The WXT Data Centre project is a strong example of what Dornan is capable of. A 77 MW hyperscale facility, it set a benchmark for speed, moving from first piling in the ground to early floor access for the client faster than comparable projects of its scale. Shane Crilly, who led on compliance and EHS delivery for the project, describes the challenge clearly. His role was to get the right procedures in place from the start, then make sure they were followed through to the end.

On a project of this complexity, with up to 1,650 people on site at peak, that is no small task. Over the course of the project, the team ran 5,600 inductions, raised over 12,000 permits, completed 820 EHS inspection reports, captured 1,400 good calls and uploaded over 650 RAMS. innDex sat at the centre of all of it.

FROM PERMIT BOOKS TO A PLATFORM BUILT FOR SCALE.

Before innDex was adopted, the project had been running under a different contractor who managed permits through physical permit books. Each morning, contractors queued at the site office between 8 and 9am to get their permits signed off by a designated permit issuer. That person had one hour to process everything before returning to their primary job for the rest of the day.

Shane reflected on what that meant in practice. "You have essentially everybody trying to get permits approved within the first hour. Is it just a tick box exercise? How much value would you really get from that?" Outside of that window, no permits were issued. There was a single point of contact, a single window of time, and no flexibility built into the system.

When Dornan took over as principal contractor, the approach changed. Rather than concentrating permit approval into one fraught hour each morning, the team asked for permits to be submitted the day before. This gave area owners and construction managers time to properly review what was coming, request changes where needed, and approve work without holding things up on the day. Critically, approvals could happen remotely, meaning the right person could sign off the right permit from wherever they were, rather than everyone converging on the same office at the same time.

"The subject matter experts were able to sign off the permits for each discipline," Shane explained. "It kept the flow of work moving."

12,000 PERMITS. EVERY ONE TRACEABLE.

Over the life of the project, the team raised more than 12,000 permits through innDex. These covered control of access, lifting operations, hot works, excavation, out-of-hours working during the week, and weekend working, with individual permits raised for each contractor, each day. At peak, with over 1,600 people on site, the volume was simply a reflection of how the project operated.

What made that volume manageable was traceability. Every permit carried a full record: when it was raised, who raised it, when it was approved, the duration of the works, the location, and when it was closed out. That detail mattered more than once.

Shane described one instance where a historic permit was needed for a contractor who had already left the project. "In the instance of a permit book, would we have had traceability? I'd say we'd have gone down rabbit holes looking for that book." With innDex, the permit was pulled up within minutes, complete with all the original detail, undamaged and exactly as it had been on the day it was approved. "It was as good as the day it was approved," he said.

Close-out was another area where the digital approach made a real difference. With a paper permit book, the expectation that every contractor would return to site at the end of their working day to formally close out a permit was, in practice, unrealistic. "People have left the project on their way home and remember to close out the permit. Ordinarily, they weren't going to turn the car around, drive back to the project, lift the boot and get the permit closed out." The platform closed that loop cleanly.

SELF-SUFFICIENT INDUCTIONS AT SCALE.

With up to 1,650 people moving through the project and 5,600 inductions completed in total, getting people onto site quickly and compliantly was a significant logistical challenge. innDex made that process largely self-managing.

Once the induction link was circulated and the induction poster was up, workers could complete their online induction and book their slot without any resource from the site team. They uploaded their documentation, including CSCS cards, right to work evidence, manual handling certificates, first aid qualifications and any other relevant competencies, directly through the platform. The team could review submissions, request additional information or corrections, and track everything in one place before anyone arrived on site.

"There's no telling how much time you'd normally spend hand-holding people through that process," Shane said. "With innDex, they essentially worked it out themselves." The admin that would normally sit with the site team, chasing email addresses, collecting documents, manually entering records, was removed almost entirely.

The platform also enforced standards automatically. If a worker's competency expired, the turnstile recognised their face but denied access. If someone had not been on site in the previous four weeks, a reinduction was required before they could return. On this project where the client held high standards and workers often moved between multiple sites with varying requirements, that hard stop mattered. "There was no grey area. Whereas if you're relying on a training matrix, is it updated? Has somebody overlooked it? The platform captured that."

ONE PLATFORM. MANY MOVING PARTS.

Permits and inductions were the backbone of Dornan's use of innDex on WXT, but the platform supported a wider range of operations across the project.

RAMS that had been approved through the client's platform were added into innDex so that everyone with the app, that is, everyone who had completed an induction, had immediate access to the approved copies. Rather than chasing documents or relying on someone to share the right version at the right time, any worker who needed to check a method statement could do it directly from their phone.

Site messaging replaced what would otherwise have been a sprawling network of WhatsApp groups. Shane described it as an underrated feature. Being able to reach everyone on site that day, everyone inducted into the project, or a specific company or subcontractor, at the click of a button, without needing to manage contact lists or separate group chats, created a cleaner and more accountable communication record.

The plant and equipment register was also managed through innDex, both as a central record of what was on site and as the platform for pre-use inspections. During the period when connectivity was lost inside the building, the team reverted to paper-based inspection records. The comparison was telling. Digital records showed exactly when something was last inspected and by whom. Paper records depended on legibility, correct serial numbers and someone physically collating return packs at the end of the week. "Some of it, as you can imagine, it's been done outside. It's been done with a bad pen. It's been done in wet weather. It's messy," Shane said.

EHS inspections and observations were also tracked through the platform, with Power BI dashboards giving the team visibility of open actions, close-out progress and trends across the project.

ADOPTION: A SHORT WINDOW OF RESISTANCE.

Getting a large and varied workforce onto a digital platform is rarely friction-free. On WXT, there was a short period of pushback, particularly from more experienced workers who were less comfortable with the technology. Shane described the approach directly: "If you don't get on board, you won't have a permit."

That firmness, combined with the straightforwardness of the platform itself, meant the resistance was short-lived. Workers who made mistakes early in the process learned quickly. "Once they'd done it the first, second time, after a short period of time, there wasn't anybody who wasn't able to do it themselves." The pain of the transition was real but brief, and the consistency that followed was worth it.

PERMITS AT SCALE. COMPLIANCE WITHOUT COMPROMISE.

The WXT Data Centre project is a demonstration of what innDex can do when the demands are high and the stakes are real. Over 12,000 permits, 5,600 inductions, 820 EHS inspections, 1,400 good calls and 650 RAMS, all managed through one platform, on one of the fastest-delivered hyperscale data centres in the UK.

For Dornan, the value was not just in the numbers. It was in the certainty. Knowing that every permit was traceable, every competency was verified, every worker on site had been properly inducted, and every piece of documentation could be pulled up in minutes rather than hunted down across folders, books and filing systems. "It was a hard stop. There was no grey area."

That is what compliance at scale looks like. And on WXT, innDex delivered it.

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