New RedSky customer SPI Piling will be using our Mobile Forms solution to replace the current paper-based system. It’s going to save a lot of time, money and effort, right across the organisation.
Bolton-based SPI Piling Limited is the latest customer to sign up for RedSky’s construction-specific Mobile Forms solution.
“Paper forms are extremely difficult to keep track of,” said Managing Director Alan Smith. “We have a mobile and transient workforce, and people are always losing them. The forms that do actually find their way to us are quite often illegible, dirty and scrumpled.
“The triplicate books are a real problem – around 50% are illegible, usually because people don’t press hard enough for the ink to come through to the bottom copy. And we use that to generate quality paperwork, invoices and payments. We waste a lot of time chasing up information that we can’t decipher on the current forms. It’s a nonsense.”
Visibility of data
Alan is frustrated at having no visibility of the forms data: “It’s impossible for us to monitor what’s going on in a live format and to deal with things in the right timeframe. And that’s happening across the board, from commercial aspects to health and safety reporting.
“This practice is generating big risks. Sometimes invoices have gone out and a couple of weeks later we discover that items have been missed from the list. We can’t very well go back to the supplier, cap in hand, with a revised invoice. In the contracting world, that would cause far too many problems. We end up having to take it on the chin.”
Big savings on the horizon
Alan can’t wait to transform SPI’s approach: “Once we have RedSky’s Mobile Forms up and running, we’ll finally be able to work with live data. Legibility issues will be a thing of the past because there will be no hand-written paper documents. The new approach is going to be a massive time-saver for us because everything will be in one place, securely stored and easy to access.”
“We’re also going to save an incredible amount of money on stationery. That might sound surprising, but when you have a workforce of operatives who each fill in, say, six pieces of paper a day in a triplicate book, that’s 18 sheets a day each. It all adds up. We buy hundreds of triplicate books at a time. But not for much longer, thankfully!”
A simpler, centralised solution
SPI is a BSI-accredited organisation. Regular independent audits are a requirement, to retain the kitemark. The audit is a challenging time, according to Alan: “It’s always difficult to prove the audit trail from concept through to completion because there are always bits of paper missing. The RedSky Mobile Forms solution will eradicate that problem by centralising every bit of paper from every site.”
Alan views Mobile Forms as an important first step on SPI’s digital transformation journey: “As I see it, the world has gone digital. It’s time to move on. It’s time to embrace that change. I’m sure the workforce will welcome this new way of working because the whole process will be so much easier. Instead of popping back to their van several times a day for a paper form or a triplicate book, everything will be on their mobile. And they always have that in their back pocket.”
About SPI
SPI Piling Limited is a leading UK steel piling contractor. The company was founded in 1999 and acquired by A E Yates Group in 2006. The management team and staff have a variety of backgrounds, including civil engineering and geotechnical. They are fully conversant in all temporary and permanent steel piling techniques and methodologies.
To find out more about RedSky’s construction-specific software solutions, fill out our Contact Form, email us at hello@redskyit.com or telephone 44 (0)20 3002 8700.
