Started as a road construction company, Holding de Vier Ambachten, or H4A in short, has expanded to the point where it now offers a wide range of expert services, including construction, road construction with its own tarmac plant, landscaping, pipework, industrial services and wind energy. The company, which has sites in Sas van Gent, Goes, Axel and Zelzate, has an annual turnover between 55 and 60 million Euros and employs 240 people.
“We didn’t have a good view on where our equipment was. Too much searching, hastle and misunderstandings,” says Financial Director Tom Willaert. “Sometimes we had no idea where our own equipment was. Not very convenient when you need it. Plus, too often we needed to rent equipment from third parties. It was time for an update.”
H4A is working in more than one country, which increases the complexity of administration and legal requirements. For example in Belgium H4A needs to fulfill the check-in-at-work legislation for construction sites bigger than 500.000 EUR and the mobility allowance.
Whereas in The Netherlands H4A needs to comply with the legislation for the trip registration.
H4A optimally manages all its resources now with Suivo. By all, we truly mean all types of resources: from tools, drills, excavators and containers, to trucks, vans and even its employees.
In the meantime, 3,000 assets have been equipped and are continuously monitored.
“I’m able to follow all the material from behind my computer,” explains Erik Mahu, Head of Equipment at H4A. “I see for example when material should be inspected. That way I can plan everything perfectly, block the right tools for inspection when they arrive in the warehouse and set them back in “active” mode as soon as the inspection is done. This helps to streamline our material handling process.”
In addition, digital or electronic time registration is also being considered. Employees will no longer have to write down their working hours themselves on paper sheets. The remuneration is automatically calculated and does not leave room for any discussion.
“H4A currently has many projects in Belgium where check-in-at-work is mandatory,” continues Willem Verhelst, manager at H4A. “At the moment we are still doing this manually via the laptop, by using Limosa declaration. In the future it will become much easier if we work with the check-in-at-work module of Suivo. ”
Driving times can also be registered automatically. In this way, Suivo helps the employees of the payroll administration to comply with different legislation rules. For Belgium, it automates the mobility allowance and in the Netherlands the trip registration.
In the future, the system will become even more interesting for H4A: the LoRa tags will make it possible to track the equipment throughout Belgium and the Netherlands in the event of theft.
