Back in 2020, we announced that we had secured an exciting grant from Innovate UK to help improve productivity within the construction industry. The grant was worth just under £49,000 and supported our work to develop paperless QA processes at the Laing O’Rourke Explore Manufacturing Plant.
We’re thrilled to have been able to highlight the multiple methods of enhanced data capture available to increase the operative practices of the construction industry. The project was a great success, and we’re proud to have played a part in encouraging digital transformation across the future of the construction and supporting industries.
What challenges were presented?
Prior to starting the project, the plant used a paper-based system to record data that had been acquired from tests and checks on its manufacturing production line. The resulting process wasn’t as successful as it could have been though and held productivity back on the production line, with the company routinely experiencing issues surrounding the consistency, accuracy and logistics of data capture.
Therefore, our focus throughout the duration of the project was to minimise these issues and create a boost to productivity in a tangible way – including exploring the extent to which we could update the company’s current systems.
How did achieve this?
We looked at the possibility of replacing the existing QA process with a tablet-based mobile application. By doing this, data could be integrated with Laing O’Rourke’s current ERP system, allowing work to be efficiently prepopulated on tablet devices with data being fed back into the system.
On top of this, we implemented a drag and drop designer to highlight the potentially unknown benefits this method can unlock. For example, data can be validated at the source and mandatory fields can be enforced, information such as product lists can be easily accessed, and mobile device features can be used to capture additional data, such as photos with the camera feature and locations using GPS.
What is the result?
By using our paperless software, pre-planned work can be assigned to specific members of staff – creating pre-populated forms that appear within an employee’s personal interface. Completed forms like these can then be forwarded on to senior staff for review and sign off, enabling overall greater workflow management.
The work we carried out during the project highlights just how much digital transformation can be used to cut out the intermediate jobs that serve no true purpose to productivity. The Explore Manufacturing Plant now benefits from improved business intelligence, as well as fast, compliant data capture to save time, money, and boost day-to-day operations for the benefit of various teams.
Take a look around our website if you’d like to find out more about the various industries we serve and discover how our award-winning mobile data capture technologies can benefit your business.