Procore helps Benmax deliver business-wide consistency

Over the years, Benmax was focused on moving manual business processes into an internal project management system. It wanted to reduce the number of spreadsheets and documentation that needed printing, faxing and scanning. As each of the company’s five offices rolled-out, the local team bedded down its own way of doing things.

“This meant a lack of consistency across all of our projects and locations,” said Steve Watt, General Manager Construction at Benmax A.C.T. headquarters. “We could not audit projects and know whether errors were being made. And without one central platform, we still had some staff opting to do things their way rather than embracing the technology solutions we had put in place.”

Now that Benmax is using Procore, it has solved its primary challenge - a lack of consistency across projects and teams. The company today has implemented Project Management, Quality & Safety, Equipment Management and Project Financials – and is currently expanding its long-term use of Analytics company-wide.

“Benmax now has a clear line of sight into profit identification, accurate reporting and a company-wide consistent approach to document control,” he outlined.

With Procore’s equipment management tool, the days of team members having to remember the name of pieces of equipment and then update the spreadsheet on site are a thing of the past.

“We can track equipment selection through to procurement these days. The team can better match updated service reports to each piece of equipment which is a huge time saver,” he said.

Project management with Procore today replaces the multiple handling processes of carbon copy handwritten purchase orders.

“Electronic purchase orders attached to emails are now directly embedded into budgets. There is no such thing as a lack of data entry or surprises now.”

Before using Procore Quality & Safety, Benmax followed a manual process of identifying and reporting site incidents. Today, forms have been standardised into writeable PDF documents allowing the team to respond much more quickly than before.

However, the most transformative aspect of quality and safety has seen Benmax adopt a new use of its toolbox tools in the age of COVID-19. It has replaced manual systems with digital document templates and video.

“The health of our team is so vitally important at this time. We are replacing the need to fill in forms and physically use pens provided by other people to sign documents with new-look digital and video reports. This gives us the coverage we need for any issues and keeps each one of our staff on their own device. It gives us greater peace of mind,” he confided.

According to Steve, Procore technology will support business continuity for Benmax. “Now that we have consistent reporting and analytics across the company, the next logical step is to undertake a deeper analysis of this data to benefit every function. With project financials, we can record and track our costs better, and this is leading to better cash flow.”

“Procore Analytics can make sure we know who is using the platform, what tools they are using, and how accurate our financials are. These management reports then become vital to supporting more informed decisions for the Board,“ Steve commented.

Benmax has a strong focus on training.

“Each office built a 'Procore Champion', and this super-user helped others to make better use of the platform. Our ‘Procore Champions’ were rewarded with a trip to Groundbreak,” said Martine Evans, Project Administrator and training supervisor.

For Scott Polsen, Managing Director, Procore has enabled a new transparent layer of business intelligence for construction management. “Location is no longer relevant as Procore has produced a centralised construction management system for the team to have 100% visibility across everything we do.”