For the last few years, Stephen Bremner, the Fleet & Health and Safety Director at L Lynch Plant Hire & Haulage Limited has been working on a five-year plan, based around the company’s four pillars – Safety, Net Zero, Digital and Wow. Included within this plan was the goal of gaining Earned Recognition (ER) status, which they successfully achieved in October last year, ahead of schedule.

To mark this achievement Subir Gupta sat down with Stephen and Gabby Lawrence, the company’s Transport Compliance Manager who alongside Stephen has helped deliver the strategic plan, to discuss how Aquarius’ integrated software solutions, including ClockWatcher Elite, Document Manager and Asset Maintenance, played a central role in helping them to achieve ER status, and meet the transport and compliance team’s ‘Net Zero’ and ‘Digital’ pillars.

First, Subir asks for a brief background on L Lynch Plant Hire & Haulage Limited …

Liam Lynch founded L Lynch Plant Hire & Haulage over 40 years ago with just one machine, and today, from our head office in Hemel Hempstead, we are proud to be an award-winning family business and a leading provider of Operated and Self-Drive Plant Hire, Haulage and Transport Services to the UK construction industry.  In addition to our fleet and plant assets, our Haulage team operates 160 tippers and grab lorries, and manages more than 120 drivers.

Let’s go back to 2018 / 2019 when you both first joined the company, because this was a significant period of change and growth for L Lynch. Your state-of-the-art head office in Hertfordshire had just opened, you built a brand-new Rushden office, servicing the Midlands and North, and innovatively the company created its very own Eco Operator training programme and introduced the first fully electric machine to the fleet.  In April 2019, you also implemented ClockWatcher Elite – can you take us back to that time?

L Lynch has always been an ambitious company, and with all the innovations that were happening in every corner of the business at that time, alongside our corporate commitment to sustainability, it was a natural step for the compliance team to want to go paperless and operate a centralised digital system across our new offices, for managing all aspects of tachograph compliance.

Why did you choose ClockWatcher Elite?

As a growing business, we selected ClockWatcher Elite because of the ‘scalability’ of the software and its ease of use in providing a central system that speeds up processes and makes our national administration, across multiple offices, more efficient and traceable.  Plus, going from a paper-based system to digital was a key part of our ‘Net Zero’ and ‘Digital’ aims – and looking back it represented the first major phase of our Earned Recognition journey, which the DVSA had just launched in 2018.

Gabby, as the Compliance Manager, what were the immediate benefits?

With our compliance team based centrally at our head office, and drivers and staff working from various locations across the country, ClockWatcher Elite gave us a fast, reliable and secure compliance management solution – one specific example is that the tachograph analysis system enabled us to action infringements much more quickly, including remote sign-off. The team are also able to work more efficiently and productively, and during COVID and remote working, which we couldn’t have predicted a year earlier when we embedded the system, it turned out to be a total game changer. 

At the same time as embedding ClockWatcher Elite, you also become one of the first FORS members to implement the software’s Document Management system – can you explain the reasons for this decision and give examples of how you use it?

Like with tachograph compliance, we also wanted to have a paperless and centralised system for managing our health and safety compliance responsibilities – we wanted to ensure employees based all around the country were all working to the same company safety policies.

It has literally transformed the way we communicate and share important company information with not just our drivers, but all our staff. We send documents such as employee handbooks, health and safety policies, company memos, videos and training materials en masse, or as a tailored circulation – and can electronically track delivery. 

As a specific example, we use it to manage the supply of our PPE equipment, and the system gives managers a recorded and signed digital trail of equipment used. 

What continues to be the main benefits?

Principally, Document Manager allows us to work faster, more diligently and economically, as part of our objective of ensuring all employees are working in line with our company policies. 

We’ve also reaped costs savings; in addition to the obvious reduction in printed consumables, the associated delivery costs and storage, our main cost saving has been time.

Moving on to the final piece of the ER software jigsaw … Asset Maintenace then came in 2021, and again you were one of the first adopters of the system and contributed to its early development, with Gabby putting forward great ideas for new reporting features and workshop tools.

So why Asset Maintenance?

It was the next planned progression and it was a great fit having everything on one easy to use platform alongside the tacho analysis system.  It makes the management of driver and vehicle data so much easier and quicker – and visual. It has closed the loop. And just like ClockWatcher Elite, it is an ER-approved system.

Can you provide some real-life examples of how you use Asset Maintenance on an every-day basis?

In very basic terms there are two or three parts to this answer – from a vehicle compliance side with the Driver Defect App, for scheduling and planning maintenance events and how it links, and is used by our workshop team. Then of course, there are all the tangible management benefits of being able to drill down, evaluate, and cross-reference all of this information, and link with the tacho data, for increased efficiencies across the whole of the different teams. From reduced VOR and significant cost and time savings, and increased safety and compliance standards. 

Gabby, let’s discuss the Driver Defect App …

The drivers like the simplicity of the Aquarius App, and when they have completed the daily checks, it automatically links with the workshop and an alert is triggered and a fitter allocated for the job. The triggered alert on the App – which was one of our development ideas – may sound simple, but its significant when you consider our mechanics are not sitting next to a computer screen all day.

Plus, drivers have the ability to take and send photos via the App, which enables the fitters to easily diagnose the issue and order parts in quicker, which equals less vehicle down time. We can monitor everything minute-by-minute, and action defects so much more efficiently and quickly by linking the App with Asset Maintenace.

Plus, when you consider our ‘Net Zero’ pillar, this seamless digital process has removed the need for huge volumes of paper and job cards.

How is Asset Maintenance used in the workshop?

In addition to being an effective planning and job assignment tool, one of the biggest benefits of Asset Maintenance, is that it allows templates and schedules to be tailored to any asset type and to each parts specification, in turn increasing the visibility, reporting capability and auditability of our vehicles – we use for it everything from tyre torques to brake pads and ramp inspections – literally every part of an asset on our system can be managed and evaluated.

With PDIs too we have a digital audit trail, no more misplaced pieces of paper in the workshop, which has quickened the whole process.

What do you have planned next with the system?

The next most logical step would be to continue to roll out the Asset Finance module, which will work in tandem with Asset Maintenance to enable the workshop to track, monitor and analyse the true costs of maintenance and parts with our suppliers.

Coming back to ER, congratulations on receiving accreditation … how did our software play its part in helping you achieve ER?

Stephen: First, as part our 5-year plan we needed a DVSA-approved vehicle maintenance software solution that would enable us to easily move, and centrally analyse, our driver and vehicle data online.  Aquarius ticked that box – and more.

Gabby: Going digital with Aquarius has completed transformed the way we work. It has made monitoring and maintaining our driver and vehicle compliance responsibilities a much easier task for our teams. Importantly, it helped us identify, and action, areas for improvement ready for ER.

And now for ER specifically, having all of our driver and vehicle data elements on one platform is proving invaluable in relation to DVSA’s reporting requirements. The process is simple and submissions are automated.

Stephen, in this digital journey to ER, what do you think has made the biggest difference?

It’s not just ‘one thing’ that has made the difference, but it’s the whole integrated approach that helped us to not only be ready for ER, but to also manage and sustain the accreditation.

Gabby, would you like to add anything further?

Yes, in addition to the ‘software’ itself, it has also been Aquarius’s unwavering support over the last few years that has got us to where we are today. The team are also always open to our development ideas and quick to respond, and I’m delighted to say that we have a great working relationship and strong partnership.

Thanks Stephen and Gabby.