Crema Constructions

Surviving as a construction company, and growing,

for close to half a century does not happen by accident. In fact, accidents are exactly what must be avoided if a company wants to build its reputation and trust in a competitive market. No-one knows this better than Sean Conroy, ADCO’s

National Manager, Compliance and Risk, who has more than 25 years’ experience in the industry alongside formal training in quantity surveying and law. It is Sean’s job to ensure ADCO’s safety and quality systems are maintained at industry best practice levels, and that site risks are managed prudently.

“Quality and safety are critical to the success of our business,” says Sean. “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, anchored in the importance we place in delivering our projects safely and to a high standard.

And it’s not just clients who look for a strong safety record. For many employees, this is an issue of personal wellbeing and of huge importance. “We have a history of very strong employee retention, with many employees reaching 15, 20 and 30 years of service,” Sean notes. “Added to this, we are supported by a fantastic pool of repeat business subcontractors and suppliers.”

Such a strong track record would not be possible, Sean insists, without placing a strong focus on quality and safety in day to day operations.

Sean says ADCO was looking for ways to modernise and make work processes easier for employees, while also allowing the business to operate more effectively and efficiently. Such decisions involve input from across the company to identify priority areas.

“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.”

There were a few particular areas that were identified as needing attention. “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,” says Sean.

“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.”

Essentially, ADCO wanted to provide its employees with something that was “a better fit for ADCO” and which would make their job easier and more satisfying. And it had to be a system that would last the test of time. Sean says: “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.”

Asked how HammerTech has impacted daily operations, Sean points to the greater flexibility operationally, and the 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,” he adds.

“The open reporting API (Application Programming Interface) 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 ADCO 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.”

Sean says the roll out of HammerTech has been smoother than expected, with no real “barriers” encountered during the implementation.

“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.”

Overall, the transition to HammerTech on ADCO’s projects nationally had been a “great success”.

“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,” Sean says, adding that colleague “buy-in” was also crucial. “We 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.”