The Kier Group is a contracting giant, undoubtedly the leader in many industry sectors including, Building, Civil Engineering, Fleet & Passenger Services, Engineering Design, House Maintenance, Mining, Rail Services, Waterways Services, Utilities Services, Technical Services, Property Development, Interiors & Refurbishment, Project Investment, Mechanical & Electrical, Housing, Highway Services, Facilities Management, Environmental Services, Energy Management Services and Construction Management… they more or less built Britain from Kier operations across the entirety of the UK at thousands of locations.
Kier approached us in 2015 with a view to providing attendance clocking in system that would record employee hours worked at a range of depots across the South West and South East of England, as they had just won a number of contracts in the waste management & recycling sector. Their main requirement was to be able to cost the man hours of certain key groups of employees, to ascertain whether they were hitting their financial targets each month and ensure they were operating profitably. A meeting at Bridgwater was arranged, this included a demonstration of our system, plus further meetings at our Head Office. Since this involved considerable investment from Kier, we suggested a three month trial of our TimeVue clocking system at two of their recycling depots and so the go head was given.
We installed our TimeVue-Pro Plus attendance terminals using proximity key fobs at the two depots, along with the software application and database which was to be installed onto each managers pc. This particular configuration was just for the trial. One of the depot area managers was chosen as a key individual for us to train in the use of the software, regularly feeding back to Kier’s Head of Technical based at Basingstoke providing progress reports and results being achieved. The trial took six months, this was extended due to technical challenges with the IT infrastructure which Kier had inherited with the contracts. We were perfectly ok with this, working through the problems as they arose. We have an excellent software development team behind us, so were confident our time attendance solution we were offering would be accepted. When Kier calculated the savings, they wasted no time in placing orders for further depots across England & Wales.
The final roll out of the system involved the installation of clocking terminal hardware at every depot, the software application and database was installed onto one of Kiers virtual servers at Head Office, which we were given 24/7 access to using a Citrix remote login application. The depots were split into three main areas of England. Each area has its own unique database which was their preference. Each depot has one or more client installs of the software to enable the managers to access the database for their specific area. If the managers require adjustment to the shift rules or other queries, our support team could login in immediately to resolve any queries. We also provided remote access to the managers pc’s using our remote access software. We later provided Kier with our telephone clocking service to allow remote workers working away from the depots to clock in/out using mobile phones. More recent installations in South Wales have seen Kier taking advantage of our SaaS on our secure cloud servers. This allows Kier managers to access the software using a web browser, and no software install is required on their pc’s, which helps their IT department out.
Our TimeVue solution gave Kier the detailed analysis of man hours for each key group of employees, which was Kier’s main objective from the beginning. The improvement in productivity helped ensure their financial targets were being hit every month.
The adaptability of our system, thanks to our clever software development team who often work almost tirelessly round the clock to make businesses tick, we believe was key to our success in winning this large tender. Though it wasn’t without its challenges… but then again, we always have time for a challenge.
“The time & attendance system supplied by Facetime is proving very effective at our Depots across the Country. The support service is really good and they resolve support requests in a timely manner, I would recommend them without hesitation..Michael O’Farrell – IT Business Partner
The Kier Group
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“Facetime provides a time & attendance system that ‘measures-up’ at Clarks flagship shoe shop at Street, Somerset”