How LetsBuild Greatly Improved FRANKI’s Construction Management Processes

FRANKI is a daughter company of Willemen Group, the biggest family-owned contractor in Belgium. Over the last couple of years, FRANKI has expanded its activities through mergers and acquisitions with other contractors like Franki (1998), Cosimco (2005), Group De Waal (2005), Aswebo (2011) and Van Wellen contractors (2014).

Project

Orangerie is an old industrial hall turned into an administrative building in Seraing. The complex, including the said building and the adjacent castle, can accommodate more than 600 people and offers all the facilities you could expected from an international company headquarters: reception, meeting rooms, auditorium, company restaurant, etc. Like its building architectural design, the project aims to create an environment and work practices that encourage the development of knowledge while keeping the industrial heritage alive.

Challenges

What characterized this project was the short deadline between the making of the last remarks and the delivery to the client. As a Project manager, Guillaume and his team only had 4 days to complete the remarks and send them to the subcontractors so that they could realize the last corrections. Guillaume says that this would not have been possible using the classical method of working with pen and paper.

Solution

LetsBuild streamlined all the tasks of the project manager in one single process. Prior to LetsBuild, FRANKI completed differently scheduled tasks of their teams of construction workers and subcontractors in three steps: planning, execution and control.

Results

• In just 4 days Guillaume and his team were able to communicate 520 remarks to 10 different subcontractors in a more efficient way than ever before.
• Subcontractors were happy of the high-quality communication received from FRANKI.
• The project delivery deadline was respected without additional effort or stress.
• 5 other companies started using LetsBuild on the go to streamline the management processes during the project.
• Project coordinators and managers have spent more time on the field executing real-value activities compared to previous projects.

Benefits

• Error rate to a bare minimum due to better communication.
• Lots of valuable time saved thanks to faster “clickable” note-taking and report-making.
• A clearer overview of the project because of an efficient, centralised platform that keeps track of all notes and adjustments.
• Instantly available information that is easily addressed to specific recipient(s) (colleagues, subcontractors, clients, architect, etc.)
• Instantly available tool on and off site due to a web-based platform/app.
• Easy-to-see improvements because of the app’s compare mode.
• Work is always up-to-date as the app is updated with the latest version of the project all the time.

“Since I started using LetsBuild, task management has become “a piece of cake”. The traditional 3 steps have now become part of a single interface. In addition to managing the construction site, LetsBuild is improving task monitoring as informing subcontractors about any problems we are running into or might run into has become easier. With LetsBuild, managing my site has become easy. I could not live without it, neither could my subcontractors and workers, who really appreciate getting clear and accurate information.”