Sitedrive saves supervision’s time and helps identify bottlenecks

Fira Palvelut is a part of the construction company Fira which is active in Finland’s capital area. Fira Palvelut operates side-by-side with Fira and specialises in plumbing replacement. The company uses Sitedrive software that has been designed for scheduling and managing construction sites. Fira Palvelut has been able to identify construction site bottlenecks with this software and make its schedule structures smoother, among other improvements.

Fira was founded in 2002, and Fira Palvelut was added in 2010. Fira Palvelut implements plumbing replacements in different types of locations in Finland’s capital area. The objective of the company has been to renew the construction sector and to break old habits.

“Our original idea was not to focus only on plumbing replacements, but rather to break the 1970s’ habits that dominate the industry in a way that would allow us to renew the industry in some way. This was the principle that we started out with and we have started to set ourselves apart on the markets,” explains Tuomas Hakulinen, Supervisor and Site Manager at Fira Palvelut.

Real-time data always available

Fira Palvelut uses Sitedrive software that was created by Fira’s internal startup with the same name. Sitedrive is a software program for scheduling and managing a construction site. The task situation and resources of the site are available in real time with the software.

“This is possibly one of the first programs that has been designed for the construction site by listening to the construction site and by following the supervisors’ and construction site organisation’s wishes,” Hakulinen describes.
“With Sitedrive, I have resources and tasks as separate blocks.
In this way, I am able to create the smoothest schedule structure possible with the resources I have. During the construction, I can play with even lower levels of one or two weeks. We can react to tasks in real time, move them forward or back by a day or two.

With Sitedrive, I can find the bottlenecks where the schedules stall

“For example, if floor casting is delayed by two days, and I move the task forward by two days in the software, it will calculate the quickest way to continue the work,” Hakulinen explains.

Hakulinen thinks Sitedrive is visually clear and easy to use. According to him, only the elements relevant for the construction industry have been chosen and added to the software, with no unnecessary add-ons. A supervisor can print out a daily “schedule” from the software with the tasks to be done for each contractor or even each worker.

“I can immediately see if a contractor has too few workers or too little work. With Sitedrive, I can find the bottlenecks where the schedules stall. It’s easy for me to react to that one specific issue and not think about the entire project,” Hakulinen stresses.

“Sitedrive releases a significant amount of my time and the rest of the management’s time to take care of other things that facilitate working,” Hakulinen clarifies.