CU Jan-Feb 2020

CASEstudy
Before and after shots of a recent Durkan New
Homes development, Manor Place in
Elephant & Castle. EasyBuild was
originally developed exclusively for
the Durkan Group
be completed).
Besides the comprehensive workforce
management solution, EasyBuild's ERP
for the service and maintenance sector
includes fully integrated invoicing, which
handles both scheduled and reactive
maintenance tasks, and keeps an
audited asset history that details tasks,
dates, contractor or employee, and other
costs - repair, replacement or standard
maintenance of components. The service
and maintenance solution is also used
for defects management and snagging.
each discipline, snagging and defects
that need to be completed before
handover, or a levy to cover the cost of
defect repair. And, of course, the cost of
labour, material, and plant.
THE WORKFORCE AND CIS
COMPLIANCE
Just as important as CVR is CIS
compliance - the UK Government's
Construction Industry Scheme, which
establishes the standards under which
construction workers are to be employed.
Besides ensuring that changing
employment regulations are always
maintained, an ERP system will maintain
up to date details of employment and
qualifications of all employees, and, upon
entering the workforce will be subject to
auto-enrolment under the government's
pension plans.
HOUSEBUILDING COMPANIES
Housebuilding is another fascinating
area, and EasyBuild has developed
components within its housebuilding
module to cater for the multiplicity of
clients - house buyers - and the
employment of freelance tradesmen on
each property. It does this by listing each
property on an estate, providing
information on its release, reservation,
exchange, legal completion and postsale
requirements, all of which feed
directly into the service and maintenance
solution.
All very natural, but it goes further than
that by managing incoming sales
enquiries and matching them with
available properties. The database also
includes supporting information so that
the sales office can easily identify the
status of each process. It can also be
used for scheduling ground rent billing.
Housebuilders typically develop
projects on multiple sites. Having a
suitable ERP solution like EasyBuild
allows them to allocate plant costs
between the builder's yard and individual
properties, and to allocate costs
accordingly to each property or site. It
even goes as far as allowing users to
segregate costs between tangible assets
like cement mixers and aggregated stock
like scaffolding boards.
SERVICE AND MAINTENANCE
Mobile working is key here, as it provides
cost benefits to the organisation to allow
engineers to start their jobs directly from
leaving home, rather than requiring costly
trips to the main office to pick up paper
jobsheets, for example.
An ERP solution for service and
maintenance companies has to provide
mobile technology, not least because of
the need to respond to a schedule of
planned and reactive maintenance tasks
and report on their completion.
EasyBuild operates on a traffic light-style
Service Level Agreement (SLA) system,
where each task has an associated
completion time against which progress
can be monitored (it's actually a fivecolour
SLA which can be used to
represent time left until a task should
CLIENTS AND SUPPLY CHAIN
EasyBuild has four main modules
underlying the three solutions:
Accountancy, Project Management,
Admin and HR, and Clients and Supply
Chain. Whilst the first three are selfevident,
the latter supports marketing,
CRM activities, the management of
communications with clients,
subcontractors and service providers. It
supports things like cumulative invoices
based on architects' certificates, and
provides a drill-down facility for the
provision of reports, outstanding
retention monies and standard debtor
management.
The module also allows the creation and
management of lists of engineers,
architects other professionals,
companies and suppliers and maintain.
It also maintains record expertise,
qualifications, consultant orders and
professional indemnity insurances.
Backed up by an Oracle database and
professional document and report
production, it is evident that EasyBuild
has developed comprehensive ERP
solutions that meet the needs of three
important sectors of the construction
industry.
The challenge to come, however, will be
the changing regulations over the next
couple of years as the UK reorganises its
operating procedures following Brexit.
Ensuring that clients and customers are
kept informed of critical changes in the
industry and keeping software up to date
and complicit is another critical element
of an ERP system - one that EasyBuild is
in a perfect position to meet.
www.easybuilduk.com
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