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Balfour Beatty Increases Productivity of Gas and Water Business Workforce

Part of this includes Purge & Relight; an onsite job that requires engineers to visit residential and commercial properties to reconnect gas supplies. With contracts geographically spread, one operative could be required to carry out multiple jobs per day across a large geographical area, with significant time spent travelling between sites.

Given the scale and volume of work carried out by the team, Balfour Beatty wanted to implement a fully integrated, flexible mobile workforce management and scheduling solution that would enable real-time visibility of their mobile workforce. They also wanted a solution that could be rolled out to other field based teams within the business, starting with Purge & Relight.

Balfour Beatty engaged with Kirona in April 2016 to implement its leading field service management software suite; Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS), Job Manager and InfoSuite to help them achieve their business objectives.

In the gas sector, Balfour Beatty work to expand and renew underground mains, often in busy and high-impact residential and commercial areas. They work closely with clients to manage and plan work intelligently in these areas, minimising the impact this essential work has on local communities.

The Challenge

Balfour Beatty runs a number of different operations within the utilities sector including network maintenance and asset growth for the Gas industry. They are responsible for expanding and renewing underground mains, often in busy residential and commercial areas, employing operatives across the North East and West Midlands to carry out mains servicing.

Balfour Beatty is a leading international infrastructure group. With 30,000 employees, they provide innovative and efficient infrastructure that underpins their daily lives, supports communities and enables economic growth.

The Solution

Balfour Beatty set out to streamline the process of raising work within Purge & Relight by having the option of jobs being created by the operatives in the field. Using Kirona’s field service management software, the workers are empowered with the ability to raise Purge & Relight jobs or follow-on jobs whilst on site, which are immediately visible to their back office team.

Kirona’s Dynamic Resource Scheduling application ensures that the requirements of each job are met in accordance with their SLAs. In addition to delivering benefits to operatives, the Kirona solutions are also providing customers with greater control over appointments, reducing the risk of wasted or unsuitable bookings.

Balfour Beatty also implemented Kirona’s InfoSuite management information product in September 2016 to complement the mobile workforce management which provides actionable insight enabling the business to further optimise their operation. Balfour Beatty’s operational management teams have the real-time visibility of progress and performance information to enable them to react to challenges before customer service is impacted.

The Outcome

Since implementing the solution across the North West in June 2016, and the West Midlands at the end of 2017, regional operatives have been able to carry out more appointments per day by maximising schedules across the team. Travel time has been reduced and fuel costs have decreased whilst the number of jobs has increased.

Bryan Casey, Finance Director from Balfour Beatty said:

“The introduction of the Kirona solution is bringing our mobile workforce much closer to the back office team, enabling us to improve the efficiency of our purge and relight operation.”

“Kirona has delivered a solution that not only replaces our legacy systems, but brings the best of Mobile Working and Scheduling technologies to the front line delivery of our Gas and Water business”

Speak to usFor more information about how we helped Balfour Beatty or to discuss any of Kirona’s products and services contact us at info@kirona.com or 01625585511.

“Enabling us to improve the

efficiency of our purge and relight

operation”

Reduced

Travel Time

Decreased

Fuel CostsIncreased

Number of Jobs

General enquiries Tel: +44 (0)1625 585511 Email: info@kirona.com

Head Office Kirona Limited, Barrington House, Heyes Lane, Alderley Edge, Cheshire SK9 7LA