BCM Construction are able to quickly build and roll-out bespoke applications to collect and process data on the frontline — at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional software development.

As a principal contractor for infrastructure projects across the rail, highways and utility sectors, BCM is a bonafide construction and engineering specialist.

But with workers across various projects, from all different backgrounds and age groups, BCM was having issues with the quality of frontline reporting. Data would often be submitted half-complete, inaccurate or illegible, which made it almost impossible to process this information within tight project deadlines.

It was clear that BCM needed mobile and tablet applications to not only collect this data in a standardised format, but also make it easier to manage and interpret these reports as part of everyday project work or ahead of an audit.

With an IT team that was already stretched beyond capacity, there was no internal resource to develop these very specialised and bespoke applications, while off the shelf solutions weren’t suited to the way they worked and couldn’t integrate with BCM’s primary database. It’s a difficult position that many IT Managers find themselves in when looking to digitise.

Enter Nutshell; the fastest and easiest way to build sophisticated business apps without writing a single line of code.

BCM chose Nutshell for the speed and ease with which purpose-built applications could be created, tested, and rolled out to frontline workers, as well as the ability to integrate with and manage data on Microsoft SharePoint.

Nutshell worked with BCM to define a digitisation roadmap detailing which processes would be transformed into mobile apps, how the data would be submitted, processed and managed, and set out timescales for each stage of the journey.

Using Nutshell’s drag-and-drop app builder, BCM was able to quickly build frontline reporting tools that push and pull information from SharePoint. These reports are tagged to specific projects, so only the relevant data can be accessed by workers and everything is correctly categorised ahead of an audit.

Workers now have everything they need in the palms of their hands; report submissions are standardised, information comes straight from the source and is categorised meticulously, which vastly reduces the chances of project-critical data errors and subsequent NCRs.

"We’re on course to be among the first rail and engineering companies to go fully digital, and with Nutshell being such a flexible platform, we’re confident these apps are futureproofed. We can build from scratch, refresh and amend them as we like"

Marcus Brown - BCM Construction Ltd