LT McGuinness looked at many options to consolidate its OH&S systems before choosing HammerTech.

Having undergone growth, expansion into new regions and operating on nearly 50 sites throughout Wellington and Auckland, LT McGuinness needed a platform that aggregated its OH&S systems.

Metrics at a Glance

The Challenge

LT McGuinness has experienced significant growth over the past 4 years with expansion into Auckland, Tauranga and Palmerston – growth that has presented a challenge to efficiently managing its health and safety systems.

Its existing system was a hybrid one developed over many years but with growth came the need for simplification. The company operates up to 50 sites at any one time and each site’s OH&S rules and regulations were contained primarily in 22 lever arch files. When a change needed to be made it meant a lot of paper chasing. It was a very time-consuming and onerous process. As safety is central to LT McGuinness’ way of operating, a new solution was needed.

“It is not easy to find the best solution as there are so many options,” says LT McGuinness’ HSE Manager Daniel O’Connor. “The spectrum ranges from fully customised packages where an enormous amount of effort is required to fit into our systems. There are also what I call straight-jacket systems where you get what you get and your systems have to adapt. HammerTech fell in the middle. There was some adaptation we needed to make but there were a lot more positives than negatives. HammerTech is also a construction-centric platform which was really important to us.

“One thing we didn’t want to do is continually invest money and time into ongoing maintenance and upgrades to optimise the system, hence HammerTech was the best option.”

The Focus

The focus for LT McGuinness was to roll out a solution that:

• Made it easy for changes to be made digitally to OH&S procedures which were currently contained in 22 lever arch files across nearly 50 sites
• Replaced a range of bespoke tools that weren’t connected to each other
• Assist in LT McGuinness’ bid for ISO 45001 and ISO 14001 certification
• Was adaptable enough to be rolled out to large as well as smaller sites, taking into account the larger sites tended to have a full-time health and safety officer whereas the smaller sites relied more on the site manager

The Solution

It was important for LT McGuinness to have a platform that provided a consistent level of information. 

The HammerTech team worked closely with the LT McGuinness team to understand how their current OH&S platforms would work with the HammerTech platform.

Initially the information uploaded to HammerTech was a replication of LT McGuinness’ paper system. “One of the things we didn’t do at the start – which we should have done – was spend more time simplifying our systems before moving over to HammerTech. We took all our baggage with us,” O’Connor admits.

O’Connor admits that the HammerTech system did take a little getting accustomed to but the initial pain was definitely worth it. To help the rollout, LT McGuinness created HammerTech champions who were given additional training which they then used to assist others. These champions not only ensured LT McGuinness staff were up to speed but also assisted the multitude of sub-contractors the company uses.

The Results

With all its data now in the one place, LT McGuinness is using it to improve their systems and procedures. “We understand so much more around our business and how it is working.”

“Everything is at our fingertips. We are creating dashboards to present to the directors, to site management teams and external parties. Some clients need monthly OH&S reports which were quite onerous but are now just the push of a button. It has made that process massively efficient.”

LT McGuinness is not only saving time but also costs. Board reports on OH&S performance usually took a couple of weeks to compile. Now there is a live dashboard which can be seen anytime.

One of the immediate benefits is there is now a distinction between injuries and incidents. In the past when an incident was reported it was seen as an injury but now LT McGuinness is able to track them as distinct occurrences.

“There are several reasons for going with HammerTech as our platform. The big thing for us was it is a construction-centric platform and it didn’t need to be completely customised. It meant we were able to roll it out quickly. We knew that if we went for a customised system it would have involved a lot more testing which we didn’t want to get into. It is expensive and takes time and potentially a worse product.”

 "One of the things we are looking forward to is now there is an increased presence (of HammerTech) in New Zealand we look forward to further customising some of these tools to adapt to a NZ context."

About LT McGuinness

Established: 1950

Began using HammerTech: 2020

LT McGuinness is a third-generation construction company dating back to 1950. It is a leader in construction, redevelopment and refurbishment of many landmark buildings in Wellington and Auckland, and is expanding into regional construction markets.

At any one time it operates in nearly 50 sites with projects ranging from $20,000 to over $100m. It is one of New Zealand’s largest privately owned construction companies with a reputation based on quality, on-time and safe performance.

Location: New Zealand

Specialty: Commercial buildings, Interiors, Heritage, Multi-unit residential, Facilities + Maintenance