different jobs and projects. “We use template folders where a lot of times we’ll start with the same form template, but then we have to change some aspect of it,” explained Johnson. “Maybe the backend PDF needs to look different, or extra information needs to be included. We copy our template, tweak it, and then use it for that specific job.” This flexibility allows the team to maintain consistency across projects while still meeting unique customer requirements. “From one job to the next, there are always modifications between forms. They’re tweaked to match whatever we need in that particular case, and GoFormz has been instrumental in making that a seamless process."

Streamlining Union Hiring and Applications with Public Forms

For projects across the country, Hoover Construction often needs to hire locally from union halls. “In the old days, doing our paperwork was a bit of a chore,” explained Johnson. “We’re dealing with explosives, ATF clearances, and a lot of forms, and capturing it all by hand and submitting it back to the home office from wherever we were at was always a big chore.”

“With GoFormz Public Forms, that entire process is now digital. Employees simply scan a QR code or use a link, fill out the form from their phone, and it all flows back to the office instantly,” noted Johnson. “When List View was introduced, it made remote form completion even easier, especially for workers using smaller devices.”

Beyond union hiring, Public Forms also help capture interest from walk-in applicants. “We call it our short form—it’s like a one-page application.

Keeping these records digital has been a huge time saver. “Now they’re all in one central spot. We can pull a CSV and summarize the data without having to compile stacks of physical papers.”

ROI and Impact

Since implementing GoFormz, Hoover Construction has seen measurable benefits across multiple areas of its operations. “Broadly speaking, GoFormz has saved us time and prevented costs,” noted Johnson. “There are scenarios where a critical form could have been lost if we were still using paper, but because it’s all in the system, that risk doesn’t exist anymore.”

GoFormz has also reduced errors caused by handwriting and manual data entry. “When collecting applications and other forms, we used to deal with messy handwriting or mistakes that caused data entry errors,” Johnson said. “Now, data can be extracted directly from GoFormz and imported into our ERP. Even if we still enter some manually, the chance of mistakes like a wrong phone number or address is greatly reduced. It definitely saves time and hassle.”

Accessing and organizing forms has become far more efficient. “One of the simplest but most consistently useful benefits is easy access to all the forms. Many are saved as PDFs in digital job folders, but even when we need to locate a specific form quickly, we can search or filter in GoFormz and find it immediately.”

A Software That Grows With You

GoFormz stands out for its thoughtful updates and reliable support. “Unlike other software we use, GoFormz hasn’t made changes just for the sake of change,” expressed Johnson. “The interface evolves intentionally, without abrupt shifts that disrupt workflow. It’s a well-considered progression that makes using the system easier to use over time.”

Johnson also appreciates how quickly issues are handled. “We’re pretty self-sufficient and don’t need to call often, but when we do, issues are handled quickly without hassle. There’s no bureaucracy or red tape — just straightforward help when we need it.”