Eric Wright Group is one of the UK’s leading construction and property businesses, with specialist teams delivering complex infrastructure projects across civil engineering, water, FM, and development.
With a workforce operating across multiple regions, the Group's water division, Eric Wright Water, recognised the need for a smarter, more consistent way to manage time capture. As activity scaled, paper-based and mixed approaches increased admin overhead, limited visibility, and made it harder to apply travel and overtime rules consistently across regions.
In 2024, the IT team led a project to modernise time capture across Eric Wright Water. The goal was to reduce manual data entry, streamline payroll processing, and strengthen the consistency and audit-readiness of time and travel records - without disrupting operational reality on the ground.
They selected CausewayOne Digital Tools, and the results have been clear.
In just over 12 months, Eric Wright Water has standardised processes across regions, reduced payroll processing time by 20%, and established a clear, auditable record that supports efficient review and substantiation.
The Challenge
Eric Wright Water operates across multiple UK regions, delivering thousands of jobs each year. Over time, each region evolved its own approach - ranging from paper forms and spreadsheets to a limited legacy app. While these approaches reflected local working practices, they created variation in how time, travel and overtime were captured.
Payroll teams were also manually re-keying timesheet data into ERP systems, which took more than a day per region each week. Without manually summarising daily timesheets, reporting was largely limited to weekly totals, making it harder to identify queries early, reconcile exceptions efficiently, and provide consistent detail when needed.
Regional travel and overtime policies added further complexity:
- Birmingham applied door-to-door travel with a standard commute deduction
- Yorkshire calculated travel from home to first job
- The North West paid mileage from office to site at a fixed rate
These policies were well understood operationally, but managing them reliably at scale needed a structured, configurable system - one that could reflect regional rules while standardising workflow and approvals.
“In our world, consistent evidence and governance matter. We wanted time capture that’s clear, compliant, and easy to substantiate, without forcing a one-size-fits-all process."
Paul Swann, Commercial Director at Eric Wright Water
The Solution
Eric Wright Water deployed CausewayOne Digital Tools to standardise time capture, while still supporting local rules around travel, overtime and mileage. Working closely with Causeway, the team configured region-specific workflows that reflect operational conditions, while maintaining a consistent experience for operatives, supervisors and payroll teams.
The solution provided:
- A single, repeatable workflow across all regions
- Configurable logic for travel time, overtime and mileage
- Earlier visibility of exceptions and unusual claims
- Clear, audit-ready records aligned to payroll
- A platform that can support additional workflows under the same licence
CausewayOne Digital Tools is a suite of applications designed to drive productivity, improve efficiency, and create a single source of truth across the construction and maintenance lifecycle. Teams can build complex or simple forms completed in the field via laptop, smartphone or tablet - helping digitise workflows. For Eric Wright Water, it has replaced manual timesheet processes with a mobile-first system that feeds directly into head office.
"We looked at various time and attendance systems, and CausewayOne stood out - particularly in how it can handle regional rules while keeping the process consistent ."
Paul Swann, Commercial Director at Eric Wright Water
The Outcome
CausewayOne Digital Tools hasn’t just sped up payroll for Eric Wright Water.
It’s improved consistency, visibility and control across every region.
Payroll processing time has reduced from around 10 hours to 8 hours per week in each region, freeing up roughly 6 hours of admin time per week across three regions. Time previously spent re-keying data and chasing corrections is now redirected toward higher-value work.
Just as importantly, there is now a more consistent, complete record of time and travel capture. Claims are validated automatically against configured rules, approvals are traceable, and evidence can be produced quickly and consistently when needed.
Key outcomes include:
- Payroll processing cut by 20%, from 10 hours to 8 hours per week, per region
- 6 admin hours saved per week across three regions
- Improved visibility and control over travel and overtime capture
- Auto-calculated mileage expenses using Google Maps integration
- Standardised workflow across all regions, with local rules handled
- A scalable platform ready to support wider workflow digitisation
"We’ve cut payroll processing from days to hours, freed up around 6 hours of admin a week, and we now have a consistent, audit-ready record that we can rely on.”
Paul Swann, Commercial Director at Eric Wright Water
By embedding business rules directly into digital workflows, Eric Wright Water has turned timesheets from an admin burden into a stronger, scalable control - improving efficiency, strengthening governance, and creating a foundation for wider process digitisation.
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