FSH, the one-stop construction company servicing the north of England, has transformed its business with a 5 in 1 management system from BigChange.
Operating as a cloud service linked to mobile apps used by workers onsite, the solution provides FSH with real time operational information for improving efficiency, productivity and service.
Employing 132 mobile tradesmen and 65 office staff, the Castleford headquartered company has regional offices in Hull, Liverpool and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. FSH specialises in insurance-related work, typically repairing flood or fire damaged properties. A new construction arm handing reactive maintenance work is also driving expansion in sectors such as social housing and education.
With a fleet of 132 BigChange equipped vehicles providing live data for managing operations, tradesmen are being equipped with rugged Samsung tablets running JobWatch. Mobile apps completely replace paperwork with live data reporting and the devices capture useful time and location stamped photographs, as well as customer signatures.
Matthew Cappleman, Managing Director of FSH, comments:“We work mainly for the UK’s biggest insurance firms and providing a consistent high quality rebuild and refurbishment service is absolutely vital,”“The monitoring and reporting of our work on site is however just as important and that’s where BigChange comes in. It gives real-time visibility of every job and provides an audit trail of all work. That means we can not only manage work better and improve customer service, but we can also provide insurers with immediate job updates and evidence of work done.”Operationally JobWatch is used from job start to completion with tradesmen receiving jobs scheduled by BigChange. The devices are used for daily vehicle checks and on departure the tablets are clipped in dashboard cradles to provide navigation to the job location. On arrival, JobWatch ensures the tradesman completes a risk assessment and captures photographs showing the current state of the work site – with photographs repeated at the end of the day.
Cappleman added:“BigChange really does expedite everything as our tradesman can go straight to the job and put in a full, productive 8 hour day. The system also ensures good work discipline and good practice as the tradesmen are in effect self-managing their work, backed up with their reports and photographs. With JobWatch there is no more sitting around and managers no longer need to go onsite to check the work. Everyone wins.”With the entire fleet tracked, FSH has an instant view of all vehicle locations. This allows tradesmen working on reactive maintenance to be dynamically re-scheduled to urgent jobs, gives customer services valuable insight into any delays arriving onsite and also helps in the quick retrieval of stolen vans. However according to FSH, it’s the logged data that is of particular value.
Matthew Cappleman continued:“BigChange logs vehicle movements so we’ve always got evidence of arrival and departure times should queries arise. The data helps us check timesheets, monitor unauthorised mileage and spot poor driving. With weekly driver performance reports we have seen an all-around improvement in driving and not only is that good for staff safety on the road but ultimately it means less vehicle wear and tear and better fuel consumption.”Stuart Welburn, Finance Director at FSH agrees that BigChange has had a positive impact, added:“Certainly BigChange has been good for business and we estimate efficiency gains of 2 or 3 percent. However, we anticipate it will improve our profitability not only through better utilisation of our resources, but by generally improving our services to continually improve our reputation and win more business.”
