DPW Plant hire has been hiring a broad range of specialist rotating telescopic handlers and multi cranes since 2005. Currently, DPW is working with John Holland and other general contractors on the Sydney Metro Northwest project – putting it all together with Assignar software.
Sydney Metro Northwest, formerly the North West Rail Link, is the first stage of Sydney Metro and
will be the first fully-automated metro rail system in Australia. Sydney Metro City & Southwest is the second stage.
The project will deliver eight new railway stations and 4000 commuter car parking spaces
to Sydney’s growing North West, a region which has the highest car ownership levels per household in NSW. Over the coming decades, an extra 200,000 people will move into Sydney’s North West, taking its population above 600,000, or twice the size of Canberra.
DPW’s specialist equipment, including the HiRail telehandlers and Sennebogen multi crane, are being used to remove all the pre-existing scaffolding, and the company is also responsible for all the overhead wiring of high voltage cables.
DPW differentiates itself from competitors because its machines are certified by WorkCover. A full 90 per cent of competitors’ machines rely on outriggers or lifting attachments but DPW’s machines are able to work on rail tracks without these additions due to their compliance certification which specifically includes EWP, RSO, and WorkCover.
According to DPW Managing Director, Paul Waters, compliance is a result of automating the documentation process. “We win work because all our machines meet every Rolling Stock Operator (RSO) certification and as founders of the HiRail system for Dieci telehandlers within the rail sector, it is paramount we are on top of all safety documentation for our systems and machinery. Maintaining these high compliance standards across the different rail networks took a lot of energy and time but now with Assignar we have one program that can manage all of this more efficiently.”
“For our operators, all their important site documents are submitted on their phones via the app. If anything goes wrong, we have a digital audit trail securely logged on Assignar, so we can track where all our operators are, what plant they are assigned to and what documentation they have submitted,” he said.
Assignar is a cloud-based SaaS platform, built to help construction contractors improve efficiency and safety by providing end-to-end real-time management of a company’s workforce, assets, and compliance. It allows contractors to use digital and mobile forms for scheduling, compliance, communication, and real-time tracking.
“With our old paper system, collecting and processing physical dockets was a very time-consuming process. With many of our operators working on sites in different states and regions away from our head office, we could expect to experience significant delays in getting the dockets back for processing. With Assignar, we built out a digital docket and worked closely with one of our Tier 1 customers on a major rail infrastructure project to get this approved,” said Waters.
“Transitioning from hard copy documents such as pre-start checklists and SWMS to digital has reduced the time we spent chasing up and processing these forms by 50 per cent.”
Construction operations software adoption is expected to boom in the next few years, off the back of the Federal Government’s $75 billion investment in Australian infrastructure projects, and increasing compliance rules and regulations.