Fully integrated technology ecosystem combining mobility, automation and business intelligence using Sharepoint, PowerApps, Power BI, Flow

Microsoft Power Platform (Desktop, iOS, Android)

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The brief__

We have had to approach this case study a little differently than we typically would. In order to protect our clients name we have referred to them as a Global Construction Giant.

Shaping skylines and delivering iconic projects for over 50 years, this Global Construction Giant is a premier global construction company that focuses on elevating industry standards. With our guidance, our client evolved digitally, saving on weeks of labour costs.

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The process__

As pioneers of this new innovative technology in Australia, we broke new ground in 2018 with the revolutionary PowerApps platform. Our client wanted to digitise their safety and compliance forms as a lot of it was paper-based which was cumbersome, slow and lead to lost or degraded report and record keeping.

Their graduates and contractors were tasked with performing the daily logging of paper-based checklists, safety walks, audits, site inductions and permits. Carrying out these tasks came with substantial data entry that took precious time to log back into digital and record keeping systems across each of the many in-flight construction projects.

On one construction project example, a streamlined approach was needed to handle over 6,000 worker inductions. Uploading induction forms into the existing safety database was a manual process that took many hours to complete post induction. For a project that large, manual operation was no longer feasible or efficient.

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Discovery phase__

Identifying potential safety hazards and ensuring full compliance with various multi-regulatory requirements throughout a construction site is a crucial component of an individual’s day on-site. Newpath, Melbourne’s leading full service digital agency, needed to find a mobility solution that would integrate the physical logging aspect of this job via mobile devices with the clients existing technology stack.

As we were dealing with a company that was already a global Microsoft client, it was natural for us to begin exploring the newly released Microsoft Power Platforms for a solution. While there were other contenders, the combination of PowerApps, Flow, PowerBI and Sharepoint was a technically sound and commercially effective solution.

Newpath worked exceptionally close with Microsoft global to build a solution, finalising on PowerApps as it integrated well with our clients broader Microsoft ecosystem. It was the first time that changes on this scale were implemented on the Microsoft PowerApps platform, as PowerApps was in its formative stage at the time.

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Design + develop__

Newpath established a mobility solution within the client’s Microsoft ecosystem by integrating the unique and dynamic PowerApps platform in October 2018. By leveraging the power of this platform, the clients’ newly developed solution operated completely in tune with their needs, giving them the autonomy to drive and own the solution. Within 6 months, we had a fully-operational platform that was used across their Victorian-based building sites.

This enabled our client to efficiently utilise one universal system to streamline their OHSE compliance and reporting processes both online and offline. With PowerApps integrating with SharePoint, safety officers can now easily upload photo evidence alongside compliance documents and generate reports instantly.

We extended the solution by rolling it out with iPads setup in each induction room, meaning the manual step of collating and uploading each induction record was eliminated from the process, and instead a reliable, efficient and digital solution took its place delivering financial benefits to our client.

The ecosystem is entirely a Microsoft set of technologies — Power Apps, Power BI, SharePoint, Microsoft Flow.

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The results__

As a result of this project our client has seen a significant increase in efficiency across their workforce by eliminating issues such as double handling, data loss and inaccuracies. This has increased their data distribution capability and allowed them to oversee the large outputs of data their users are entering into their system. The project went live across their building sites in Victoria, resulting in 40 – 50 hours of compliance and safety time being saved each week across each site.

One of their projects as mentioned above inducted over 6,000 individuals with an estimated 15 minutes saved per induction since moving it to the new digital platform — leading to a total of over 1,500 hours saved in administration of induction forms.

With consistent, successful integrations across the PowerApps platform, Microsoft conducted a case study on the same, due to our outstanding results.

As the dynamic PowerApps platform continues to improve and evolve, we plan to implement predictive technology which allows our client to spot potential issues before they occur, thereby replacing reactive measures with predictive measures.

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