ADCO + HammerTech. A case study as to how ADCO and HammerTech developed their relationship and why ADCO has become a leader in their space.
Why are quality and safety important to ADCO?
Quality and safety are critical to the success of our business – they are central to our culture at ADCO and to our reputation as a Builder of Choice.
We have a long history of repeat business Clients which is anchored in the importance we place in delivering our projects safely and to a high standard. We also have a history of very strong employee retention, with many employees reaching 15, 20 and 30 years of service. Added to this, we are supported by a fantastic pool of repeat business subcontractors and suppliers. All of these factors, which are critical to our success, would not be possible without placing a strong focus on quality and safety through our relationships in day to day operations.
What was the problem/challenge that prompted you to look for a system like Hammertech?
As a business, we were undertaking a review of how we could work more effectively and efficiently, modernising the business and making performance easier for our employees and for the business as a whole.
We considered feedback of our employees in relation to our existing bespoke safety management software and decided it was the right time to test alternative market solutions. We were looking for a system that would deliver improved efficiencies for the business not just now but well into the future, an agile system with growth potential and one which allowed our employees to be more mobile.
What pain points were you experiencing with your past solution that led you to want something new?
We felt that our employees, particularly Safety Advisors and Site Managers were forced to spend too much time in the site office and not enough time out on-site, where safety is most critical.
We also found that our existing bespoke system had limited growth potential and ongoing investment to develop it at the pace we needed would be expensive.It was important to provide our employees with something that was “a better fit for ADCO” and which would make their job easier and more satisfying.
We considered feedback of our employees in relation to our existing bespoke safety management software and decided it was the right time to test alternative market solutions.
How has Hammertech impacted your day to day operations?
HammerTech has provided us with greater flexibility operationally and greater depth in recording and reporting through to Senior Management.
It also gives us greater visibility across our projects nationally, which stems from our decision to pursue an Enterprise Agreement rather than using the system on selected projects only. The open reporting API is particularly useful in drawing down pertinent live data and identifying trends or hot spots which the business needs to address. This is especially important for a national business where we need to stay in touch with projects which are geographically diverse.
On-site, the system provides our teams with greater mobility and the ability to notify, follow-up and close-out key issues with subcontractors. It has also delivered improved efficiency for our site inductions, and we are working to enhance that further for the business.
How easy/hard has it been to roll out digital solutions across the job site? What are the barriers and how have ADCO overcome these?
We have found the roll out of HammerTech to be a great success on our projects nationally. It has probably run smoother than we expected.
We attribute this to the strong working relationship we developed early-on with key people at HammerTech and the fact that we were genuinely “working together” to ensure the roll-out was a success.
We also made sure that key senior personnel here at ADCO were fully committed to the roll-out and that our team would recognise that. The upfront planning and implementation strategy developed between ADCO and HammerTech was also a key part of the success.
I can’t say that we have encountered real “barriers”. When issues arise or support is needed, the response from HammerTech has always been very good. If there is an improvement which we look for, there is always very pro-active and open-minded dialogue first on whether it can be achieved and then how best to achieve it.