COVID Management
Growthbuilt’s pandemic response keeps them ahead of the curve
Project overview
Growthbuilt is a leading Tier 2 design and construction company based in NSW, Australia. They currently engage over 120 subcontractor companies across nine sites, representing over 1,300 workers.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the NSW Government placed regulatory restrictions on building companies and how they had to operate, including mandatory tracking of vaccination status and negative test results.
Growthbuilt were quick to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic due to the company’s structure and agility of their leadership team and workforce. They implemented Sitepass as a platform to manage COVID-19 and have since remained ahead of the curve in their pandemic response by monitoring the government and construction industry’s position.
This action ensured that during a time of societal upheaval, Growthbuilt’s projects remained on time, on budget, and completed with a strong focus on everyone’s safety.
Implementing a completely objective system without risk of human prejudice has brought consistent standardisation of process across the business and all sites. There is a single set of rules for everybody.Don Zakroczymski, Head of WHS&E at Growthbuilt
The Challenge
9
Sites
40+
Projects
1400+
Users
72h
Intervals
The solution
Working quickly to ensure their staff’s safety while maintaining their project progression, Growthbuilt engaged Sitepass. To start, Growthbuilt implemented the solution’s pre-qualification and visitor management capabilities on two sites and has since expanded this to all nine active sites, including the Head Office, representing over 1,400 active users who enter and work at these sites.
Sitepass workflows were used to modify onboarding requirements to include necessary training records and COVID-19 documentation including tests and vaccination records. The visitor management system helped to monitor and limit the number of workers on site, as well as restricting access if the worker had not provided an approved COVID-19 vaccination status. The inbuilt messaging features included in Sitepass ensured Growthbuilt could effectively communicate to their 1,300+ workers on site any changes they needed to follow with the new compliance requirements.
The quick pivot and adoption of this new system ensured Growthbuilt remained on track and on budget with minimal disruption to workflow.
The system will work for both mandatory vaccination and non-mandatory vaccination sites, because the aim of the exercise is to have immediate reliable data to assist you to put into action your COVID-19 Safety Plan should a worker present as positive or potentially positive for COVID-19.Don Zakroczymski, Head of WHS&E at Growthbuilt
Client Successes
The success of Growthbuilt’s dynamic response can be narrowed down to three significant processes.
Thorough tracking of personnel ‘status’, vaccination and test results within the customisable workflow.
Each worker has their own personal account within Sitepass that allows them to upload all supporting documentation to their profile, which is then verified by the Site Manager or Safety Manager before being approved in the system.
Forms have been developed to automate worker status based on customisable conditions applied by Growthbuilt. Constraints include being partially or fully vaccinated, periodic COVID-19 tests and results or exemptions. The system will display the status of a worker as being able to access the site or denied access based on real-time information.
The onsite check-in check-out system will allow or deny a worker to enter a site based on their workflow status, alerting the site leader and the safety manager when a team member’s status changes.
Using an objective system without risk of human prejudice ensures consistent safety standards across all sites.
‘Paperwork’ completed digitally by the worker prior to coming to site.
Sitepass is a user-friendly platform, allowing all contractors to update and upload their own license and qualification information autonomously. These documentations are then verified by the Site Manager or Safety Team prior to the onsite induction.
Growthbuilt has measured that they save 2 hours per worker of manhours by pre-checking credentials digitally. This reduces the time spent delivering inductions and interactions during social distancing and ensures all workers are operating with correct credentials.
Communication - Alert workers efficiently and at short notice through one integrated program.
Rapid changes in business processes such as COVID-19 restriction updates was one of the most significant business challenges of the pandemic. Communicating this to staff was just as big a challenge.
Prior to using Sitepass, Growthbuilt had multiple systems to manage their staff, contractors and visitor information, using spreadsheets to capture their contact details. The process was limited to sign-in information only with vaccination and test result data being recorded separately and re-verified manually each day. These predominantly paper-based, and siloed systems were prone to human error and did not talk to each other.
To send an urgent communication alert to the crew on a worksite, it used to take hours to collate contact information and details of who was on site during the exposure window.
This can now be done within the minute of using the customisable reporting dashboard within Sitepass to export a list of workers on site within the specific exposure time, alerting them via email and SMS (including option for non-smartphones and no internet connectivity) immediately and include this information in auditable format.
Sitepass provided Growthbuilt with an up-to-date central register of all contractors, staff, and visitors as well as their contact information. They can send custom messages to the entire workforce from any device, communicate changes in business operations and snap lock downs with emails, messages and SMS alerts.
Sitepass records each sent communication against the user’s profile, ensuring the user can see the messages they have received, giving reassurance to the sender that the message has been delivered and record keeping of all communications and recipients for audit purposes.
In one instance, Growthbuilt were able to notify their workers to start self-isolation and testing measures 3 days before the Public Health Unit contacted them, instructing the same.
Tangible Results
Sitepass has been adopted as the single source of truth for Growthbuilt and will continue to be moving forward. Throughout its implementation they have noticed reduced human errors moving to the digital system and increased efficiency of workflows which have shaped company procedures.
Sitepass as a COVID management solution is a mature and robust system, improved in partnership with Growthbuilt to deal with their response to the pandemic. Proven results from the solution have given confidence to their clients.
“When we show the system to clients, it shows that Growthbuilt goes beyond compliance. Realtime reporting and transparency with clients and our senior leadership team has given confidence to our clients.”
- Don Zakroczymski, Head of WHS&E at Growthbuilt
Their comprehensive ‘check-in and check-out’ data has also assisted the public health units by supplying them with up-to-date current worker information, integral for contact tracing, mitigating significant exposure risks.
A recent visit from the Regulator, WorkSafe NSW to one of the Project Sites, resulted in the following feedback.
A Regulator came to do inspections of our COVID-19 safety plan compliance and asked about the Sitepass QR code. When explained that the check-in code was part of our Visitor Management System and integrated with recording the vaccination status of workers, he said what he saw was akin to industry best practice.Don Zakroczymski, Head of WHS&E at Growthbuilt
Conclusion
Implementing Sitepass early and adopting it to suit their business needs gave Growthbuilt confidence in their compliance measures and a head start on maintaining smart safe business practices. Not only do they have a comprehensive real-time snapshot of worker vaccination status to meet government compliance, but they also have many other measures now in place and constantly monitored to reduce risk and increase efficiency.
Growthbuilt now implement the above processes both internally and on all their worksites. “Employee vaccination status and proof are uploaded into Sitepass. It has become our single source of truth,” Don Zakroczymski, Head of WHS&E Growthbuilt.
