Case Study - Improve Efficiency

Featured Solution:

Microsoft Project Customization

 

Client:

National Water Main Cleaning Co. - Newark, NJ

 

Background:

National Water Main Cleaning Co., a subsidiary of the Carylon Corporation, provides state-of-the-art environmental maintenance services, such as sewer cleaning, TV and sonar pipeline inspection, infiltration control, hydro-vac excavation and more to help industries and municipalities solve their sewer and wastewater maintenance problems.

 

Challenge:

The sewer and pipeline maintenance services performed by National Water Main Cleaning is vital to the environmental protection of ground water, so NWMC must be able to respond quickly to its customer needs.  This requires them to know where their field personnel and equipment is at all times.  

 

Before automating the system, information showing personnel and equipment allocated and dispatched to a job was posted on a giant magnetic job board.  This method enabled NWMC to move resources as needed, but it also made it difficult to maintain an actual record of where resources were at any given time.  If a change was required after hours, say for an emergency, someone had to physically come into the office, call all employees whose schedules would be impacted by the change and then make the necessary changes to the job board.

 

Additionally, someone from accounting had to transcribe the job board on a daily basis to ensure jobs were billed correctly.  This process was very time consuming, inefficient and did not provide a digital record that could be easily accessed if needed.

 

Approach:

Accounteks worked with National Water Main Cleaning Co. to develop custom add-ons to Microsoft Project that enabled them to automate the assignment of staff and equipment to job sites.  Additional modifications are currently being made to seamlessly integrate NWMC’s accounting and billing system with its project management system.  This will ensure jobs are properly invoiced and employees’ time is accurately accounted for in the payroll system.

 

Results:

The benefits were immediate:

  • A job that had previously been done manually was now automated.  This has saved approximately 10 hours per week in staff time and reduces manual errors. 
  • Workers are now notified of jobsite changes immediately via emails to their smart phones.  Should an emergency or last minute change affect who has to be where, no one has to come to the office in the middle of the night, change the job board and make phone calls to ensure employees show up at the right job.
  • Personnel and equipment resources are maximized for efficiency.  The automated process allows only workers that are qualified and trained to be assigned to use a particular piece of equipment. Additionally, the system denotes when vehicles and equipment are out for maintenance or not in use, which allows National Water to share their resources with sister companies, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary purchases of new equipment.
  • The new system allows management to plan jobs further in advance and better anticipate additional staff or equipment that may be necessary.
  • System automation provides a documented historical record of resources that can be used for future planning.  

In Process:

Accounteks is working with National Water to seamlessly integrate the project management system with its accounting system. This is expected to save countless man hours that were required to transcribe the manual job board and will reduce manual errors associated with billing and accounts receivables.  Integrating the project management system in with the accounting system will also improve time card tracking, reducing unnecessary overtime costs and manual payroll errors.