Forestry, Rail & Civils Ltd

Key benefits

• Streamlining operations
  Forestry, Rail & Civils Ltd have digitised their processes and documentation procedures, including time sheets, daily checks, LOLERs, and more, allowing for instant document delivery and better visibility.
• Centralised database access
  With the ability to access data at all times and in one place, the FRC team have improved their customer relationships. With real-time updates their clients can follow job progress. FRC also have online access to insurance documents, LOLER certificates, and competencies.
• Rapid form filling
  Sped up by drop down menus and auto-fill, the likes of digital risk assessments are quick to complete on the app, allowing operatives to focus more time on their work. With more intuitive forms, near-miss reporting has significantly increased.

Summary

Forestry, Rail & Civils Ltd are a vegetation management company based in Droxford, with operations covering the South of England. After a rapid period of growth, mounting paperwork, and teams operating within highly regulated areas like rail and vegetation management, they decided that field management software could help them manage their workload and improve compliance.

Re-flow provided FRC with a centralised management platform, bringing different parts of the business under one piece of software. All form-filling and documentation is processed and stored within Re-flow, improving and speeding up compliance processes and giving real-time visibility of completed tasks in the office. The system has saved time, reduced administrative burden, and supported FRC’s efficiency and growth in the industry.

Organisation details

Forestry, Rail & Civils’ operations cover complicated projects on powerlines, railways, canals, highways, and more. Set up by director Colin Browne, they started trading three years ago as a two-man team. In a short time, they grew to a staff of almost 80, and there are no signs of slowing down.

Challenges

The company works within heavily regulated industries. A few years into trading, their commitment to quality, reliability, and customer satisfaction meant more and more administration time was needed to keep on top of everything.

Their work generated huge amounts of documentation and caused unnecessary journeys to and from the office in order to physically hand in and complete paperwork. Things were getting lost, people weren’t returning their documents, and storage and filing was becoming an issue.

The company saw room for improvement in the following areas: 

• Strict regulatory compliance requirements: working within highly regulated industries, including rail and commercial tree management, required precise data handling to ensure compliance and meeting client standards.
• Time-intensive paperwork management: reliance on physical paperwork caused delays, with forms often lost or returned late, hindering project timelines.
• Limited storage capacity: physical storage and archiving took up significant space, complicating long-term data retention and quick access to records.

Aims

‘We needed something that was going to make managing this process a lot easier and efficient for the admin staff, and for the guys who are out on site,’ Danny Freeman, FRC’s contracts manager, told us.

They had a number of areas they wanted to cover: 

• Powerful scheduling and visibility: to manage multiple contracts from a variety of clients in different parts of the country
• Improving documentation efficiency: to replace paper trails with a digital system that can store and organise documents reliably, without the risk of loss or delay.
• Ensuring compliance across teams: to meet regulatory requirements in the rail and commercial tree sectors by mandating, speeding up, and automating essential compliance checks.
• Reducing physical storage needs: to eliminate physical archives, making past records easily accessible and safely stored for long-term retrieval.
• Supporting real-time data access: to provide operatives and managers with up-to-date project details, ensuring accurate tracking and reporting directly from job sites.
• Facilitating easy software adoption for all skillsets: to find a system that would be user-friendly and intuitive, especially for team members less comfortable with technology.

Solutions

The company looked at other field management software, but the alternatives were more aimed at sole traders doing small jobs. Re-flow offered: 

• Centralised information management: Re-flow is a unified platform where all job-related information is readily accessible. An open line of communication is available at all times, ensuring visibility of job progress.
• Intuitive user experience: the software’s easy-to-use interface allows team members of any age to use all of its features.
• Customisable forms: the form builder enables the creation of forms tailored to specific needs, ensuring that all necessary data is captured quickly and accurately.
• Fleet management: with features for managing equipment and logistics, Re-flow helps track the status of tools and machinery, allowing for effective scheduling and monitoring of resources without the hassle of paperwork.
• Tailored knowledge base: Re-flow’s adaptable knowledge base allows the company to store and display team competencies for clients, enhancing transparency and trust.

Results

‘Re-flow is an intuitive system,’ Danny Freeman said. ​‘Keeping all of our information, fleet management, and billing in one place is a massive help for us. I think Re-flow has aided our growth.’ FRC requested a customised knowledge base, and Re-flow delivered. ​‘We spoke to one of the form builders and asked them to tailor that completely to our solution, which was to display competencies. We wanted the competencies to be available to clients. We wanted it to be available to site supervisors should we be on a slightly more complicated site. And they literally followed through with that within three hours of us making the phone call. And now we actually use it to display everyone’s competencies.’ 

FRC also use Re-flow for: 

• Compliance and inspection tracking 
  PUWER regulations, LOLER checks, and weekly tool inspections, are automatically uploaded and records are kept, ensuring compliance and easy monitoring.
• Digitalisation and site checks 
  On-site risk assessments, safe work packs, and daily checks are streamlined through Re-flow, impressing clients and enhancing FRC ​’s professional standing.
• Ease of use and scheduling 
  Operatives know what they’re doing before they even get to work. The system allows tasks to be handled directly from mobile devices, reducing paperwork and saving valuable time, especially at the end of the week.
• Form builder and HAVS tracking 
  Re-flow’s forms track HAVS exposure, hours, and billing, integrating smoothly into FRC’s workflow and significantly improving operational efficiency.
• Displaying competencies 
  FRC requested a customised knowledge base in order to display competencies for clients and for site supervisors on more complicated sites. The Re-flow support team built this into the software within hours. 

Colin Brown, FRC’s director, summarised life with Re-flow well: ​‘I’ve got a good team around me, some of them that I’ve worked with for probably 15 to 20 years. Re-flow forms part of the overall package, which is good for approaching potential clients and customers.’ 

Danny Freeman added, ​‘I think Re-flow has enabled us to grow mostly from the aspect of efficiency. We weren’t able to deal with as much paperwork as we can deal with now. It allows us to look after significantly more contracts at a time and keep it all in the same place.