How to turn paper records into more reliable digital ones, efficiently: the Serviam case

Serviam is a company working in road construction and in the maintenance of primary and secondary road networks. It also operates in road safety, in horizontal and vertical road signage. Its work covers contracts in both the public and private sectors, and it operates within a broad network of suppliers of fuels and oils, construction materials and machinery, among other supplies and construction and roadway technologies. 

The wide geographic reach of its operations means moving machinery, running projects and assembling work crews in distant places, all at the same time. That creates constant needs around coordinating, moving and tracking supplies, across several work fronts and several operational levels at once. An operation on this scale creates specific organizational needs and calls for rigorous control tied to the cost and volume of its machinery and materials. 

The challenge: turning paper records into digital records that can be trusted

Before GDW Fleet was implemented, Serviam had no centralized, real-time information capable of keeping up with its growing operations. Road construction, by its scale, demands large volumes of fuel, covers distant regions simultaneously, and uses machinery with specific maintenance needs. 

Information was tracked on paper records and spreadsheets, which generated extra administrative hours, errors, and even the possibility of supplies such as fuel going missing, given how loose the controls were. 

The solution: traceability of fuel purchases and use, and better machinery performance and maintenance thanks to GDW Fleet

GDW Fleet offers tailored solutions that optimize project costs and raise productivity for construction companies. By recording their work in the software, designed specifically by GoDoWorks, field crews stay connected and an up-to-date record of activity is built, which makes it possible to trace assets, machinery, supplies, fuels and oils with nothing left out. 

Fuel deliveries are verified at origin and destination, which allows the balances of each project and each entity to be audited. Consumption per machine is recorded, so its behavior can be better understood and its maintenance supported; faults and inefficiencies get detected and the useful life of company assets is extended. 

All the data GDW Fleet produces comes from the connectivity of the field crews' mobile devices; that keeps control in place across any geographic spread and across a variety of field situations, and lets supervisors receive real-time data updates on a single platform with no administrative rework. 

The platform is also a tailored solution that takes into account the specific needs of each company's operation.

The benefits achieved at Serviam

Doing away with paper records saved administrative time and removed the errors that come with that format, which is easily lost and brings countless drawbacks (it is heavy, bulky, it has to be stored, and so on).

The GDW Fleet software lets Serviam's supervisors and managers trace fuel deliveries and fuel purchases in real time. From that information, and from the activity of the site machinery, they get precise data on fuel consumption per project, fuel consumption per machine, and on performance indicators such as liters of fuel per hour or liters per kilometer for every machine in the company. 

That gives a fresh view of the operational performance of the company's equipment and makes it possible to know, monitor and improve productivity, by spotting anomalous performance and abnormal consumption and tracing them back. 

Given the scale of Serviam's operations, which involve using and distributing hundreds of thousands of liters of fuel, knowing and optimizing that use translates into significant savings. In other words, capturing this data digitally through the GoDoWorks tool supports well-founded, timely decisions grounded in real knowledge. 

GDW Fleet was integrated with the company's fuel purchasing system so the full path of the fuel could be reconstructed — whether to an internal depot or to a machine that bought directly at a service station — and it captures every delivery to the different machines and projects. 

On the  machinery maintenance side, operators can report faults through the software; their supervisor gets an electronic alert that lets them resolve problems more effectively and in less time. Maintenance staff receive notifications that keep them informed about the condition of each machine and warn them in good time when a check or a mechanical fix is needed. That helps both the useful life of company assets and safety.  

Optimizing working time, company resources and their maintenance translates into higher productivity and assured quality. 

The way Serviam and GoDoWorks worked together allowed for broad collaboration, made easier by our understanding of what construction and civil works require and by adapting our digital tool to the specifics of roadway work. 

In summary, the benefits were:

• Information centralized on a single platform.
• Less administrative time thanks to the end of paper records.
• Greater reliability in information records, now digital. 
• Traceability of fuel purchases and distribution, delivering savings and preventing losses. 
• Better machinery maintenance from knowing how it performs, detecting anomalous behavior and creating the chance to repair in good time.
• Real-time knowledge of fuel consumption and performance per project and per machine, supporting management decisions and improving productivity.
• An overall rise in productivity and assured quality.

Serviam's experience with GDW 

"Thanks to GDW Fleet we managed to consolidate data on a single platform, it let us improve how we manage machinery maintenance, gain control over fuel consumption in real time and speed up data capture through mobile devices, helping us do away with paper records."

Faustina Keuliyan, Project Director | Serviam