Otto Building Technologies keeps track of employees’ work locations

In 2015, project manager Matthias Faust, responsible for assembly management at the Cologne branch, was looking for time recording software and came across the program from Lohner Softwarehaus 123onsite through extensive internet research. The project manager explains: “123onsite was state of the art and met our requirements for Time tracking, Photo documentation and Reporting exactly.” Previously, the monthly reports were written by hand by the installers or partly created via an Excel spreadsheet. The processing was very time-consuming for the HR department and also prone to errors. With 123onsite, times, expenses and absences are now recorded digitally and can therefore be processed directly.

Successive introduction

Matthias Faust and Steffen Schmidt, Head of IT and Occupational Safety, tested the program intensively. Afterwards, they instructed their colleagues at the Cologne branch in the use of the software by means of a pilot project. After six months, the decision was made to gradually integrate other locations. Today, fitters, site and project managers, designers and administrative staff all record their times using 123onsite.

The system is also used to record expenses and apply for leave. In the case of sick leave, either the supervisor or the team assistant enters the reported times. The assembly managers check the hours and expenses entered by the employees for the previous month and then approve the data for the HR department. At present, the employees in the HR department still enter the hours manually into the payroll accounting program using an Excel export from 123onsite. In future, the data will be transferred automatically via an interface.

If there are any changes, the app informs the relevant employees via push message. In this way, not only long-term assignments but also short-term changes are documented in a time-saving and audit-proof manner and communicated with the respective persons.

Defect and quality management integrated

Otto works with a total of 720 licenses from 123onsite. In 2020, the company expanded the system to include the defect and quality management app 123quality and acquired 100 licenses for it. The solution is integrated into 123onsite and only had to be activated for the relevant users.

With 123quality, the user quickly photographs a defect and speaks on the mobile phone what needs to be done. He locates the tasks on the digital construction plan and assigns them to the responsible employee or subcontractor with just a few taps. Different types of tickets such as tasks, defects, file notes, obstructions or performance determinations are created quickly this way. The entire process of digital defect recording, tracking and rectification is thus standardized, documented in a clearly comprehensible manner and leads to significantly better quality in execution.

Photo documentation and Reporting

Every day, the colleagues on the construction site document the construction progress, but also any obstructions caused by other trades, by photo and comments. The latter is immediately forwarded to the client. This simplifies the documentation immensely, because all photos and related information are automatically assigned to the relevant project, construction area and component. To ensure that all information is included in the daily construction report, the medium-sized company had an individual report programmed by the software company. The information entered in 123quality is transferred to this report, so that the daily tickets are also included for documentation purposes.

The building services experts place photos of the defects on the corresponding floor plans. Site manager Sebastian Garbotz comments: “I forward the ticket to the subcontractor with the order to work off the defect, and I don’t have to meet with him on site.”

Project manager Matthias Faust also uses 123quality to support the preparation of quotations for supplementary work. To do this, he takes measurements and special features on site, photographs the situation and adds individual comments to the information. This information helps Faust to prepare the offer. Based on the photos, he has the localities in front of his eyes.

Transparent construction reports

Since the introduction of the solutions from 123onsite, the reporting significantly improved. The entire Time tracking process and the checking of entries are much simpler. In the past, the photos were sent thorugh WhatsApp or by e-mail and had to be stored in the correct folder on the computer. Now, the photo is available with categorization, local assignment based on the construction part and the construction area with text, date and time and is automatically inserted into the construction day report.

As the user interface of both solutions is the same, employees do not have to familiarize themselves with a second system and only have to remember their user name and password once. The advantages result from the digitalization of the time recording process and the entire documentation. Transparency, time savings, better utilization of construction sites and clear and informative daily construction reports reduce the number of queries.

About Otto Building Technologies

Since its foundation in 1967, the medium-sized company for sophisticated concepts and solutions in the fields of ventilation and air-conditioning technology, refrigeration technology, building automation and electrical engineering has grown steadily. Today, 900 employees provide customized building technology concepts. The customer base includes manufacturing companies as well as hotels, shopping centers, museums, universities, hospitals, administrative buildings and opera houses.

Image credits: 123onsite/Timo Lutz Advertising Photography.