Managing your contractor activity on site an sometimes feel like herding cats. Having a central portal through which all contractors must pass provides a way to communicate and control. Whilst you can’t make a contractor take the agreed routes to site you can ensure that, by providing plans and controlling access times, they have no excuses for getting it wrong. A confirmation email together with 24/7 view of their deliveries ensures that they know when and where to turn up and can’t blame you.

The importance of having the right materials available at the right time cannot be over-emphasised. Reports regularly show that a significant amount of time is lost due to materials not being available when they should be. Construction waste is another hot topic. Key factors are always – order the amount of materials you need as accurately as possible, arrange for ‘just in time’ deliveries to reduce storage and material losses, ensure that deliveries are rejected if damaged or incomplete. Zone Manager is a vital tool in your ‘belt’ for managing materials.

Implementing effective logistics strategies within the construction industry is the best way of reducing environmental impact, such as local congestion, waste and carbon emissions. The information that a Delivery Management portal can give makes it possible to identify opportunities for improvement, reducing the number of deliveries by consolidation and smoothing demand. A smooth operation helps to ensure relationships with the neighbours are always good.

Site reports are increasingly important. Spreadsheets become unwieldy and time consuming. Zone Manager lets you produce reports at the click of a button in a variety of formats. Daily activity reports can be produced at any time for all of or any part of the site. Site activities are recorded allowing historical records to be produced by zone, gate, contractor and several other criteria. CO2 reports can be produced in moments, supporting your BREEAM compliance, and printed or exported to your environmental systems.

Zone Manager is provided as an Internet service (SaaS). The system can be up and running in days. No software needs to be installed and usually all that is need is a website address. High speed broadband access and low contention ensures the best level of connectivity.

You need to ensure you have full control over who and what is coming to your site. By implementing Zone Manager you ensure only authorised deliveries are allowed through the gates. Site regulations and/or inductions can be included on the confirmation emails and permits so every driver is fully informed before they arrive on site. You have an auditable record of who came and when. You can prove duty of care to the authorities.