Knowing what you know now, would you do it again?
“Yes”
What would you say to others thinking of working with Transfirm?
“It’s an improvement journey that you’ll understand more fully as you progress. Stick with it and you will get the outcome you seek and benefit from Transfirm’s experience.”
CASE STUDY
Brady Marine and Civil specialises in the construction of wharfs, jetties, offshore pipelines, bridges and complex over-water marine structures. Brady Marine and Civils’ specialty is to deliver challenging projects that have technical complexity. The business has seen rapid growth and recently joined Soletanche Bachy, part of the Vinci group of companies. Brady Marine and Civil needed to effectively manage growth which required a well-developed digital management system.
What was happening when you engaged Transfirm?
Our management system was paper-based and quite cumbersome. People were never certain which was the latest version of a document to use, putting the business at risk due to the lack of control and visibility. It was creating a negative cultural shift in the business. This was accentuated during the Covid pandemic when we couldn’t visit sites. Without visibility of key data and processes, it becomes very difficult to manage a system remotely.
What was the first thing you did with Transfirm?
Transfirm worked with us to undertake a ‘discovery’ of our operations – the first thing was to understand the values of the firm and identify the major process areas.
We needed clarity on our ‘prepare for construction process’ so we collectively mapped this out to understand how all key staff worked together. It set a cornerstone for us that showed good processes are attained through collaboration.
How did you feel at the time?
Process mapping was very exciting – getting the group together to collaborate enabled everyone to see what others did in the process. It showed the potential of what we were doing and gave people first-hand experience.
We had faith in the direction and when people wanted to keep doing more, we, as business owners at that time, allowed and supported it.
What else did you do with Transfirm?
We then setup a digital management system that we could use to operationalise our improved processes.
We identified that a large part of setting up a construction project was how we manage plant and equipment and saw great value in simplifying and digitising these processes. This provided us visibility, consistency, and significantly improved day-to-day decision making. It was now much easier for the Plant Team to respond to plant issues and maintain records.
We then created a way to standardise and deploy a new construction project into the management system. This enabled us to give the project teams the drawings and information needed without the sites making changes unknowingly to the engineering teams.
We then went on and developed other key business processes that supported our construction projects. This included simplifying and digitising training and competency verification, auditing, managing issues, work permits, temporary works, site inspections, NCR and issue management, audit schedules, risk management as well as security and permissions management across the business.
Our old WHS safety system had over 300 forms and procedures. With so much paper and text, it’s understandable why people were confused – it’s a common occurrence, even in software systems. Now we have a handful of customised apps and libraries and about 30 templates that replace it all, and we still maintain ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO45001 and Office of Federal Safety Commissioner (FSC) certifications.
As part of the journey, we were also able to consolidate a number of different systems to just one, as well as setup robust permissions management that makes information accessible and secure.
What made the most impact?
Having just one location for everything – the management system – has made the most impact.
We can now access documents, apps and real-time reports from one place online, creating visibility from senior management right through to front line construction teams. Everyone has easy access.
Had we gone down the path of buying or subscribing to different software for different processes we would still have lots of different pieces of software that don’t connect. Instead, we now have one place for everything and great comfort knowing it’s all on our Microsoft tenancy – maximising the use of existing licensing.
In the past we used to spend enormous amounts of time getting ready for audits. Now our audit preparation is minimised because our system is part of daily work. If an audit happens it’s no problem.
Management systems are often created through responses to certification requirements, and this can cause duplication and complexity that people in the business get disillusioned with. We have done the opposite. We documented processes used in the business and then ensured they meet certification requirements. We have created something that the business needs, which also just so happens (by design), to tick all the boxes for our management system certifications.
Final Thoughts?
You can’t grow a business without a good management system – It’s the core of the business. And you can’t get a good management system without going on the journey of process improvement that we have gone on.
Glynnis Williams
Co-Founder
