Growing Paper Mountains in the
Scottish Highlands
BAM Nuttall’s Site Managers on a project just North of the Cairngorms describe their experiences following the implementation of the Paperless Construction app.
When the stream at Mulben, a small hamlet outside Keith in Northeast Scotland, was built, over a hundred years ago and not more than fourteen meters from a railway track, the only equipment they probably used were a theodolite to plan its route and the navvies shovels. The stream’s brick-built walls were used to direct water into the millrace of a mid-nineteenth century mill on the site. It had naturally deteriorated somewhat since then, eroding the wall’s foundations on the railway side and the first couple of courses of stonework were coming away, and with no real foundations remaining, a complete replacement of the wall and foundations was required. The opposite side of the wall was also in a bad state of repair and a big root system had taken the wall down on the mill side, and a brand-new wall had to be built.
Well, we’ve made some advances since then, and BAM Nuttall, asked to do the work for their client Network Rail will have brought in the latest surveying equipment and heavy diggers to dam the stream, dig out new foundations and rebuild the walls and then release the water into the stream again.
The biggest advance, though, is the mountain of paperwork that accompanies any civil engineering project which includes sign-in sheets, work package plans, task and safety briefings, timesheets, KPI records, and which, on large jobs, could run into container loads.
All of the paperwork had to be printed out, filled in, signed and rescanned into the system. Monthly KPI reports were compiled manually, relying on memory and diaries and random bits of paper with the inevitable losses and inaccuracies. Folders had to be searched for missing information and details ‘lost’ or filled in with ‘best guesses’. In addition to all of this, work couldn’t begin until task briefings had been printed out, assimilated and signed off.
Advance? Let’s put this into perspective. The seemingly onerous mountains of paperwork did not grow because the company directors, admin staff and external bodies like H&S and others wanted to hobble the workforce with unnecessary form-filling and other ‘bumf’, but to create a more efficient and safer working environment for their employees, and to ensure they were fully briefed before they started a job and were trained to do it.
Like all such efforts, it ran into the idiosyncrasies of real life exacerbated by having to work outdoors in a cold and wet corner of the country. Scraps of paper were shoved into wet pockets, short cuts were taken and time and effort spent trying to fill in the gaps in the paperwork – the return rate of signed briefings, for instance, usually fell as low as 50%.
98%
Paperless
11,000
working hours
100%
Briefing return rate
Discover the capabilities of Paperless Construction, the top compliance management software.
Going Paperless
It was obvious that the only way the problem could be resolved was to eliminate the paperwork and go paperless. Time was spent, therefore, investigating a number of solutions that promised to deliver a solution that resolved all of their problems in a simple, easy to use and efficient manner.
Om Harris, BAM Nuttall's Project Manager, summed up the team's experiences, and explained why they decided to go paperless with Paperless Construction. "We had been looking for a solution over the past 2 to 3 years, and nothing worked as fluently and efficiently as Paperless Construction, a cloud-based solution which addresses all the problems BAM Nuttall's project teams experienced, while supporting their continued adoption and use of digital tools and approaches."
"Historically, we had to print all the documents, everyone had to sign onto briefings, and then we scanned the completed records (ending up with two copies of the same record). This required significant effort and time from people in the team."
Well, almost paperless – some re-inforcing drawings were printed in A3 format for ease of reference by trades such as steel fixers, but the entire Mulben retaining walls job was completed with only one and a half folders of paperwork being generated in total. All other drawings that were required were available digitally via the Paperless Construction app.
Instead of waiting for the days tasks to be printed out and issued, automated workflows were created which could be completed and signed electronically, and synced inside the Paperless Construction app, creating a fully automated audit trail and totally eliminating the need for manual document control.
Om Harris, BAM Nuttall's Project Manager, summed up the team's experiences, and explained why they decided to go paperless with Paperless Construction. "We had been looking for a solution over the past 2 to 3 years, and nothing worked as fluently and efficiently as Paperless Construction, a cloud-based solution which addresses all the problems BAM Nuttall's project teams experienced, while supporting their continued adoption and use of digital tools and approaches."
"Historically, we had to print all the documents, everyone had to sign onto briefings, and then we scanned the completed records (ending up with two copies of the same record). This required significant effort and time from people in the team."
Well, almost paperless – some re-inforcing drawings were printed in A3 format for ease of reference by trades such as steel fixers, but the entire Mulben retaining walls job was completed with only one and a half folders of paperwork being generated in total. All other drawings that were required were available digitally via the Paperless Construction app.
Instead of waiting for the days tasks to be printed out and issued, automated workflows were created which could be completed and signed electronically, and synced inside the Paperless Construction app, creating a fully automated audit trail and totally eliminating the need for manual document control.
The briefing documents were provided for supervisors and managers on tablets, together with permits and work package plans, all of which were stored in the cloud and available instantly either online or offline.
With traceability and an auditable paper trail in place, the problems of losing or mislaying paper documents were, likewise, a historical issue. Gerry Duncan, BAM Nuttall's Site Agent, said "Receiving returned briefing records from site has always been a problem, but with Paperless we can guarantee a 100% return rate - so all our compliance records are in place." Digital timesheets were also totally accurate, clear and unambiguous. The start and duration of tasks were updated for each, with no opportunity for fudging figures or ‘guesstimates’.
KPI reporting, which was previously another hit or miss affair, collated figures in real time from the site – another simple and accurate process which enabled instant and reliable management reports to be created seamlessly from the data. Gerry Duncan, Agent, commented, "Extracting data for KPI reporting took minutes, not hours, leaving you free to do things you need and want to be concentrating on."
With workers personal information immediately available, subject to GDPR criteria, Compliance information was also immediately on hand at just the touch of a button. As William Robertson, BAM Nuttall's Lead Senior Safety Advisor, pointed out, "I had the ability to walk up to anyone on-site, scan their QR code and immediately see what tasks they had been briefed on. It links their details from induction to their schedules, and everything's accessible instantaneously."
With traceability and an auditable paper trail in place, the problems of losing or mislaying paper documents were, likewise, a historical issue. Gerry Duncan, BAM Nuttall's Site Agent, said "Receiving returned briefing records from site has always been a problem, but with Paperless we can guarantee a 100% return rate - so all our compliance records are in place." Digital timesheets were also totally accurate, clear and unambiguous. The start and duration of tasks were updated for each, with no opportunity for fudging figures or ‘guesstimates’.
KPI reporting, which was previously another hit or miss affair, collated figures in real time from the site – another simple and accurate process which enabled instant and reliable management reports to be created seamlessly from the data. Gerry Duncan, Agent, commented, "Extracting data for KPI reporting took minutes, not hours, leaving you free to do things you need and want to be concentrating on."
With workers personal information immediately available, subject to GDPR criteria, Compliance information was also immediately on hand at just the touch of a button. As William Robertson, BAM Nuttall's Lead Senior Safety Advisor, pointed out, "I had the ability to walk up to anyone on-site, scan their QR code and immediately see what tasks they had been briefed on. It links their details from induction to their schedules, and everything's accessible instantaneously."
Putting a Toe in the Water
It’s always a challenge getting workers who have been using traditional working processes for many years to adapt to new workflows and technologies. The ease and simplicity of the Paperless Construction app has not only proved popular with the wider workforce, but has even been said to encourage people who were previously technology resistant to ‘put a toe in the water’ of the new digital age.
As Phil Pree, BAM Nuttall’s General Foreman said,
"The more experienced supervisors, who have been more wedded to old ways of working, found they actually liked it. Subsequently buy-in from the project team was easy; that made our jobs as managers less challenging."
‘It just made our lives easier’
The Paperless Construction app delivered BAM Nuttall the easy to use, comprehensive digital solution needed to support the project team working on the Mulben retaining walls project. The app was readily adopted by the team who appreciated the benefits it offered, and as William Robertson said, "It just made their lives easier.” He added. "Paperless Construction is a great way to get people onto our digital journey and to move away from outdated and paper-based systems - we had bricklayers using the app, and that wouldn't happen with any other solution."
The amount of physical paperwork required on site was drastically reduced (almost to zero) and the odious task of securely storing masses of paper was eliminated. According to Gerry Duncan, "There were time and efficiency savings everywhere, from a few minutes per sign-in for each member of the team, 5-10minutes per briefing, eliminating time spent on doc control and filing; and a few hours was saved every month for KPI's and reporting". - Gerry Duncan.
The Paperless Construction app fully supports BAM Nuttall's digital aspirations and will help maintain their leading position in digital construction.
But perhaps the final word should be left to William Robertson, who summed up BAM Nuttall's Mulben project team's experience with the Paperless Construction app nicely:
"Reflecting on using Paperless, I realised that if you give the people the right tools, digital transformation is painless."
William Robertson - Lead Senior Safety Advisor