Leading teams remotely is the norm for managers in the construction and utilities industries. Many businesses in these sectors have multiple projects happening simultaneously, often hundreds of miles apart, meaning managers regularly make crucial decisions on where to place workers, equipment, and other vital resources.
In this blog, we’ll look at some of the most common challenges and opportunities for improvement faced by managers and the ways in which FYLD adds productivity and safety benefits to their daily operations.
Common challenge: Effectively managing remote teams
Teams are more spread out than ever before. And with field worker shortages being experienced across industries and geographies, spans of control to oversee mobile crews continue to increase. It means one manager can expect to be in charge of multiple teams across multiple sites, often hundreds of miles away or in remote locations. It’s not realistic for them to drive from site to site. The result is that many remote site managers rely on phone calls or messages to get an idea of what’s happening on the ground, which can lead to critical details being missed.
FYLD’s solution: Increased visibility
With FYLD, the visibility remote managers enjoy has completely transformed the way our customers work. At the beginning of every day, they receive video risk assessments from all the sites they oversee, with suggested prioritisation of those that they should review first. That gives them visibility from an operational and safety perspective of what’s happening on the ground, and that can be shared up the management chain to regional and operations managers.
Data continues to be captured and shared throughout the day, with updates and evidence collected and acted upon on one platform. No more assessments scribbled on bits of paper, messages across various chat platforms, or irregular phone calls! You can appreciate the effect a transparent and reliable platform like FYLD has on everyday operations.
Common challenge: Resource management
Labour shortages are an industry wide problem across the globe, and it can often be challenging to fill vacant roles as quickly as is required. This can mean managers must make difficult decisions about where they place their people and which projects should be prioritised.
FYLD’s solution: Intelligence-led prioritisation
The information fed into the platform by fieldworkers is the lifeblood of FYLD. Intelligent analytics are applied to all the data to help managers understand where to focus their attention and where their teams or individuals can be best placed for maximum impact. For example, rather than analysing every site individually, the platform analyses the data so that managers can quickly see which sites are the highest risk and if the operators on that site are experienced enough or would benefit from some assistance.
That level of granularity and intelligence is almost impossible to get from traditional methods. And we know that this intelligence is helping our customers make better decisions and make their businesses more productive.
Our platform helps managers get a far better understanding of where they need to focus their attention. Managers have complete visibility of their sites, so they can see where senior people need to be deployed to. For example, a job blocker holding up a whole site will take prioritisation over a less pressing issue on another site, regardless of which crew is being most vocal about the need for help.
FYLD removes the guesswork – our customers know which issues need immediate attention; they make data-driven decisions led by real-time information.
Common challenge: Human error
Everyone makes mistakes. Even the most thorough operatives can miss a potential risk or submit an incomplete assessment. Crews are also often stretched and short on numbers. This means that the fieldworkers on the ground need informed assistance to make sure operations are managed at the highest possible standard.
FYLD’s solution: Augmentation
Far from the dystopian vision of robots replacing humans, FYLD uses technology to augment and enhance the capabilities of workers on the ground. Our artificial intelligence (AI) gives users instant feedback about the environment they’re assessing and control measures to address risks. So, if an operative misses some overhead cables, the AI will pick it up and suggest actions to mitigate the risk. That’s not replacing workers; that’s giving them vital support and upskilling them.
FYLD can help inform all fieldworkers, whether new to the industry or experienced. The platform recognises the workers’ environment from earlier reviews and can push suggestions that might have been missed or that have been acted upon previously with safety measures, meaning that the quality of the assessments by workers of all levels of experience are enhanced. Everything comes back to ensuring people do their jobs as well as they can, receive real time coaching when it is needed, and that they go home safely.
Common challenge: Reactive culture
Overseeing and directing multiple sites spread over hundreds of miles is no easy task. Circumstances and priorities often change by the minute. It means that even the most skilled and experienced managers have to work reactively, developing solutions to complex challenges which can be inefficient and costly. Managers become responsive to their phones, often prioritising the ‘loudest’ crew over the crew most in need of assistance when prioritised by safely delivering the day’s operations.
FYLD’s solution: Proactivity in action
We speak to companies working in construction or utilities constantly, and often even if they are capturing hundreds of pictures of their sites each week, nothing further is being done with that information to enhance or analyse that data. Instead, they are often drowning in data but have no insight.
FYLD is a game changer in this respect – it gives managers the opportunity to lead proactively.
Our customers are using FYLD to spot issues before they become major job blockers. For example, operational managers are looking at the site surveys that come in first thing and sending support crews to the site because they can see that, without help, a job is going to have to stop by midday. That ability to pre-empt issues and address them proactively saves our customers time and money.
Common challenge: Unsuitable technology for fieldworkers
While companies are increasingly equipping their teams with tools and technologies to relay information back to their managers and keep a record of everything on-site, if these tools are unsuitable, unintuitive or poorly designed, no benefit will be gained – we frequently see tools built for the office worker repurposed to the field, not designed for it. Workers who are used to using slick, responsive technology in their personal lives can grow frustrated if their workplace tech is not of a similar standard.
FYLD’s solution: Tech designed for fieldworkers
FYLD has been built with fieldworkers for fieldworkers from the very beginning. With their needs anticipated, the benefits are immediately clear. We optimise usability, productivity, eradicate accidents, and save our customers time and money. We have done this by building human-centric technology – 100% optimised for fieldwork efficiency – that is proven to truly help and empower workers in the field.