Active Crane Hire was established in 2001 and specialises in the dry hire of tower cranes. With offices in New South Wales and Queensland as well as partners in Melbourne, Active Crane Hire are leaders in their field. They take pride in their team and focus on providing the perfect match between experience and youth, whilst being open to new ideas and technologies to stay competitive in the industry. Current projects include the Taronga Zoo Convention Centre, an aged care facility in Five Dock as well as residential work across Sydney with up to 15 floors high. With over 170 cranes, Active Crane Hire trusts Assignar to manage the maintenance of its fleet.
Compliance management and accessibility
Our workforce grew from 3 to 35 people and we were consistently adding more tower cranes to our fleet. So, I started looking for an online data management system to keep up with compliance within our industry. Prior to using Assignar, we managed the maintenance of our cranes through excel sheets and self-created forms that technicians could access from the desktop in the office. All machine-related documents, maintenance records, and registrations for WorkSafe were stored on the computer. I knew that collaboration tools such as dropbox and google drive could create accessibility but it wasn’t a full end-to-end solution. Now, with Assignar all our detailed maintenance and full-service records are digitally stored on the platform. This assists our business as our clients require us to show that our fleet is well maintained and showcase the systems we have in place to manage that process. Having a digital audit trail of our maintenance and service work is also beneficial for any onsite visits from WorkCover.
Core platform to store our information
We store our important documentation and information in Assignar. All team members from the sales team to technicians get the information they need on the go and in real-time. Our sales team are also skilled technicians, so they can access project data such as crane-based designs, crane installation and dismantle information, and crane configurations for quotes and invoices via the app. The whole team can view any information they need and do their work out on the field instead of in the office- it is like a library!
Our technicians submit digital service and maintenance forms via the mobile app. Once submitted our service maintenance manager gets an email of the form results and actions on any items flagged as red.
As the Managing Director, Assignar gives me visibility into all our projects from a high level and a granular one. Service dockets submitted have the date, time and location logged, so we can track the time our technicians were onsite and charge accurately.
Prior to using Assignar, the service dockets would need to come when the vehicle was returned to the yard, then to our admin staff, and lastly to me for approval. Now, all the necessary information we need to invoice out to our clients is collected in real-time via the mobile app and all stakeholders have visibility via the dashboard.
“We have saved 1-2 weeks in the data collection and approval process of service dockets, prior to exporting that data out to MYOB for invoicing.”
Assignar and our team
Our team at Active Crane Hire are aged between their mid-20s to 40s, so using phones and downloading apps for them was just normal. There wasn’t any backlash. One of the big advantages of Assignar is that it is a really simple app. Sometimes, sitting behind a computer can be more challenging to teach and learn but mobile apps are just used every day in people’s lives now.
The key to successfully implementing Assignar is managing expectations and understanding change takes time. In the beginning, there is a double-up as we implemented a new system and maintained manual processes but as we transitioned over we saw the efficiencies digitization brought our business.
I spent time doing one on one training with our Customer Success Manager and she assisted us with the digital form creation in Assignar. Then our Operations Manager had training on the system and together we created a test project where the team could learn how to submit digital forms. This way, we could train our technicians on particular tasks, prior to launching Assignar as the standard process. The Assignar team is great! Whenever we need anything they are always there to help.
