To support a period of rapid growth, Powercomm Group is expanding its use of RedSky’s award-winning construction ERP solution. Two additional software modules are set to achieve a raft of efficiencies and significant cost savings.
During the last two years, Powercomm’s focus on renewable power generation projects and battery energy storage solutions (BESS) has proved a highly successful business strategy.
The Group’s large team of field engineers carry out reactive and planned maintenance work on high- and medium-voltage power facilities throughout Ireland and the UK. Chief Financial Officer Kieran Whelan said: “We’re growing across all divisions and have been successful in getting onto several frameworks with large energy providers. Many are full turnkey solutions, from design, procurement and construction through to grid connection, energisation and ongoing asset maintenance.
“Given our high growth rate, we recognised the need to develop our real-time systems, to make sure our IT infrastructure keeps pace with our evolving operations, enhancing our ability to create efficiencies, see our data quickly and make decisions accordingly.”
Service Management module
With the number of daily service requests rising sharply, at times the office-based team finds itself swamped with paperwork and struggling to allocate tasks efficiently.
“RedSky’s Service Management module will improve things dramatically for our office-based staff and project managers, as well as the engineers out in the field,” said Kieran. “The focus is on trying to digitalise as much as possible. Scheduling will be much easier because we’ll have full visibility of all our engineers, right across Ireland and the UK.”
To schedule a task, the office team will simply ‘drag and drop’ it into the engineer’s calendar. The engineer will receive an automated notification of the appointment – the same applies to any subsequent date or time changes. The notification will include the job number, details of any equipment that the engineer will need and a full set of digitised documents, including a job sheet and risk assessments and method statements [RAMS].
“On site, the engineer will use a tablet to complete the digital forms, add photos of the equipment that’s been serviced and then upload it all to RedSky,” said Kieran. “The system will automatically create a standardised digital report that combines all the job information.
“We spoke to a fellow RedSky user who told us the automated report is comprehensive and looks very professional. We’ll be able to email reports out far sooner than we do currently, which will be great from a customer service perspective. He told us that the Service Management module saves around a day a month for each of his engineers, so we’re expecting a rapid return on our investment.”
Mobile Timesheets module
Kieran has also purchased RedSky’s mobile timesheet solution. He said: “At the moment we’re working with paper-based timesheets. Sometimes it can take two or three weeks to get all the paperwork sorted so that we can raise an invoice.
“Digitising the process will be so much more efficient. The engineers won’t have any paperwork to fill in and return to the office. They use mobiles every day, so they should find it quick and easy to complete the new mobile timesheets. It will make them more productive – and the office team won’t waste time chasing up missing or lost timesheets.
“We’ll be able to charge our engineers’ hours to their jobs by the end of each working day and we’ll be able to raise invoices more quickly as a result, which will improve our cash flow.”
Proactive and responsive
Kieran is impressed with the system and the service he has received. “We find the RedSky team very proactive and productive,” he said.
“They are a professional outfit to work with. They seem to be investing in the system and the software, which is good for us because it means they are looking for ways to create efficiencies in our business, to support our growth. That’s what a true partnership should be.”
About Powercomm Group
Established in 2008, Powercomm Group is headquartered in County Kildare, Ireland. It specialises in HV and MV electrical engineering work up to 400kV. The company offers bespoke services as well as turnkey solutions that span the electrical asset lifecycle: substation design and build; procurement, installation and commissioning; and maintenance support.
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.
