With offices in 25 countries and more than 10,000 employees, SOCOTEC is a leading player in testing, inspection and certification (TIC) in the construction and infrastructure sectors.

Across the globe, the company delivers professional services in construction, buildings & real-estate, infrastructures, environment & safety and certification.

One of the main challenges facing SOCOTEC is the decentralised nature of its business, which led the business to Causeway Ermeo.

 

The Challenge:

 

The real estate sector is in the process of catching up with its historical delay in terms of digitalisation. To tackle this, SOCOTEC  is organising its efforts around 3 key areas:

 

  • The redesign of production tools to better manage data models (BIM and IFC standards)
  • The implementation of a scalable IT architecture, the creation of an ecosystem of API partners to complement the company's current tools, including Causeway Ermeo, data interoperability, through the deployment of Building Operating Systems (BOS) and Infrastructure Operating Systems (IOS)
  • Data exploitation and de-silencing are based on two main areas: a data lake to visualise the data with Dataviz solutions, and data science, with predictive models and computer vision, particularly for risk analysis

That said, the company did not have the in-house tools to complete many of the tasks mentioned above and needed support from Causeway Ermeo.

 

The Solution

 

Using Causeway Ermeo, SOCOTEC wants to :

 

  • Homogenise data, centralise it and update it on all business tools simultaneously
  • Improving the traceability of interventions and reports (this is essential to meet COFRAC obligations and those linked to accreditations and certifications)
  • Increase productivity by saving time on reporting (internal productivity and responsiveness to customers)


The specific issues of CEE control and CEE audit addressed by Causeway Ermeo :

 

  • Structuring and standardising operational processes between the different sites
  • Exploit the data collected in order to retransmit them to the end client
  • Ensure compliance of all audits and controls
  • Gain productivity throughout the process

 

The company's objectives for its EEC control with Causeway Ermeo:

 

  • Digitalising high-impact use cases.
  • Collect data automatically.
  • Automate reporting.
  • Harmonise changes related to regulatory developments.
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"Thanks to Causeway Ermeo, operators can concentrate solely on the technical act - this provides great added value. Data collection is faster and more efficient, thanks in particular to the automatic filling in of administrative data"

 

Laurent GouverneCEE Market Development Director

 

The Outcome:

 

SOCOTEC uses an ERP linked to internal software (Osmose), which centralises and dispatches interventions internally and consolidates data (for example, progress rates and summaries). This internal software is itself connected to Causeway Ermeo.

 

Interventions are sent to Causeway Ermeo from Osmose, with all the data retrieved from the ERP: the intervention forms are thus pre-filled with all the necessary information.

 

  • The elimination of administrative tasks for the operators linked to the interventions: The deliverables are automatically generated and sent back to Osmose. This makes it possible to consolidate the state of progress for the project manager, who interfaces with the client.

 

  • Improved customer relations: the data retrieved from the forms is therefore pushed into Osmose and then returned to the ERP. This also facilitates invoicing issues and the follow-up of operations for the customer.

 

"Only two and a half months of development were needed to interface and digitalise the entire CEE Socotec agency process with Causeway Ermeo, which represents a very significant ROI. It also allows us to open new agencies more quickly"

 

Mr Loisel, Head of IT BU Construction and Real Estate & Master Data Manager SOCOTEC.

 

  • Optimising the management of intervention forms: The operator can easily find the form that corresponds to the intervention that has been assigned to him. He can also find the history of his interventions, and in the event of an unplanned intervention, he can go and find the corresponding form in the application. This contributes to a considerable improvement in the company's responsiveness to the unexpected.

  • The addition of methodological aids: Operators work on many sites, each with their own specificities and equipment. To help operators, Causeway Ermeo can integrate explanations and indications into its forms, which can be consulted at will.

 

  • More relevant and instantaneous intervention reports: Operators can take photos during their work and annotate them, collect the signatures needed to validate the work, or capture all the alphanumeric data. The reports are generated automatically in the desired formats according to a fully customisable framework and retrieved instantaneously from the company's business tools. Thanks to the automatic generation of reports, double data entry is eliminated, resulting in real-time savings for operators and eliminating any risk of transcription errors (and data loss).

 

With Causeway Ermeo, SOCOTEC achieved the following results:

 

  • Productivity gain time to complete time reduced by 33%, time to complete the work reduced by 33%, internal and customer reporting time reduced by 90%
  • Clarity of procedures: 90% of SOCOTEC operators believe that the Causeway Ermeo forms are easy to complete
  • Practicality and ergonomics of the application: 95% of SOCOTEC operators consider the Causeway Ermeo solution to be easy to use

In addition to the actions carried out for the management of the CEE control, and thanks to the dedicated support received by SOCOTEC, Causeway Ermeo benefits from a horizontal diffusion of its solution within the group on the following parameters:

  • Real estate qualification
  • 3CEp
  • COVID 19
  • Strength diagnosis
  • Environmental Quality
  • Solidity notice
  • Acoustics
  • Accessibility for people with reduced mobility


More generally, 90% of Causeway Ermeo users at SOCOTEC see advantages in using the application rather than a paper document to carry out interventions.

 

Transform your manual processes with Causeway Ermeo. Find out more, click here to chat to one of our experts.

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