Real-world success stories: discovering sustainable construction solutions

Roadmac Surfacing Pty Ltd

April 29, 2022
6 mins read

Roadmac Surfacing Pty Ltd

Industry:

Construction

Roadmac Surfacing has worked on several large-scale government projects to rehabilitate key arterial roads around South Africa including; N3 Warden Asphalt R317m, N1 Bloemfontein Bypass Asphalt R267m, and various others across South Africa.

Client:

Founded in 1997, Roadmac Surfacing Pty Ltd is an operating subsidiary of Raubex Group Ltd and has an annual turnover of more than R1billion. The Raubex Group provides expert services in infrastructure, roads and materials covering all aspects of road construction. The group focuses on new road construction and heavy road rehabilitation as well as road maintenance, the laying of asphalt, chip and spray, surface dressing and slurry seals.

The Challenge:

A key challenge of the construction industry is that supplier invoices are often issued a long time after project completion. Given the high annual turnover of Roadmac Surfacing, it was found that there was rarely ‘one version of the truth’ in the budget reconciliation between projects and accounts. Therefore, the greatest challenge was reconciling procurement and operational costs with the financial ledger. The Roadmac Surfacing project sites did not have the tools to manage their expenditure on a daily basis. Therefore, the challenge was to provide project teams with a real-time cost management solution that could run at every site 24hrs a day.

The RIB solution offered a committed and seamless accrual cost functionality that could reconcile and reflect invoices and payments in real-time. In so doing, this would improve cost management against the original BOQ tender pricing from small to large scale complex projects, and have the added benefit of updating productivity worksheets as projects evolve.

What they asked us to do

For RIB to implement a tailored solution during the financial year that could seamless adopt the old system without any disruption to the current business projects or its cost management function.

We adopted the RIB product suite because both Candy and BuildSmart had achieved successful results in other companies in the Raubex Group and it is an ERP system offering best value for money in the industry. The implementation was exceptionally quick and the team are very happy with the product, support and service which is consistently reliable. Because of the effectiveness of the seamless solution, and its ability to align cost functions across the business, it has become integral to the Roadmac Surfacing management of contracts. 

Charl Van Schalkwyk, Financial Manager
Roadmac Surfacing (Pty) Ltd.

Thanks to the Candy and BuildSmart suite of products, our project sites are able to receive their monthly costing from head office on time. Now the team never misses a deadline, as the month ends are predictable and easy to plan. Managing a project without RIB is extremely time consuming, so it makes scenario planning a breeze. 

Wimpie Kock, Contracts Manager
Roadmac Surfacing (Pty) Ltd.

The Solution:

The RIB consultants installed both Candy and BuildSmart to streamline business processes and enable real-time management of projects with seamless cost versus allowable, and financial reporting. Until this installation, the length of time taken for invoices to reach the procurement office meant it was difficult for Roadmac Surfacing to effectively manage site-based costs, such as orders and deliveries. Therefore, the committed and accrual cost functionality in BuildSmart was critical. The implementation of BuildSmart as a seamless cost and operations management solution took just three weeks. As part of the implementation process, the RIB team conducted live on-site training on actual data, using live software on a demonstration database. Roadmac Surfacing implemented the complete RIB solution to manage their projects from estimation to site plan and valuations through operations management with automated site costing reconciled to final account.

The Results:

  • Expenditure reduced by more than 75%.
  • Monthly reporting pack now completed a week earlier than when previously using the non-ERP financial system.
  • Sites are now run as their own business and must show profits throughout a project.
  • Planning has been significantly improved; pre-plan meetings are based on the Candy allowable adjusted to the actual situation. This has resulted in quick, accurate data that highlight problem areas more quickly.
  • Roadmac Surfacing now has ‘click of a button’ effectiveness 24 hours a day. The team also receives user defined reports and access to data directly to the sequel tables without disrupting the live data.

11 Reasons Buildsmart Trumps Generic ERP Solutions

E-BOOK

11 Reasons BuildSmart Trumps Generic ERP Solutions