Case Studies

Overview: The legacy safety platform was designed, built and hosted internally using Microsoft InfoPath and SharePoint. The platform advantages were the complete control of forms, reports and pace of improvements. At the time of deployment, building their own platform provided subcontractor access for free, reducing software licensing costs by over $200k annually.

Legacy Platform Challenges: A few years after deployment, Microsoft announced the end of life for the InfoPath platform and would cease to function in 2026. Since it was developed internally and self-hosted, the platform required additional resources to develop new functionality, support security, maintain data integrity and additional onboard training for new employees or subs. All records, (nearing 1 million) were in a custom format that would need conversion for document retention requirements.

Approach: Partnered with the Safety Department to create a project charter to define business needs, risk and team responsibilities. Established a decision matrix to research the pros and cons of rebuilding vs buying and implemented an Agile approach to keep all teams on track. By establishing an environment of trust, the team understood what was important, clarified how to find a solution, shortened the build vs buy design and created insights for future strategy initiatives. This helped define “the why” for the entire organization.

Benefits: With the team empowered, a cloud-based solution was chosen that not only met the functional requirements but also met the need to ensure subcontractors were free. Additional benefits included:

• Faster onboarding for new employees/subs.
• Easier setup between jobs and project closeout.
• Eliminated IT Help Desk to support subcontractor user accounts.
• Legacy records converted for easier search.
• Deployed New Capabilities
• Improved client relationships
• Safety Initiatives moved forward by 3 years.

The Safety Vice President promotes the new platform and approach utilized to industry peers.

Overview: The Fleet Department manually tracked thousands of rental requests annually using a combination of paper order forms, post it notes, phone calls, emails and a 10-year-old in-house built Microsoft database.

Challenges: Requests were not recorded consistently in the database, required manual data entry from the various request formats, leading to incorrect data entry which caused delays in processing and a single request could take 30 minutes to process to a rental supplier. Reports lacked ability to schedule returns in a timely manner and monthly rental meetings required over a dozen individuals to coordinate efforts in meetings lasting well over an hour.  Departments no longer trusted the central process and began independently tracking their own rentals, creating an inaccurate duplication of effort. The amount of lost time to field/office personnel and overdue returns were estimated at over $1 million annually.

Approach: Conducted a needs analysis with the Fleet Department and over 5 divisions to determine workflow enhancements on requests, return coordination, reporting requirements and develop a solution to empower all teams. Due to the unique needs and workflows of the organization, a custom-built digital workflow solution on the Microsoft 365 platform was determined to be the best solution at a fraction of the cost of other options. Established Agile approach with outsourced development team and all internal stakeholders to stay on track and ensure project momentum. Entire process from needs analysis to production was completed in less than 120 days.

Benefits: The new digital workflow logged requests in a central location automatically creating the rental vendor PO, emails to requestors for approval, centralized activity tracker for each division, superintendent and foremen.

• Reduced rental request processing time from 30 to 5 minutes.
• Cut costs with scheduled alerts for timely equipment returns before renewal dates.
• Decreased monthly meetings by 75%, saving 1,000+ participant hours annually.
• Eliminated duplication of tracking at the division, project levels.

Solution was selected by external development firm as a Nintex Innovation Nominee for successful digital transformation implementation.