How BPC uses LetsBuild to improve and standardise their processes

BPC is a major player in the construction industry who builds and renovates structures of all sizes, such as office and residential buildings, hotels, shopping centres and more. Their projects are located in Brussels and Wallonia and are both for the public and the private sector. BPC has been part of the CFE group since 2004 and has been working together with LetsBuild (at that point APROPLAN) since 2013. 

Our collaboration began when BPC started looking for a digital solution that would allow them to save time, clearly monitor progress on site and reduce the admin burden of their UP-Site Tower project in Brussels. 

However, QHSE turned out to be the biggest driver of this fruitful partnership. The QHSE managers in BPC were looking for a more efficient way to manage their KPIs and make sure that all project managers are conducting the checks they are required to do according to the plan. In other words, they were after a digital tool that would help them standardise their quality and safety checks and offer them full visibility over the entire process. LetsBuild’s QHSE and documents tool (APROPLAN) felt like the right choice for them as it was already used in execution on site. Like that, they would avoid implementing yet another tool that people would have to learn using.

Before LetsBuild, BPC used to follow QHSE processes relying on pen and paper and Word documents. They had to conduct site visits in the morning and write their reports in the afternoon. Every report would take approximately an hour and it would often generate a lot of frustration. More specifically:

• Word wasn’t user friendly. The slightest mistake and the layout of the document would get completely distorted.
• There was limited tracking of actions.
• A lot of manual encoding: people had to do the same job twice (write down updates on site and later transfer them on Word).
• QHSE people had to update KPIs manually.

All this meant an excessive amount of time spent on admin tasks. At BPC, there are 3 types of inspections (general site inspections, toolbox meetings, feedback forms). Project managers need to follow up on them on a regular basis, that is at least once a month. The problem is that in some cases it was difficult for them to prioritise these checks, as they had other tasks that pushed them. 

As a result, QHSE managers were often unsure whether all checks had been completed and had to spend a good amount of time contacting each project manager to secure that everything progressed as it should. It was then important for them to find a way to centralise all the information around their KPIs, so that they can get that peace of mind they so much needed and reduce admin burden on their processes.

At first, they used LetsBuild to conduct QHSE visits with the help of points. As our tool evolved and more features became available, they moved to forms. LetsBuild created one standardised form for each KPI and worked on some adjustments to make the forms available on the app. Like that, all project managers would always have the forms they needed to fill on their mobile device. At the same time, QHSE managers would be able to monitor progress on the different checks by using one centralised dashboard per KPI. 

In order to help everyone see the value of the new working approach and ensure adoption on the site, our team set up a series of training sessions where all project managers were trained on the functionalities of the app with main emphasis on the feature of forms. 

We conducted every training in close collaboration with the QHSE managers, so that we solve the problem as one team and gain a better understanding of the difficulties that they were facing. One of the QHSE managers was always present during the training sessions and actively involved in them. That approach made a big difference in the effort to push the use of the app down to the teams. Now everyone in the company (up to C-levels) is trained to do QHSE visits in an autonomous way.

They can send reports right away from their car after the visit in just a few clicks, and they  estimate that they win an average of 30% on global efficiency. They can also manage their time more efficiently as they’re not stuck at the office for admin work anymore.

As Frank Verhaeghe, QSE Officer, mentions: “The improvements LetsBuild has brought to our QHSE processes make us up to 30% more efficient. There’s no comparison.”

In the beginning, some members of the BPC team were a bit sceptical as to whether LetsBuild will be product wise able to support such a complex process, especially with regard to forms and dashboarding. By continuously evolving our tool, we were able to overcome these concerns and help the team gain the data clarity that they were after.

KPIs and all the information are now accessible in real time, so the team doesn’t have to spend a lot of time on manual updates any longer. And even though KPIs are still done manually at this stage, a powerful integration is well underway. In 2021, we are going to develop a PowerBI dashboard to fully automate the entire process.

As a result of our good long-term partnership, we have recently stepped up our collaboration with BPC by adding consulting services (also known as Professional Services) to the agreement. Moving forward, LetsBuild will help BPC to roll out a company-wide standardisation plan across all their processes, so that they can see everything on site and continue to deliver successful projects faster and cheaper without compromising on quality and safety.