50 Albert Street in Auckland saw 450-500 working on site at any one time as it neared completion in the last quarter of 2024.
Mansons makes huge safety transformation with HammerTech
Paper-driven inductions, inspections and SWMS – and everything in-between – drove one of the biggest names in New Zealand construction to shake up its HSE processes with HammerTech.
Mansons TCLM (Mansons) is uniquely positioned in the country’s construction sector, funding and building all its projects as the largest privately-owned developer in New Zealand.
Mansons health and safety manager Rebecca Gornall has been with the company for six years and says Mansons journey with HammerTech has meant efficiency gains, smoother-than-expected stakeholder buy-in and many key features in the past two years.
“With the growth of the company’s construction activities it was important for management to have someone join that could improve the company’s safety practices and have oversight across sites,” says Gornall. “Given our many sites and the scale of construction we work on simultaneously – with many workers coming and going – there are a lot of high risks in dynamic work environments.
“We used paper-based systems for a long time. When I’d do safety inspections, it was very difficult to identify the gaps between the work being done and safety documentation, training and permits.
“That’s when we decided to look for a digital system that could capture critical information in one central online location; a system that can be accessed at any time as you’re completing inspections and identifying any improvements required”.
Gornall says that one of the initial attractions was how “neat” the HammerTech platform is – allowing site teams to easily manage permits online so they can spend more time on-site.
Stakeholder buy-in a pleasant surprise
Mansons joined the HammerTech community towards the tail end of 2022, implementing the platform incrementally with individual modules and worker information – supported by HammerTech with ongoing support and training.
“Our site teams were really excited to have a have a new system – they were the ones asking for it. I expected somewhat of a challenge to introduce something new, perhaps with members of the older generation.
“But everybody got really on board and were surprised how simple it was. It also helped that quite a few of our contractors had previously worked on sites run by LT McGuiness [another New Zealand-based HammerTech customer].
Safety inspections
Gornall performs full day inspections, on every project, at least once a week: “If I want to, I can start the paperwork part of my inspection the day before with HammerTech – given everything is online. I can then hit the ground running with my physical inspections when I jump on site.
“When I was doing my safety inspections [before HammerTech], I’d have to type up an email, send individual notes for contractors and follow them up – all that manual work.
“Now I’m one click away from sending out observations to contractors so they can be actioned straight away, as well as sending out positive observations for great work practices.”
Automated reporting
“Our contractors are really good at actioning and closing out observations on the system and including fix photos. It’s incredibly simple but saves a huge amount of time,” says Gornall, adding she saves five to six hours for end-of-month reporting alone.
“I can also just go through ‘HammerTech Insights’ when undertaking end-of-month reporting for management. Capturing all that information is a huge time saver.”
Connected inductions and SWMS
Site inductions were also paper-based across Mansons’ sites, relying on site teams to relay key information to contractors. “You may not have the same level of consistency all the time with different site staff members completing inductions,” says Gornall.
“Being a cloud-based and online system, HammerTech provides that consistency. Take information on the dashboard like SWMS, which may have unassigned. Any worker may have been inducted and assigned a SWMS, but they haven’t yet signed it.
“It’s incredibly helpful for me to see people that have been inducted, they’ve been assigned to a document, but they haven’t read or signed it yet. It’s a prompt to follow up on people and review tasks being completed to ensure all my bases are covered.”
Mass communication with ease
Gornall says ‘HammerTech Bulletins’ – keeping sites connected with timely construction health and safety alerts – has also been a highlight. Take 50 Albert Street, which saw over 2,000 workers inducted on site during construction, with 450-500 working at any one time on site in the months before its November 2024 handover.
“When Albert Street was at the finishing stage, the ability to send workers notifications via text is incredibly handy. Before we simply didn’t have contact details or a profile for each worker at the click of a button. So, we had no way to contact everyone quickly.
“Coming from ‘zero to tech’ has been life changing.”
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