MyPass recently hosted a roundtable event to connect industry leaders and listen to the "Contractor’s Perspective" on reducing operational costs and driving productivity through collaboration and innovation.
Here are the seven key takeaways from the discussion:
Building and maintaining trust is fundamental to successful partnerships between hiring clients and their contractors. Alignment needs to happen at all levels, from the executive through to the workers at the coalface. Whilst this can be challenging to achieve with turnover of hiring client and contractor staff, creating win-win outcomes from a position of trust is the first essential building block towards success. The right mindset to have is ‘for the client to be successful, the contractor needs to be successful”.
Rewarding productivity and safety improvements is a great way to create alignment of desired outcomes. Instead of arm's-length, ‘power by the hour,’ labour hire style engagements, UGL and Applus+ shared examples of where target cost estimates and unit-rate commercial models have resulted in total cost reduction for their clients. The learnings from completing similar work scopes were then applied to other locations. This approach requires more detailed planning to take place, but it creates a baseline to then continually improve upon. And the good news is that top performers on your site will be intrinsically motivated to beat a target, whether it be time, cost, quality or safety!
Ineffective planning as a key contributor to downstream inefficiencies has been a key theme at previous MyPass roundtable events. A vicious cycle is created when planning is not thorough, and work scopes are not locked down in advance of the shutdown, turnaround, project or campaign. To compensate for poor planning, Planners build a buffer into their resource requests, then contractors over provision to cater for drop-offs. This ‘double buffer’ means that casual workers can be declined work at the last minute, so it is not surprising that they hedge their bets by saying “yes” to multiple overlapping jobs. Often work schedules are thrown out on day two of the project because not enough workers have turned up. This leads to increased planning buffers the next time around, which reinforces this inefficient cycle. The solution is simple - plan better (ideally with integrated contractor teams), and adhere to program lock dates. Hiring competent Planners is not so simple, but it is worth every cent.
Industry-level scheduling will help to avoid resource conflicts and create better outcomes for workers, contractors and their hiring clients. A central calendar of key shutdown, turnaround and project dates would enable better resource coordination across companies. This would lead to less sparring over skilled and semi-skilled workers within the region and create job security for workers through continuous rosters throughout the year.
A further benefit of synchronising major works through a central calendar, is that it would level the playing field for smaller operators that are currently competing against larger players with established core teams. Local governments or governing industry bodies could be the central, coordinating forces. If the Gladstone Engineering Alliance (GEA) can achieve this, then why not others?
Mobilisation of workers has improved significantly for those organisations who are prepared to move away from spreadsheets and embrace the latest technology. Applus+ is a great example of an innovative company that has invested in MyPass to manage its permanent, core, casual and contingent worker pools. Using MyPass’s Resourcing Module, they proactively support their national client base to ensure that the right workers with the right skills are deployed.
The result is “mobilisation compliance at 100%, 100% of the time”. Applus+ removed their dependence upon highly skilled mobilisation coordinators and have managed to re-allocate nearly 80% of that team onto higher-value-adding activities.
