Industry: Water Management
Locations: Galway
Employees: 23+
Introduction:
Aquachem Water Management is a market leader in providing legionella risk assessments, testing, treatment and maintenance of water systems for a range of industries. Their team operate remotely, capturing information and feeding it back to the central management system through the Flex Manager Solution.
The implementation of Flex provided employees 24/7 access, anywhere, all in one secure database as well as paperless purchase orders, assessments and allocation of tasks. Reduced risk, greater transparency, accountability and accessibility aided Aquachem’s water testing processes efficiency and thus, the effective management of their core business processes promoting a compliant and controlled culture ensuring continued success in their industry.
Improvement 1: Audits
Excel and paper-based systems meant that the checks then had to be recorded a second time and the data input manually, if any update was missing, the reports were incomplete. If anyone else, wanted to verify the information, they relied on the first hand account of the employee who compiled the report and over time this posed challenges to accuracy and validity. The information wasn’t available in real-time or digitally captured to maintain records instantly.
Co-workers: They were responsible for keeping the records updated extensively. No person could be made responsible for each action.
Management: Difficult to trace information in real-time. Reduced accountability for actions of employees.
Solution:
The use of Flex Manager allows everyone to have data transparency, in real-time at any times as information is organised and everything is stored in one system. Corrective actions are assigned to the respective parties and they are notified instantaneously. Areas of improvements can be identified quickly. Audits can be carried out without internet connection in remote locations. Key players received reports and notifications of what is happening, reports and records of every single action. Corrective actions are set up and can be categorized so if an audit has failures, they can be segmented and identified as to which are the areas of improvements.
Improvement 2: Subcontractors Management
Subcontractors management was generally organised in folders, depending on the department. It was cumbersome to find all the contact details of the person responsible for an operation, not to mention retrieving all of their safety documentation and details of their employees. To keep all this documentation updated Aquachem had a designated person or multiple people monitoring this process.
Internal person to manage Subcontractors: Intensive process, compiling all documentation to organize contractors’ folders.
Supervisors: No oversight of task for subcontractors without spending time reviewing all documentation and asking different parties involved.
Management: No visibility to identify gaps or to see subcontractors’ performance over time.
Solution:
The centralised management of information with Flex, gave AquaChem an user-friendly process to manage subcontractors’ operations. It allows them to track the people involved, training records, safety documentation, when they need to be updated, and assigned to respective parties with tasks. Each company has a profile, where they can find all related documentation. If someone is missing information, AquaChem can hit the button and send reminders to their contractors. Performance can be evaluated through observations by the AquaChem team and this improves each contractor relationship.
Exporting information is very easy in case someone required tangible records. Dashboards and reports are customizable and can be sent to the managers and supervisors in a scheduling the frequency of their preference.
Improvement 3: Task Manager
Reduced traceability of what it was happening in the company. Every department had their own KPI’s but they didn’t have a way to oversight their operation, no clear deadlines or person responsible for each task. The information was there but not organised in such a way that is easy to check, monitor or track.
Co-Workers: Inability to prove that tasks were finished on time, as they didn’t have the records.
Supervisors: Required the team to feed relevant information for actionning.
Management: No oversight across multiple locations, what is happening or who are the people responsible for those tasks.
Solution:
Audits failures created corrective actions, those can be classified for department, deadline and person responsible. People involved is notified once the task has been assigned, updated or completed. Supporting material can be added to each task, such as pictures, PDF’s or videos. For example: supervisors can see which areas or departments has the most overdue tasks just a click of distance.
As the data feeds upwards, trends over time appear and the ability to see the most common corrective actions, categories overdue and number of tasks per month, week or year.
All the information is input and carried out easily on the mobile devices and automatically populates that profile thereby providing a full track record of information without the any paper trail.
Improvement 4: Employee Profile
There were paper-based records of all employees’s details, making the storage, maintenance and retrieval of records more difficult, when required. Employee’s training records could have expired with notification. The management of employee’s time-off was visible for direct supervisors alone.
Employees’ records: Upload manual documents to folders to ensure all relevant documentation is present i.e. insurance, contracts, training records.
Supervisors: Sometimes it was easier to ask someone else than to try check for one piece of information.
Managers: Non transparent performance indicators per department or oversight of their execution.
Solution:
Flex Manager is a single centralised point to push and pull information, AquaChem built records for each employee profile. Every time anything needs to be double-check, they search for the name of the person. A summary is display with all of their data details, location history, task assignment, training records, supervisors’ details and time-off. Reports are sent to the managers to see all the outstanding actions, mandatory training about to expire, performance per department and so on.
Improvement 3: Asset Register
Using excel, paper-based or QR/Bar code systems that were administration heavy, led to potential error.
Different areas of the company gathered documentation following distinct parameters, reducing traceability and the reporting of KPI’s. Equipment for legionella risk assessments, vehicles, electronic equipment, water sampling and cleaning and disinfection, needed an inspection tool that could be used in an easier way and that was a less time-consuming activity.
In additional to this, if a piece of equipment was assigned to an employee, the rest of the team did not have visibility of the assignment/ownership and when this item will be returned.
Co-Workers: Responsible for the manual upkeep update of equipment inspections.
Supervisors: Ensure the inspections are carried out on time and supply information to management.
Management: Manage all their resources and equipment assignment manually, making visibility difficult.Manage resources and equipment assignment, they needed visibility.
Solution:
Flex Manager has allowed the team to get the most from the employees on the ground. If someone is assigned with a tablet, supervisors get visibility of the period of time it is assigned and is responsible for the item currently. They are using NFC Technology to track their equipment, as they can log all updates just by scanning the tag, at the same time if someone needs the information, they just scan the tag. AquaChem team have visibility of the history of that asset, upcoming inspections and maintenance and the person responsible. Everything is interlinked and managers can receive a scheduled report on a weekly basis with the breakdown of the information relevant to them.