You can build roads to the starting piles to increase the speed that your people gather at, be wary that roads are not free and cost Wood. Buildings prefer having roads connecting them together for maximum efficiency due to workers not having to walk through snow. So a nice early "tip" would be to build a road around your first layer of buildings so that any buildings you connect to the second ring already have roads.

To conduct any sort of research in Frostpunk you need to construct a Workshop, getting one up as early as you can is extremely recommended since you can increase your peoples abilities at gathering, unlocking new buildings and upgrades to help you tackle the cold.

Gathering Post Is a small early game building that works in a radius, inside of the radius any piles of resources it finds it will start gathering, assuming there are people assigned to the building. Very handy to construct if you got 2-3 piles of resources nearby but do not have the manpower for all the piles.

Early research building that will provide a small heat zone once constructed, each Steam Hub consumes about half as much coal as the Generator so be careful to not over spam them.