Ground Construction Limited (GCL)

Case Study

Ground Construction Limited (GCL)

Construction

Reduced delays and increased operational visibility are a double win from automating paper-based workflows

“We see Ethos as an innovation partner so asked our account manager to help. From a blank piece of paper, we developed a bespoke intelligent site management system to automate workflows”

The Challenge

Ground Construction Limited (GCL) is one of the UK’s largest groundworks and concrete frames businesses and operates on multiple sites at any one time.

Groundworks and concrete deliveries are essential to the company’s operations but workflows to manage these functions are often paper-based and challenging in the environment of a temporary office on a construction site.

At the start of each project, GCL removes ‘muck’. For each load, GCL creates a muck ticket, a paper receipt recording the volume and grade. At GCL’s head office, information from each ticket was transferred onto a spreadsheet to enable payment.

With GCL’s 80 sites each generating between 1,000 and 8,500 loads in a few months, the paper-based system was time-consuming to process and liable to error. A lost or damaged ticket can cause inaccurate reporting and loss of time.

The Solution

Managed print to custom automation

GCL began working with Ethos in 2016 to upgrade the company’s on-site printer fleet and curb unmanaged printing and toner costs.

An Ethos solution to print, laminate and cut signs in-house followed. “We’ve produced thousands of signs over the past three years,” says Ryan Gray, Group IT and Infrastructure Manager at GCL. “The solution was a good investment.”

Ryan reviewed the independent company’s processes and saw the need to streamline the muck ticket workflow to give the head office administrative team immediate sight of the tickets to identify errors.
“We looked at different off-the-shelf solutions, but none fitted how we wanted it to work,” says Ryan. “We see Ethos as an innovation partner so asked our account manager to help. We started with a blank piece of paper and a year later, we launched a custom intelligent site management (ISM) system.”

Continuous digital transformation

The ISM digitises the muck ticket workflow with the site foreman using an iPad to record the information.
Ryan says: “The system creates a real-world experience between the on-site team and HQ. Any queries on tickets can be pinpointed and dealt with quicker, preventing any knock-on effects to our operations.”

With Ethos’ support, GCL is evolving the custom ISM to manage other workflows including concrete, rebar and aggregates deliveries, vital to GCL’s business.

The company faced the challenge of digital and manual inputs to this process.

Concrete suppliers either send digital tickets for expected deliveries or the driver leaves a paper ticket that is captured on an iPad. With sites receiving up to 30-40 concrete loads a day, the process generated a lot of administration for on-site and head office staff.

Data extraction solution

Ryan worked with Ethos to design and deliver a custom solution to converge the manual and digital inputs.
The team created an Ethos Hub Bespoke workflow to automatically collect invoices from a dedicated inbox and pull them into the secure Ethos Hub platform.

The system extracts all relevant information from every type of concrete delivery invoice and sends it to GCL’s systems.

The proof of concept for the concrete workflow took only 14 days as it was “bolted on” to the existing ISM, Ryan’s preferred way of making incremental software changes.

“No one likes too much change so it’s about small steps,” Ryan says. “We get staff comfortable using the workflows then every few months we bring out updates or make slight changes.

“Colleagues now suggest workflows to automate. I write up a spec, give it to Ethos and within 30 days we have a new process. We have a long-term relationship that’s grown from strength to strength.”

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