Ideagen and Holcim Australia

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Material supplier

Ideagen solutions
Ideagen Workforce Safety

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Holcim is a leading partner for sustainable construction. Across Australia and New Zealand, Holcim manufactures aggregates, cement, ready-mix concrete, engineered concrete solutions and precast concrete pipes for major infrastructure projects. With approximately two-thirds of its workforce comprised of contractors, including lorry owner-drivers, fleet operators and labour hire workers, managing contractor compliance presented significant operational challenges across its 280 sites.

The challenge: a manual, time-intensive process

10 years ago, Holcim's contractor pre-qualification process was entirely manual and decentralised. Each of their sites individually pre-qualified contractors as they arrived, creating substantial inefficiencies and compliance risks.

"It was a very lengthy manual process, making photocopies of insurances and qualifications," says James Atkinson, the Safety, Health and Environment Information Technology Manager at Holcim Australia.

"Inducting people onto our site was a very manual task. It would take hours per company and contractors," he says.

This fragmented approach meant:

• Hours spent per contractor on administrative tasks
• No standardised compliance verification across sites
• Supervisors unable to proactively manage contractor arrivals
• Difficulty ensuring qualifications matched actual work scopes
  

The solution: implementing Ideagen Workforce Safety

After evaluating three vendors, Holcim selected Ideagen Workforce Safety based on the robustness of the solution and its outsourced capabilities. The implementation centered on hardware terminals installed at every single site, creating a mandatory sign-in system for all contractors.

"When our contractors get to site, they sign in either using the Ideagen Workforce Safety card and their biometric authentication or the Ideagen unique number to log in to our terminals. That alerts our supervisors to come and manage said contractor.

“We knew who was on our sites, that they were compliant from an insurance and qualification perspective. And very importantly, look at the job titles in the system and make sure that the qualifications provided by our contractors married to our scope of task or scope of work,” says James.

Transformational results

The impact on operational efficiency was immediate and substantial. The contractor registration process, previously taking hours on-site, was reduced dramatically.

"The time frame for a contractor to register with Ideagen Workforce Safety end to end can be as little as three hours. The beauty of the system is that three hours is happening prior to them arriving on site," says James.

For a business operating across hundreds of sites in two countries, standardisation delivered enormous value.

"Ideagen Workforce Safety helps us standardise our contractor compliance across Australia and New Zealand and our 280 odd sites. This is a tool that our sites can use day in, day out. That's a huge benefit for a business like ours that uses so many contractors and with so many sites," says James.

Looking forward

Reflecting on the transformation, James is confident in the positive impact Ideagen Workforce Safety has had on its subcontractor and visitor management.

"Ideagen Workforce Safety created an absolute step change for Holcim Australia. It has ultimately revolutionised the way we use systems in this space and created all sorts of efficiencies. If I was at another company, I would certainly look at deploying Ideagen workforce safety as a compliance tool because it drives the standards you need in a business,” he says.

Looking ahead, Holcim sees continued value in the partnership, particularly around innovation.

Ideagen Workforce Safety has so many modules to choose from and a really progressive pipeline and approach to the use of AI and generative AI going forward, which is where a partnership with a company like ours needs to be, because it is going to give us opportunity and perhaps market edge going forward. - James Atkinson, Safety, Health and Environment Information Technology Manager, Holcim Australia

Experience the transformation yourself

Discover how Ideagen can support your organisation’s compliance and risk management needs. Schedule a demo today to take the first step toward compliant, streamlined operations.