9 months ago, the Team dropped the anchor in the Marine Industry (pun intended).
At the turn of July 2021, we saw Intermarine UK Limited introducing the innDex software platform to their business, reaping the benefits from day one.
We caught up with Nick Mansell, Chartered Engineer and CEO of Intermarine
UK, to discuss all things innDex, and to find out more about his experience using the system.
“As I returned to the Marine Industry following a period working across Transport for London’s 4 Lines Modernisation Project, I was determined to bring as much of the learning from neighbouring industries back to shipbuilding as possible.
I recall huge strides made across my projects in delivering transparency to all our project stakeholders, and how as a Project Manager I was far better equipped to make complex decisions given accurate project performance data.
These principles; total transparency for accurate decision making, alongside the desire to streamline all those processes that everyone knows must be done, but take up so much time were key to wanting to move towards a fully innDex-enabled workforce.”
For me, there are multiple strands which are delivering value for us:
Peace of Mind: As a business leader, I need to know that we are doing our best to do the right thing, not for our bottom line, but for the welfare of our guys and our long term relationships with our clients. innDex supports us in that role.
Across our projects there are a variety of regular inspections and safety critical functions that we support our teams on site with. innDex is helping us coordinate these works with minimum levels of effort.
Let’s be honest, no one wants to chase a production team around a large facility with a piece of scrunched up paper trying to gather signatures on a toolbox talk. If you are operating in this way, ask yourself what really happens to the signed paperwork?
We all know the truth: bottom draw → project file → never to be looked at again. innDex helps us find the gaps, plug them, and ultimately drive improvements across our company.
Data Collection: We are operating a team of around 200 shipyard specialists around the UK and are set to double over the next year. That means a huge amount of data – be it in personnel files, holiday requests, emergency contacts, training records, addresses, briefings etc etc. innDex has supported the organisation to structure the collection of critical data. There’s an old saying – if you can’t measure it, you certainly can’t manage it. So even if we’re not measuring something right now, I know that the structured data collection approach facilitated by the innDex data means that we are only a couple of tweaks to our project dashboard from full transparency.
Culture: At Intermarine UK we want to be crystal clear and transparent for all of our stakeholders; we’re not afraid of the data, regardless of what it shows. The fact of the matter is, we want the data because it provides opportunities for us to learn and improve. innDex has provided the organisation with the opportunity to build a Digital Thread throughout the whole business. This helps us to build solid processes, troubleshoot pinch points and above all, deliver total transparency to our clients.
There are many! For me, I love the bulk clock-in function which is great for our team, enabling our site leaders to submit information and supporting all of us to see at a glance who is on site and who is absent. This is really important for Emergency evacuation and preparedness, which is underpinned by another innDex capability, Roll Call.
I really like the Toolbox Talk function too. These records too often end up in some file at the bottom of a project documentation stack – but they shouldn’t! The records are the key to unlocking value in the whole Site Briefing Activity. It’s an essential part of a modern construction site.
Good Calls – These serve as a great opportunity to highlight the positives as well as negatives across your site. Internal Audit is a really important part of getting better, the Good Call function is great for this.
Just because things are good, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t record it, the whole team needs to understand than good or bad, we need auditable trails. It’s an essential part of the culture of openness we are trying to embed.
I do think that the introduction of innDex, particularly for the delivery of Toolbox Talks and other safety critical briefings has helped to alleviate a lot of the anxiety associated with these tasks.
No more lost sign off sheets, no need to fold multiple sheets of paper into a damp pocket after the nightshift and so on. The ToolBox Talk function enables all of our supervisors to hold all the briefing material in a single accessible location. It’s great!
To be honest, there are always things that can be improved, which is one of the great things about working with the innDex Team. They aren’t our suppliers, they are our partners.
We have an open innovation forum with the innDex developers where we share our ideas and they work through the technical issues, improving the platform for us and other users.
This collaborative spirit helps our team as well; they know that if there is a way to make things flow better they should shout about it and innDex will get it built!
The bulk clock-in function is a great example, introduced because of the Intermarine UK feedback to make the platform more accessible.
There are more ideas in the pipeline so watch this space!
"Marine, Rail, Construction, General Infrastructure Management, the answer is YES, I would recommend innDex. The industry is facing huge resource shortages, we read about it daily in the press.
It's essential that our limited resources are deployed as efficiently as possible to maximise productivity."
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