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

Emil Tepe GmbH from Dinklage in Lower Saxony is focusing heavily on digitalization in construction. In 1931, Emil Tepe founded his electrical installation, plumbing and heating company in the midst of the economic crisis of the time and showed entrepreneurial foresight even then. Today, the electrical company employs 150 people across all divisions at its sites in Dinklage and Bissendorf. The company installs 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 speed and flexibility and functionalities were missing, the company started looking for a new program and was found at 123onsite.de GmbH found what they were looking for. Since 2015, the company’s cable and pipe network construction department has been using the software 123onsite in use – not only for Time trackingbut increasingly for mobile project documentation.

Since then, every employee logs on to 123onsite in the morning, registers at the construction site and books his attendance time. The system completes the recorded hours using the stored information and transmits the entered data to the office application. As driving and working times sometimes diverge, Tepe GmbH has had the software programmed in such a way that colleagues can clock out within a variably defined radius of the construction site, controlled by GPS.

Special features? No problem for 123onsite

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

Configure individual forms easily

The advantage for the company in Lower Saxony is that it can easily easily configure its forms by by adapting the existing templates to its requirements. By specifying mandatory fields, selecting the master data, validating the data and specifying the sequence and type of entry fields, the forms are clearly laid out right from the input stage. The company already records all the technical data of a gas connection digitally. The components are provided with an EAN or QR code, which the employees read into the form on site.

Once the construction work has been completed, it is no longer possible to inspect the work as the excavated trenches have been closed. For this reason, some network operators require the individual work steps to be documented with photos for billing purposes. This is ensured by a mandatory field for photos in the forms. Thomas Gröne adds: ” We work in telecommunications stations to which other companies also have access. That’s why we document the condition of the premises with photos during the inspection to ensure our security. ” There are also plans to automatically clock out when a photo of the construction site safety equipment has been added to the form.

Time savings and error minimization through 123onsite

The benefits clearly lie in the enormous time savings and the minimization of errors. After digital recording 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 import the data for cost calculation. This means that every project can be quickly recalculated using exact figures and the data can be used to calculate new projects.

Fast and efficient support

As the North German electrical engineering company, like other companies, has problems recruiting new staff, it is taking intensive care of its current workforce. IT training is the order of the day and any problems that arise at short notice are resolved as quickly as possible. “If, for example, something doesn’t work when handling the forms, we take care of it by the next day so that our colleagues can work optimally again,” says Gröne. This approach is greatly appreciated by the employees and is supported by the comprehensive support from 123onsite makes it possible.

Picture credits: 123onsite/Timo Lutz Werbefotografie.