Bouwdeck: innovative prefabricated roof systems

Once we arrived on site, Patrick Poelwijk was already waiting for us. He has been with Bouwdeck for four years and fulfils the role of work planner as well as drawing room planner. He starts enthusiastically: "At Bouwdeck we produce innovative, prefabricated roofing elements for extending houses. Our elements are mainly used in new buildings. The prefabricated elements offer a great advantage for contractors, because the contractor can quickly erect the scaffolding and can therefore move on quickly."

What did Bouwdeck run into?

Over a delicious cup of coffee, we continued the conversation. What were they missing in scheduling projects that made them look for a new planning tool? Patrick says: "Together with my colleague work planner Mitchel, we divide the projects that come in and put them in the planning. I used Monday myself and my colleague Dick Smidts (technical director) even used Excel. I filled my planning, he filled his and then we checked whether it matched each other a bit."

He continues, smiling: "Now you probably guessed: if a project was postponed for a few weeks, Dick had to adjust his Excel schedule, but I also had to adjust my schedule in Monday. Big projects you sometimes have to shift up to 20 times. In Excel, that's a lot of manual work and in Monday, shifting projects doesn't work very well either. Besides, I don't find Excel very clear at all, you are scrolling endlessly. That's why we started looking for another solution."

The choice of vPlan

What features did the new planning tool need to have? Patrick: "Moving around in the planning was a tricky issue, so we looked at that carefully. I also wanted a visually attractive planning and wanted to integrate checklists, lists and other forms. My colleague Dick wanted the Excel look back. He wants to see at a glance how many elements are produced and when the delivery is. This is all possible in vPlan. The endless scrolling was also solved: in vPlan, you just use the search bar and there you are."

How does Bouwdeck deploy vPlan?

Bouwdeck's order process goes through 3 steps:

1. Work preparation;
2. Production;
3. Delivery.

Views in vPlan

Patrick says: "In vPlan, we use the timeline view and the list view. We don't plan by resources (people or machines), but more by weeks and elements. We can produce about six elements per production line in a day, which is x number of hours per day. So if they need to make eight elements, they are about a day and a half. So we know immediately our capacity per week."

Automatic notifications

He continues, "Although we don't plan based on employees, we have linked our employees to orders. So those involved get automatic notifications when something shifts in the planning. The work planners also get a notification of this - we set this up using an automation."

Dependencies

For Patrick, it is important that he can easily shift orders in the schedule. For this, they use dependencies. Patrick: "Thanks to dependencies in vPlan, we can very flexibly shift orders in the planning. This automatically takes into account any other steps in the process that must then also be postponed. However, postponing one process step does not mean that the next step is always postponed: sometimes there is enough space in between, vPlan takes that into account too."

Forms in vPlan

So scheduling with vPlan is going well. But what about those checklists, lists and other forms that Patrick wanted to add to orders?

"We digitised our checklists. Earlier, we printed out the checklists, then they were filled in by hand by the production workers and then scanned again. But sometimes the handwriting was not legible, they would put a cursive instead of a signature or they would not complete the checklist. Moreover, printing out, filling in and scanning in was a lot of hassle. We wanted to see who produced an element and make certain parts of the checklist mandatory to fill in, so that everything is filled in carefully," Patrick says.

Customisable

Thanks to the collaboration between vPlan and Tabletforms, it is possible to design forms entirely according to your wishes. How did Bouwdeck approach the design of their checklists? Patrick explains: "During the process with Tabletforms, we involved our production staff. Which fields did they want to see in the form? Together we thus created a very complete form."

Experience on the shop floor

"The production workers find it quite an improvement - they now only need to enter the construction number. The rest of the information is automatically entered into the form."

Simple material registration

He continues, "Furthermore, we use mandatory fields. I automatically receive an e-mail when a checklist is completed. Once the form 'packing' is completed, the roof element goes across for transport. And then we have completed another order! On the checklist, we also have a section for material registration. We register our rubber mats and roof drainage so we always know how much we still have in stock. Always handy."

Future plans with vPlan

Bouwdeck recently started working with vPlan and still has big plans for the future. Patrick: "We also want to start using the Wkb form next year. We also want to develop new forms for the shop floor; for production and for assembly and service workers. They can then easily use forms on site via the app on a tablet."

What positive results is Bouwdeck achieving with vPlan?

Despite the short time Bouwdeck has been working with vPlan, Patrick is so far particularly pleased with the digitisation of their checklists. "There are no more printouts hanging in the production hall. Well, almost no more printouts," he winks. "The checklists, drawings and other forms will soon all be accessible via iPad. We are still working on that. I think a lot of time will be saved once everything is in one app and everything is completely digital."

He continues: "What I've particularly enjoyed is the contact with both vPlan and Tabletforms. If we have any questions I can always contact them and get a response within no time. Yes, the contact is really very nice."

Patrick, thanks for the pleasant conversation and your time!