Improving visibility and consistency across divisions

The Challenge

Barnwood is owned by its employees and comprises three divisions: construction, shopfitting, and general works. The company’s existing project management system, which grew from an email and document management system, was adapted over 20 years to add support for drawings and plant management.  

Barnwood was under pressure from both site teams and its clients to work more efficiently. There was a growing recognition that the tools it was using were no longer up to the job. The company needed a more modern way of working. “We wanted to stay ahead of competitors and we knew we needed a construction-specific solution,” explains Nathanael Challacombe, head of HSQE and sustainability at Barnwood. “That meant a common data environment for our drawings and digitalised on-site processes and forms.”

The Solution

Using Procore has helped Barnwood improve project visibility and transparency across all its divisions. Now, everyone shares the same, up-to-date versions of project information. The company has a full audit trail to help it offer evidence that it complies with necessary standards and regulations. “This is what I like about Procore,” says Challacombe. “It gives us consistency because everyone is following the same process.”

The Results

• Full audit trail of building work to provide evidence of compliance 
• Visibility and transparency across all three divisions
• Full confidence that the most recent versions of drawings are used

A connected approach to drawings 

Barnwood needed to move away from its manual processes for managing drawings. Previously, drawings were emailed to an admin team for sorting. Today, the design team uploads drawings directly to Procore for real-time review and comments. The Procore overlay feature helps users compare drawing versions by highlighting alterations in a different colour. “Our people work more efficiently and collaborate on designs rather than looking for changes,” says Challacombe.

 The Procore drawing register organises Barnwood version-controlled drawings in one place. “It’s great being able to swap between different drawings, whether on the app on site, or on a desktop in the office,” says Challacombe. “We used to have a culture of printing everything off, now we’re only printing by exception.”

Reducing risk and improving site safety

Barnwood uses Procore to keep a detailed and accurate record of completed building work. “Procore helps us with measuring quality,” says Challacombe. “The Procore Inspection tool lets us identify how we’ve built things and helps eliminate any future risk of non-compliance. It helps us follow drawings and comply with the Building Regulations and the Building Safety Act. We get an audit trail of what was built when and how.”

Procore’s observations and inspections tools help Barnwood identify health and safety trends within divisions and in the group as a whole. Challacombe needs to report to the senior management team every month. Before, that was a manual process. “Identifying safety trends is easily done on the reporting tool,” he says. “It’s important to have those leading indicators so we can be proactive about observations and safety reporting.”

Managing quality effectively

Previously, Barnwood would create a quality management plan for each job that was printed in a binder and then pre-printed quality forms that were not applicable, “gathered dust on a shelf”. Now, the site teams use the Procore Forms tool to create fillable PDFs and add photos on the spot. “All the manual admin has gone,” says Challacombe. “Procore helps us prove we are building to the correct standards and provides evidence.”

Barnwood has gained what Challacombe describes as a ‘single source of truth’, whether it’s the RFI register, observations, or snagging lists. Barnwood used to lack a joined-up process for information requests, or RFIs. And each division—and sometimes each contract manager—was using different tools.

The Procore Site Diary lets Barnwood digitalise and track on-site directions and allows it to replace a battered A4 pad that site managers used to record goods received. Instead, that is managed on the app on site, where pictures can be uploaded directly. “We’re better connected,” says Challacombe. “The accounts team downloads reports on particular types of goods centrally.”

Next steps

Procore is helping Barnwood work more effectively and has received positive responses from across the organisation. The next project is to roll out Procore Document Management (PDM) to centralise project documentation. The company is also trialling Procore’s new releases in Resource Management to track, allocate, and manage equipment.

As an employee-led company, the team at Barnwood is fully invested in the company’s success and recognised the need to change its working practices. It can be difficult to make change happen when there is resistance to new ways of working. However, the will to modernise and adopt new technology was already there, and the company was able to partner with Procore to help it achieve its aims.