Checklists, acceptance protocols and more – digital forms at Emil Tepe

Emil Tepe GmbH, based in Dinklage, Lower Saxony, is focusing strongly on digitization in construction. In 1931, in the midst of the economic crisis of the time, Emil Tepe founded his business for electrical installation, plumbing and heating construction, showing entrepreneurial foresight even then. Today, the electrical company employs 150 people across all divisions at its sites in Dinklage and Bissendorf. The company provides house connections for gas, water, electricity and telecommunications within a radius of 40 km around Dinklage on behalf of the regional network operators. It also carries out installations in the fiber-optic network in the area between Oldenburg and Herford.

123onsite implements requirements quickly and flexibly

Since the development of the existing time recording software was not progressing at the desired pace and flexibility and was lacking functionalities, the company started looking for a new program and was successful in finding one at
123onsite.com GmbH
found what they were looking for. Since 2015, the company’s cable and pipe network construction department has now software
123onsite
in use – not only for
Time tracking
but increasingly for
mobile project documentation
.

Since then, each employee logs into 123onsite in the morning, logs in at the construction site and
books his attendance time
. The system completes the recorded hours via the stored information and transmits the entered data to the office application. Since driving and working times sometimes diverge, Tepe GmbH has had the software programmed in such a way that the colleagues can punch “closing time” in a variably defined radius from the construction site under GPS control.

Special features? No problem for 123onsite

Dipl.-Ing. Thomas Gröne, responsible for coordinating the house connections, manages ten to fourteen teams every day. That usually means 10 to 20 orders that are processed by the individual teams every day. The special feature here is that for each house connection, accounts have to be prepared for the various telecommunications service providers. In other words, a house connection can result in up to eight statements. These must contain not only the commercial billing items, but also all the technical data. In addition, there is extensive documentation of the construction sites. Thanks to 123onsite, this detailed data collection is easily done. Within the app you can
individual forms
can be created for numerous possibilities. All relevant items per house connection are thus quickly summarized on the construction site and can be viewed in the office application for checking.

Configure individual forms easily

The advantage for the Lower Saxony company is that it can easily configure its forms simply by adapting the by adapting the existing templates to its requirements. By specifying mandatory fields, selecting master data, validating data, and specifying the order and type of data entry fields, the forms are clearly designed as soon as they are entered. The company already records all the technical data of a gas connection digitally. The components are marked with an EAN or QR code, which the employees read into the form on site.

After the completion of the construction work is no longer possible to check the work, because the excavated trenches were closed. For this reason, some network operators require the individual work steps to be documented by means of photos for billing purposes. This is ensured by a mandatory field for photos in the forms. Thomas Gröne adds, “We work in telecommunication stations to which other companies also have access. That is why we document the condition of the premises by photo during the inspection for our protection.“There are also plans to automatically clock out when a photo of site security is posted to the form.

Time savings and error minimization with 123onsite

The benefit clearly lies in the enormous time savings as well as the error minimization. After digital capture by the employee on the construction site, the information is immediately available in the office for further processing. Emil Tepe GmbH also uses interfaces to read in the data for cost calculation. In this way, each project can be quickly recalculated on the basis of exact figures and the data can be used for the calculation of new projects.

Fast and efficient support

Since the northern German electrical company, like other companies, has problems with young talent, it takes great care of its current staff. IT training is the order of the day and problems that arise at short notice are also rectified as quickly as possible. “If, for example, something does not work in the handling of the forms, we take care of it until the next day, so that the colleagues can work optimally again” says Gröne. This approach is highly appreciated by the employees and is supported by the
comprehensive support from 123onsite.
made possible.

Image credits: 123onsite/Timo Lutz Advertising Photography.