Places for People used a SharePoint health and safety system built with Nintex workflows to replace paper-based reporting and centralise safety data across the organisation. The solution improved accuracy, sped up incident reporting, and delivered better visibility and compliance across sites.
The project leveraged Transparity’s Modern Workplace and App Innovation services to design custom workflows, automate notifications and approvals, and integrate health & safety processes into SharePoint. As a result, Places for People reduced processing delays and enhanced oversight of safety operations.
Places for People Group operate across diverse markets including property management, development, regeneration, leisure, and Capital. The Group’s businesses own or manage over 180,000 properties with assets of over £3 billion. Through this portfolio they build and manage homes, provide job and training opportunities, support new and existing businesses, provide financial products and specialist care and support services that enable people to live independently in their own home.
PFP were looking for a health and safety solution that could improve central oversight, data gathering and intelligence to ensure standards could be met currently, with scope to adapt to future changes. Due to the fluid nature of the PFP portfolio a solution had to be both strong enough to stand up in its own vertical but agile enough to work in all acquisitions and markets.
A comprehensive requirement list ranged from risk assessment, audits and inspections through the capturing and investigating of incidents to reporting on action plans that deliver continuous improvement. There was also a need for a communications portal within the solution that provided for onsite and mobile staff through mobile and laptop devices. This was further complicated by several parts of the group having independent systems and no group network access.
As a first step the health & safety team visited a current SharePoint user, the Canal and River Trust. “It felt like a Eureka moment,” says Gavin Scollen, Group Head of Health & Safety at Places for People. Transparity took a customer centric approach and realised that adoption of technology was a key factor in the system.
The off the shelf systems that PFP had looked at couldn’t fit the requirements and during exploratory conversations with end users it was found that SharePoint was already being used in other parts of PFP. The employees were already comfortable with SharePoint so adoption would be greater, and the requirements could be satisfied using the Microsoft stack and complimentary Nintex system.
Transparity invested time with the health & safety team to discuss requirements and create a specification. This ensured that end users felt part of the solution, that it fulfilled their needs and drew off their experience to simplify business processes. This allowed Transparity to explain the solution to end users and build on their goals to ensure a fully maximised experience that exceeded expectations.
The close trusting partnership meant an agreed solution was built on the current PFP platform of SharePoint and Nintex. The solution made extensive use of flexible functionality available within the SharePoint and Nintex platform, such as SharePoint pages, document libraries and lists, as well as Nintex Forms, Mobile, Live and Workflow, plus SQL Reporting Services for KPIs and drilldowns.
Transparity provided bespoke code for external interfaces, data aggregation and customer HTML pages. They also configured the platform as an extranet, allowing business units that are not yet part of the Group’s IT infrastructure to connect. Transparity provided a full software development suite of services, including requirements gather, design, build, test, handover with training and demonstrations, and support.
The Health & Safety team are now able to take control of activity across the group. Newly acquired businesses can be placed on the network from day one, vital for such a fluid company. Offline, mobile and site based can now collate data and upload the moment they reach a viable connection and group standards can be easily applied across all sections. This is within an adaptable environment ensuring agility and futureproofed for long term technologies.
Places for People Group operate across diverse markets including property management, development, regeneration, leisure, and Capital. The Group’s businesses own or manage over 180,000 properties with assets of over £3 billion. Through this portfolio they build and manage homes, provide job and training opportunities, support new and existing businesses, provide financial products and specialist care and support services that enable people to live independently in their own home.
