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It might be time to take a closer look at the actual headcount at your construction sites. With large contractors hiring hundreds of thousands of workers across sites, it’s almost certain that tracking headcount is error prone. Today’s construction sites are as vulnerable to theft and pilferage as they are to the more serious issue of payroll fraud. If you’re still using outdated methods of workforce management, you may be paying more than you need to.
Construction site access control and attendance is largely still logged manually or at best tracked via excel spreadsheets. There are many problems with manual attendance systems. We’ve identified the top five problems that might be directly impacting your bottom line.
Construction site access control and attendance is largely still logged manually or at best tracked via excel spreadsheets. There are many problems with manual attendance systems. We’ve identified the top five problems that might be directly impacting your bottom line.
Loss of true man-hours
Manual tracking of attendance doesn’t account for variance in work hours and shifts. If you were managing a construction site with over 3000 workers, would you know if 200 slipped away over the course of the day after clocking-in? Or would you know how many of your workers spent hours idling at your site; either grabbing a power nap or scrolling through social media during working hours? Now imagine monitoring this for your workforce that is executing an infrastructure project like a highway or bridge construction with no established physical boundaries.
Great project managers with incorrect data
Attendance data captured manually and shared with project managers, consultants and developers is almost always an inaccurate predictor of true productivity. What ends up happening is that developers and consultants have a false and more optimistic dashboard of manpower and therefore, productivity. These inaccuracies then get propagated through the entire reporting system and project managers end up making decisions based on false data.
Time consuming and inefficient
The third major problem with the manual approach is that it’s inefficient and time-consuming. Too much time is spent generating reports. Data entry, reporting and headcount management is an unproductive use of time for site administrators. Contractors spend a lot of time and money just making sure workers show up.
Not knowing who is working on your project
Construction sites are easy targets for vandalism. They are littered with high value items. Most sites are also poorly lit with limited security manning at night. A large number of sites do not have a physical boundary wall. Couple this with 100’s of unknown workers entering and leaving the work site every day. Theft from construction sites is a serious issue, and it costs contractors a lot of money each year.
The ideal scenario for payroll fraud
In many cases workers are paid by cash, leaving no paper trail liking them to the job site. With no way to prove their identity or absence from the job site, labour contractors could be knowingly or unknowingly paying for ghost workers.
If you want to truly drive productivity and efficiency, there is only one way to do it: Automation. With the rise of on-site surveillance, construction sites are increasingly using automated time and attendance software with facial recognition to authenticate and track workers. These systems have an accuracy of 97 percent which ensures that labour contractors pay only for the workers that actually work at their sites, and developers gain a more accurate representation of the real situation on site. This also helps consultants make more accurate estimates for project deadlines and financial projections. Automated systems are more secure, accurate and reliable than manual processes.
Make sure you are paying for accurate work, not ghost employees. How confident are you that the manpower dashboard being reported to you is accurate? Let’s help you digitize your construction sites, please speak to us today!
