Highway Assurance case study

£3000 per year saving on paper alone

750 sheets of paper saved per day

Reduced admin by 6.5 hours per day

Implemented company wide within 4 weeks

The background

Leading traffic management company, Highway Assurance, facilitate the maintenance and improvement of the highways, working alongside Local Authorities and Highways England as well as companies from the private sector.

The problem

When Dale Chenery, Head of Traffic Management, arrived at Highway Assurance, health and safety policies and recording RAMS were not being monitored and recorded in the correct fashion, or being completed by the operatives on a daily basis. This was essential to comply and maintain Highways Assurance’s ISO 9001:2015 accreditation.

With up to 750 sheets of paper being produced on a daily basis, this cost the company over £3000 a year in paper alone - not including printing or ink costs. The daily battle for the operations team to produce, collate, record and file was a time-consuming, costly and laborious task - it was quickly realised that something had to be done.

The solution

After accepting that technology was a key part of today’s society, Highway Assurance began researching alternative methods to issue, collect and record all daily job packs as well as drive health, safety and compliance.

Highways Assurance recognised they relied heavily on the operatives themselves to return all paperwork, completed to a set standard. Dale had the job to ensure that Highway Assurance had a robust system in place to drive and enforce site compliance and health and safety.

Dale began to research providers for a paperless system to be able to provide the following:

Drive health, safety and compliance
Ensure vehicle defect sheets are completed
Operatives to have access to RAMS at all times
Create paperless job packs
To be able to record, file and issue tool box talks information without paper
To give the operations staff insights into what is happening on site
To be able to provide information and a service to clients that differentiates from competitors

This led to the choice of MyMobileWorkers.

Quality control

Once MyMobileWorkers was up and running, this allowed Highways Assurance to collect more detailed and accurate information. With great emphasis on quality control, Highways Assurance needed to ensure they were getting the correct on-site information from the operatives.

Having real-time communication between the office and the operatives allows work to be checked as soon as it comes in. The quality of photographs and information can then go through an auditing process to ensure workers are capturing reliable information of which can be presented to customers.

This has provided Highway Assurance with the data to conduct weekly meetings to review quality and to identify any issues or repeat offenders with non-conformance being logged and actioned.

From here, an auditing process has been developed and has been incorporated into the software to reduce administration time from 9 man-hours per day to 2.5 hours and make the process simpler to report and monitor. The 6.5 hour saving per day can be better spent focusing on other areas ensuring smooth business operations.

Customer access

Highways Assurance have now developed their process and offer online portals so clients can access all of their job information. This saves time in the office trying to find information or having to stop what they are doing to issue the information out, providing a competitive edge with their clients.

The platform will provide a transparent service where nothing is hidden from customers, allowing visibility on job photos and real time information. Since its implementation, it has removed the need for operatives to go back out and re-visit sites where there has been information errors and left over equipment that could lead to large fines.

The level of customer service Highway Assurance can provide has heightened and they can ensure that the company is moving with the times. Highways Assurance are keeping up to speed with the rapid growth that the company is experiencing and MyMobileWorkers helps to manage this.

Reducing stress for operatives

Health and safety should also cover mental health as much as anything else.

Highway Assurance have implemented a fight-or-flight system, which system outlined exactly what to do in the event of an accident to alleviate the responsibility and stress for operatives. They had this procedure on paper originally, but due to the nature of working on the road, it wasn’t always practical to have it to hand.

Now it’s stored on the operative’s device and easily accessible in the time of need.The system also has a lone worker safety feature built in, something Highway Assurance weren’t able to provide prior to using MyMobileWorkers, which allows management to set an interval for how often the worker needs to check in and automatically sends a notification when a job has taken longer than expected. There is also a panic button when workers are in need.

This gives operatives peace of mind that should anything happen, management are alerted straight away, knowing exactly where they are.

Cost effective

Highway Assurance looked at developing their own mobile app and desktop system but after sitting down with IT developers they quickly realised that this was going to be an expensive and lengthy process with a lead time of around 8-10 months and cost of £60,000 to £80,000.

MyMobileWorkers had them up and running in 4 weeks after implementation, creating a bespoke system for their business at a much lower cost. This allowed Highway Assurance to see the benefits much sooner.

Highway Assurance

With a £3000 saving on paper alone, Highway Assurance can now focus on the quality of their service since implementing a digital platform.