PaveWA doubles size in 8 months with Emvisage Automation

PaveWA is an Austra­lian civil cont­rac­tor execu­ting conc­re­te, paving, earthworks and asp­halt pro­jects for local govern­ment and uti­li­ty providers.

They’­re using Emvi­sa­ge Field Ser­vice Softwa­re for stream­li­ning their proces­ses, digi­ti­sing paperwork and auto­ma­ting admin tasks. 

We comple­ted a deep dive with Mic­hael Wyse, Ope­ra­tions Mana­ger at PaveWA, to unders­tand how Emvi­sa­ge has hel­ped them to double their busi­ness size in just 8 months. 

How did they start?

Prior to Emvi­sa­ge Pave were using a mix of jobs­heets, spreads­heets, email and sha­red dri­ves to man­ge their work. Mee­ting the process and compliance needs of their lar­ge clients was all con­su­ming for their ope­ra­tions team. Pave could see strong demand and oppor­tu­ni­ty to grow the busi­ness, but with the cur­rent way of wor­king, sus­tai­nable growth wasn’t pos­sible. Pave nee­ded a more auto­ma­ted, inte­gra­ted solu­tion. After eva­lua­ting a ran­ge of sys­tems, Pave cho­se Emvisage.

Wanting to grow but no way to scale

Pave WA have dif­fe­rent field teams comple­ting a ran­ge of work, from road sur­facing to foot­path repairs and landsca­ping. Pave’s clients wit­hin the local govern­ment and uti­li­ty sec­tors had speci­fic work requi­re­ments, in terms of the workflow, what evi­dence was cap­tu­red and the templa­tes for quo­tes, comple­tion reports or appro­val of varia­tions. SLA’s (Ser­vice Level Agree­ments) were also cri­tical, as the­se orga­ni­sa­tions had speci­fic per­for­mance SLA’s which casca­ded down to deli­ve­ry part­ners like Pave WA. Mee­ting the­se requi­re­ments whi­le coor­di­na­ting more than 150 jobs per month was a chal­len­ge for the Pave WA ope­ra­tions team. 

Most of the work was manual, buried in jobs­heets, emai­led pho­tos, uploa­ding into sha­red dri­ves and spreads­heets. The ope­ra­tions team were alrea­dy past capaci­ty, wor­king long hours and under high levels of stress to keep up. With demand growing, Ope­ra­tions Mana­ger Mic­hael Wyse was searc­hing for sys­tems that would help them stream­li­ne the work, so they could grow. But he was struggling to find a pro­duct that could hand­le their diver­se needs. 

‘I feel like I have loo­ked at eve­ry single one. Other pro­ducts we loo­ked at would have forced us to ope­ra­te dif­fe­rent­ly and poten­tial­ly complica­te the work. We had to ope­ra­te how they were struc­tu­red, they weren’t for us.’

When Mic­hael first saw Emvi­sa­ge, things clic­ked very quickly, the long search was over. It was the deep cus­to­mi­sa­tion, the flexi­bi­li­ty of Emvi­sa­ge, that Mic­hael knew would accom­mo­da­te their dif­fe­rent work types and hand­le the workflow needs of their major clients. 

Efficient information flow between field teams and operations

One of the main chal­len­ges Pave WA faced was the sha­ring of infor­ma­tion between the teams doing field work and ope­ra­tions. This star­ted with the site ins­pec­tion sche­du­ling, then site mea­su­re­ments being fed back for quo­ting, fol­lowing appro­val a second round of sche­du­ling for the actual site work would be comple­ted. You can apprecia­te the sha­ring back and forward of infor­ma­tion here, the final step was get­ting the job infor­ma­tion and pho­tos from field crews that comple­ted the site works and ente­ring that into job comple­tion reports. 

With dif­fe­rent crews out in the field across a ran­ge of jobs, the­re would be times when the ope­ra­tions time would get more than 100 calls in a day, cla­ri­fying or con­fir­ming work details. The­re was a lot of double hand­ling and manual work to get the work done accu­ra­te­ly. As Mic­hael puts it, 

‘The big­gest pain was pas­sing infor­ma­tion between the office and field staff. Sto­ring the infor­ma­tion for the job, record kee­ping. The run­ning around and the time was­ted. Paper, miscom­mu­nica­tions. It was crazy, I was wor­king 11 or 12 hour days’.

Emvi­sa­ge has cent­ra­li­sed the data for Pave WA, mea­ning that field crews and ope­ra­tions are wor­king in the same space, with live visi­bi­li­ty. The­re is no need for emai­ling of pho­tos, spreads­heets, upda­ted sche­du­les. It’s all in Emvi­sa­ge, it’s clear for eve­ry­one. Field tech­nicians don’t need to scramble with jobs­heets and prin­ted pho­tos, befo­re lea­ving home they pre­view the job details on their mobi­le and when on site the cap­tu­re eve­ryt­hing quickly in one go. 

This has reduced the time field tech­nicians spend on field paperwork by 75%. With the data digi­ti­sed in Emvi­sa­ge the ope­ra­tions team ins­tant­ly have the infor­ma­tion they need, whi­le the sys­tem auto­ma­tical­ly feeds the mea­su­re­ments, pho­tos, sig­na­tu­res and job notes into the right quo­te or job comple­tion reports. The down­stream auto­ma­tion in Emvi­sa­ge saves Pave WA hours each day of data ent­ry, copy pas­ting, uploa­ding and fol­low up calls. 

‘Com­pa­red to how we used to do it,  it’s so much bet­ter now with Emvi­sa­ge. Clients are loving it - it just speeds eve­ryt­hing up.’

Now the pho­ne calls are down to a hand­ful per day and time spent on admin has been reduced by 81%,. That’s 6.5 hours less admin work each day. The pro­duc­ti­vi­ty gain here was a key for Pave WA to sca­le and grow, but it’s been more than that. For Mic­hael and the team the focus has shif­ted from admin to impro­ve­ment,  ‘this has meant I am not stuck at the desk. I am on site hel­ping, chec­king and impro­ving how we do the work’.

Less manual work > less mistakes

How well Pave WA fol­lowed their client’s work process, met compliance needs and deli­ve­red wit­hin SLA were key to win­ning a grea­ter sha­re of work with their clients.  It’s why Pave WA had a strong focus on qua­li­ty and that why prior to Emvi­sa­ge a lot of effort was spent on chec­king, rec­hec­king and ensu­ring accu­racy. Emvi­sa­ge Smart­Forms have taken out the manual steps, reducing the oppor­tu­ni­ties for human error to creep in. Field tech­nicians select an item, cap­tu­re the mea­su­re­ment and the because Emvi­sa­ge sto­res the pricing for each dif­fe­rent part­ner, the quo­te is auto­ma­ted. This has meant less mis­ta­kes for both field crews and ope­ra­tions, simply because it’s har­der to get somet­hing wrong. 

‘Eve­ryt­hing is the­re. When I am doing quo­ting eve­ryt­hing from the ins­pec­tion auto fills into the quo­te tab. It’s pre­fil­led. I just fill in the box under­neath, hit save and the sli­der to email eve­ryt­hing. Quo­ting used to be done in a hor­rible excel sheet and could take a few hours per day. Now I am all done in 30 - 60 minutes.’

Emvi­sa­ge has made not just more efficient, but also easier for the Pave WA ope­ra­tions team and the field crews. An unex­pec­ted bene­fit from this has been unloc­king addi­tio­nal reve­nue from varia­tions. ‘Varia­tions befo­re were dif­ficult. The process was dif­ficult, invol­ving pho­tos, addi­tio­nal mea­su­re­ments. People could not be bot­he­red for small varia­tions. We have found with Emvi­sa­ge our rate of varia­tions has almost tripled. That is 1-2sqm more each time. The work is the same, so it’s just making the process easier.’

‘Mate, I am loving the softwa­re. It’s making my life so much easier. Some of our senior guys have no com­pu­ter skills and even they love Emvisage’

PaveWa’s results - supercharged growth and productivity

Since part­ne­ring with Emvi­sa­ge, Pave WA has made some fan­tas­tic gains.

81% Reduc­tion in time spent on admin work 

75% Less time spent on field paperwork 

10x Return on investment 

Doubling busi­ness size in 8 months

The­se ter­ri­fic results were due lar­ge­ly due to auto­ma­tion and impro­ved flow of infor­ma­tion between ope­ra­tions and field crews.With less admin bur­den and less stress, the ope­ra­tions team have been freed up and now have the heads­pace to focus on impro­ve­ments. Whi­le field crews are hap­pier, more empowe­red and doing bet­ter work. 

Ove­rall Mic­hael has been ext­re­me­ly satis­fied with their Emvi­sa­ge expe­rience so far stating: 

We were able to employ more staff because we’­re simply able to mana­ge big­ger workloads with Emvi­sa­ge. I couldn’t tell you what we would use if Emvi­sa­ge didn’t exist.  I can’t ima­gi­ne life wit­hout it.

Emvisage - powerful automation

If you need to auto­ma­te your workflow, but it feels impos­sible or not fea­sible. It’s worth get­ting in touch, our tech­no­lo­gy can be a game changer. 

Are you rea­dy to auto­ma­te your admin and work bet­ter?  Book a quick demo