SBL Solutions was established in 2014 to provide the wind industry with highly skilled electricians, mechanical fitters as well as wind turbine technicians. Starting with a team of 5, SBL Solutions has grown to over 120 employees. SBL Solutions provide holistic support from installation, maintenance and inspection of wind turbines across Australia.
Managing Director, Brett Poole knew that going digital was the way forward for his business. He started his journey with a digital timesheet solution but knew the business also required a platform that also managed compliance and assets. That’s when he found Assignar.
READ CASE STUDY: SBL Solutions uses Assignar to manage over 100 employees across Australia.
Similar to other construction verticals, the renewable energy space has a variety of tickets, licenses and competencies. Such as rigging, dogging, crane drivers and working with heights. Prior to implementing Assignar, SBL Solutions safety documentation and compliance was paper-based. James Hickey, former General Manager recalls “we had SWMS for each task and our take-5s were all around the office like post-it notes. There was a lot of double handling. It was just a nightmare!”
Now SBL Solutions’ safety processes are fully paperless. Brett further comments “we have the ability to have something like Assignar to record all those competencies and not have a person manually check…we can set a reminder to see that competencies are expiring. It would be very difficult to manage our safety processes without something like Assignar”.
ISO Certification
SBL Solutions wanted to ensure that all their processes and systems were compliant before going for certification. In addition to implementing Assignar, they also created their own data hub. With the use of Assignar’s open API’s, they were able to connect their accounting software with Assignar. Now SBL’s datahub actions important items when triggered. For example, when a question in the safety register form in Assignar in answered with a needs action item, the corresponding owner in the SBL datahub is automatically notified.
James further reflects back on the ISO Certification process “when we did the application, the certifier trawled through all of our processes which was made so much easier by having Assignar. We gave our login to the certifier and said here is all our stuff, here is what we can see and you can follow the life of a job, the life of a person – live, right there! So to go through all the documentation, the certifier sets aside 8 days, but for us, it only took 2 days. The next part of the certification is the onsite check. The certifier was able to talk to our technicians and ask them to show on their phones how they record their work, how they complete their forms and it was seamless. From that aspect, having an end-to-end solution…makes it so much easier for us to pass the ISO process”.
Certification and Assignar
Assignar’s forms module and offline mobile capabilities were key to SBL Solutions ISO Certification. James further explained “we have over 150 forms, we use forms all the time and the ability to make that live was key for us getting ISO certification. The other component is remote locations. We are in the middle of nowhere. Phone reception is pretty much non-viable. There might be a site shed with a WiFi hotspot and sometimes reception, but the ability for us to have everyone in the morning do their toolbox talks, everyone can make sure they have all that information on their phone and everyone goes off and does their own thing.
During the day we know they are inputting the information into their forms. We also developed a form called the daily diary. It is an interactive form that records all their activities for the day. So their Take 5’s, SWMS, quality items, near misses and room for improvement which is all linked to timesheets. Making that daily dairy form mandatory on timesheet submission meant that we knew we were getting quality information. That was a key thing from an ISO point of view. We built a system with the help of Assignar that made sure we knew that the guys and girls on the field were doing what we said they were doing and that means its a win/win for everybody”.
SBL Solutions are now ISO Certified. They developed a fully integrated Management System compliant to ISO 45001:2018, ISO 14001:2018 & ISO 9001:2018. Find out more about SBL Solutions by visiting their website: https://sblsolutions.com.au/