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Mervyn Lambert Plant Ltd

Plant hire and traffic management giants Mervyn Lambert Plant Ltd have banished their paper job sheets, saving £31k instantly. 

 

The background

Mervyn Lambert Plant (MLP) have been one of the biggest names in the Highways industry for nearly 50 years and with more than 200 people working for them, MLP are arguably one of the biggest names in their sector.

They provide plant hire and traffic management to both the private and public sector.

The problem

For years, MLP used a predominantly paper process for recording their jobs, teamed with a hire and accounting system in the background.

The problems lay in the quality of the data they gathered from their operatives. The data was either unclear or inaccurate due to the nature of using a paper process and with over 500 jobs per week, something needed to change.

“Paperwork is the bane of our lives because operatives won't fill it in correctly, they won’t get a customer signature. Then the paperwork comes in 5 days after the job and if they’ve left anything on site, you don’t know it’s there until the following week or when you get a section 74 come through from Street Works.” 

Business Development Manager, Mervyn Lambert

The solution

After seeing the MyMobileWorkers solution at an exhibition and how it worked for one of their competitors, MLP decided to get the ball rolling.

MyMobileWorkers wasn’t the only solution they looked into, but chose the system due to its ability to fit into the traffic management sector, something which they found other solutions lacked.

More specifically, they wanted a front end system to track all jobs from start to finish, which also allowed them to complete checklists, risk assessments and take photographs.

In December 2015, they implemented the MyMobileWorkers’ real time mobile workforce management system and by March 2016 had completely removed their paper-based process.

"When tendering for work, it’s important to reduce costs and increase profit margins. However, this is difficult when competitors are all charging similar prices. MyMobileWorkers has allowed us to do this by reducing office staff and provided us with a transparent service where nothing is hidden from customers, including invoicing, job photos and real time information."

Business Development Manager, MLP Traffic Ltd

The benefits

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Enforced compliance with health & safety laws

MLP have created a process which makes the gangs check Risk Assessments and Method Statements prior to the work starting: only at this point can the job continue.

All relevant documentation, including site drawings etc, are attached to the job and therefore easily accessible at any point during the job.

Throughout the duration of the job, operatives can highlight any issues either via a photo, drawing or text and these are automatically sent and flagged to MLP’s support team.

This process allows both onsite reviews by the site operatives, and offsite reviews by MLP’s support team in order to review and discuss anything that they are unsure or unhappy about with visual evidence in front of them rather than interpreting a phone call.

This gives MLP a fail safe review of the operatives performance onsite, and allows both the operatives and road users/general public to receive higher levels of protection against any unexpected issues.

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Improved relationships and communication with clients

A core concept of the MyMobileWorkers software is that MLP can define levels of access to the information on the job.

This not only means that MLP have access to real time information, but anyone MLP want to have access to it can, too.

Prior to MyMobileWorkers, jobs done for a single client would generate a pack of paperwork typically 10 - 20 pages in total.

This totalled around 15,000 pieces of paper in one month, on one contract.

When clients needed information surrounding their jobs, the originals would have to be located, emailed/copied and posted and then reviewed between the teams at the client and MLP. A process as long and laborious as it sounds.

Now clients have full access to their jobs in real time they, more often than not, don’t need to speak to MLP.

When they do need to speak to them about a specific job, both teams have real time access to the same information: avoiding delay and miscommunication.

In the traffic management industry, when tendering for work, it’s important to reduce costs and increase profit margins. However, this is difficult when competitors are all charging similar prices. MyMobileWorkers has allowed MLP to do this by reducing office staff, creating a saving on wages or repurposing staff in different areas of the business.

MyMobileWorkers has provided a transparent service where nothing is hidden from customers, including invoicing, job photos and real time information. The service is completed correctly removing the need for operatives to go back out and re-do jobs, heightening MLP’s level of customer service.

Customer-portal

Enforced MLP’s high standards of work

MLP are renown in the industry for their high quality of work.

Having real time access to health and safety information and photographic evidence of the job as it progresses through its’ lifecycle has revolutionised the both the compliance and the customer satisfaction teams within MLP.

Prior to the solution being in place, compliance was a retrospective issue.

Getting paperwork back from operatives was a slow process and it was frequently days before any quality issues were noticed. Worse, these would typically come in from the general public or clients as a complaint on quality, immediately putting MLP onto the back foot.

Non-compliance is now dealt with in real time. Any issues reported on site are automatically flagged within the MyMobileWorkers web portal allowing the team to review instantly.

In addition to non-compliance issues that get reported, each job has numerous photographs taken prior to, during and after completion of work.

These photos are available to the compliance team as they are taken, meaning that they can review work as it happens. Previously MLP were less than 50% compliant on photographic evidence on site back in 2015, now they’re nigh on 100%.

This, in addition to spot checks on site, has reduced the carbon footprint of the compliance team significantly.

In addition, when an issue is raised by the general public or contractor, the compliance team can have the information in front of them immediately rather than the old paper based process.

This gives confidence to the general public and contracts alike and allows issues to be resolved significantly quicker.

UK-based-support

Protection against contra-charges and Section 74 charges

When Section 74 was introduced in 2001, charges were introduced for unreasonably prolonged works with initial charges between £100 and £2500 per working day of overrun.

Further significant changes to Section 74 charges were made in 2012 leading to maximum charges of up to £10,000 per day.

As a subcontractor, MLP are liable to contracharging from their clients and prior to MyMobileWorkers, were not able to confidently dispute these charges with the paper-based process that they used.

MyMobileWorkers date, time and geolocates every activity on a job.

Proving against doubt when a job started and finished with photographic evidence of the road prior to, during and after the work.

This information cannot be amended and the audit log is available to MLP and their clients alike.

In the 12 months since full roll out, MLP have been requested to pay circa £200k of contra-charges.

Through the evidence based approach that MyMobileWorkers provides, they have reduced this figure to zero.

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