Dominate Smart Workforce and Productivity Management solution helps Shapoorji Pallonji to manage workforce visibility, time & attendance, labor costs, project productivity and more.
About Shapoorji Pallonji
With over 150 years of experience, Shapoorji Pallonji operates in more than 60 countries, delivering complex and challenging projects. The company is headquartered in Mumbai, India and operates in 6 major business areas with 13 group companies, 3 divisions and a strong employee base of over 60,000 people from across 40+ nationalities. In its many years of successful and sustainable business, Shapoorji Pallonji has operated in different sectors such as Engineering & Construction, Infrastructure, Energy, Real Estate, Water and Financial Services.
Background
Shapoorji-Pallonji uses Dominate Smart Workforce and Productivity Management solution to monitor and manage workforce and productivity in Dubai Hills Business Park in Dubai, UAE.
Shapoorji-Pallonji was appointed by the local developer, Emaar Properties, as the main contractor to construct Dubai Hills Business Park in Mohammed bin Rashid City (MBR City). Dubai Hills Business Park is a fast-track shell and core business park development in Dubai Hills Estate. The office buildings are four 7-story plus ground level, with six floors of parking provided in a fifth building. The built area of the project is 1.6 Million Sq. Ft.
The project was planned to be completed by the last quarter of 2018, and it was successfully completed and delivered in November 2018.
Challenges
On time and on-budget delivery of 1.6 million sq. ft. of grade-A office space in four buildings plus a six-floor parking deck is a challenging task, especially when dealing with large numbers of direct labor and subcontractors working on different shifts and in multiple work zones. In the case of Dubai Hills Business Park, poor workforce visibility and control was a major issue. Too much time was being lost for attendance control during the site’s arrival and exit. Also, poor production control was resulting in project delays. What’s more, excessive idle labor hours and other workforce challenges caused significant financial losses and schedule delays. What managers needed was a clear picture of what was happening on site, so that they could put an end to all these frustrating problems and costly delays.
Therefore, a need was felt to enhance visibility and control over the workforce and project productivity. To coordinate workforce and activities involved in the project, a unified platform was needed where raw data could be collected, analyzed in real-time, and acted upon. Such a platform could provide the users with all the workforce-related information that they needed to manage the site. It could also show them where there are discrepancies between a project’s actual status and what was initially planned. This platform would have the ability to help them make more informed decisions and identify potential problems before they caused serious breakdowns.
The Solution
Shapoorji-Pallonji implemented Dominate Smart Workforce and Productivity Management to automate and optimize the tracking of its workforce and gain real-time visibility over project productivity.
Due to the nature and objectives of the project, it was decided to use Passive RFID for tracking the workforce. Passive RFID scanning tunnels were installed at strategic locations throughout the site. This included site’s entrance/exit points, rest areas, restrooms, site’s store and all the productive and unproductive location zones. A passive RFID Tag was affixed to each helmet (for both direct and subcontractors’ workforce). Also, the name and the photo of the worker were affixed to the front of their helmet.
The immediate result was quick workforce entry and exit to/from the site, no matter how many people entered or left the site simultaneously. This means a time saving of over 30 minutes for 1700 workforce per each shift. Prior to installation of the system, workforce time and attendance information were not available until noon (with 6 hours of delay), but after implementation of Dominate Smart Workforce and Productivity Management, workforce time and attendance were available without delay, in real-time.
To eliminate idle times, the site was divided into productive and unproductive areas. This way, the time each worker spent in different location zones could be compared against planned activity objectives. Managers would easily and accurately get informed of any worker’s time spent in unproductive areas. They would also know where to deal with labor inefficiencies.
Project Productivity Solution Was Utilized to Monitor Project’s Progress and Identify Deviations from the Project Timeline.
Projects were imported from Primavera P6. Each project was comprised of different work packages, and each work package included different activities (tasks). Workers were allocated to each task, and all task details were registered in the system. Work completion percentage was entered to the system on a daily basis, making it possible to get a full view of the Project/Work Package/Task status in real-time. The information then could be compared against benchmarks to see where deviations from the planned timeline occurred, and how productive the project had been.
The result was remarkable: reduced inefficiencies, errors, and labor costs. Managers gained complete visibility and immediate insight into the status of the project. This allowed them to identify opportunities to make better use of resources, discover the current and potential risks and generate more impactful results. Implementing Dominate Smart Workforce and Productivity Management enabled the company to lower labor costs by 34%. A video of this installation can be viewed at Dominate SmartSite.
Benefits
- Quick wireless arrival/departure process eliminated the need for workers to wait in long queues, and significantly reduced delays.
- Real-time availability of time and attendance information helped managers to better allocate the available resources.
- Achieved over 34% labor cost reduction.
- Achieved on-target cost and on-time project delivery.
- Increased labor efficiency and smart labor utilization.
- Reduced labor fraud.
- Reduced idle time.
- Real-time tracking of labor and production.
Conclusion
By implementing Dominate Smart Workforce and Productivity Management, managers could monitor project’s progress, enabling them to see where project objectives are met, and where there are no considerable advances. This allowed them to identify deviations from benchmarks on time and take preventive or corrective actions as and when needed. This was the first project we implemented for Shapoorji Pallonji construction group, and due to the positive experience, the company decided to use Dominate Smart Workforce and Productivity Management system in its future projects as well.
