Marketing & CompEx show how to do “MORE” with “less”

The previous article highlights how we still seem to be able to manage our materials even on city centre construction sites where we have minimal laydown space.

The more space we have, the more material we seem to store there!

Congested pipe laydown area

Most peoples’ first reaction when setting up on any project is to grab as much real estate as possible.

Without a system in place to manage what is stored there, this will definitely be counter-productive.

Having less space available forces us to:-

Be more organised
Plan ahead
Schedule fabrication in the right sequence
Call materials to site ‘Just in time’
Deliver straight into the building

If we spend more time up front with a smaller number of people planning and scheduling things in the right sequence, we will save on a much bigger scale by wasting less time for the much larger number of crew members on site.

Positive actions:-

Map out laydown areas into a grid pattern and log which items are in each grid to save time finding things
Position similar items close together and lay out in order of size eg. Pipe clips, bolts etc. (smallest to largest)
Label shelves in stores or office with type of product to be stored there, to simplify search eg. Butterfly valves, O&M manuals etc.
Use mobile trolleys or racks for storage on the site, to prevent wasted time relocating these
Label each pipe rack with list of spool numbers and when removing a spool, update the list by crossing off number
Arrange deliveries of material required for specific areas on site and move them directly to that area.
Only plan to take in a week or two worth of material to the area (at most) each time

Marketing show the way

What do you do when you are told you now have only half the amount of storage space available to you for your department?

Put your head in the sand and hope the problem goes away.
Get totally stressed out about it and let it effect all the other things you should be dealing with.
Think logically about what items you really need to store locally, make a plan and get on with it.

During the recent office move from Mespil Court to Pembroke Road, this was the scenario our Marketing team were faced with.

Their storage area in the new building was half the size they were used to, so they needed a plan.

Only items that were used regularly could be stored here and quantities of these had to be kept to a workable level.
Shelves were labelled to show what could be stored in each area
Storage holders for marketing literature and brochures were used and labelled
All pull-up banners had a photo of the banner attached to the outside for ease of identification and are now issued and tracked from a log sheet

Marketing store, easily accessible

This just goes to re-inforce the point that when you are faced with having less space available, you can still be as efficient, if not more efficient with a little more planning up front.

Keep up the good work guys!

CompEx goes up in the world

What is ‘CompEx’? I hear you say.

CompEx is an internationally recognised qualification for M&E personnel who install or maintain ‘Ex’ equipment in potentially explosive atmospheres. Jones Engineering in conjunction with UK based ExVeritas operate the first and only licensed CompEx training centre in Ireland.

As part of our recent upgrading of the offices at Little Island, Cork, the CompEx training centre has had to move from the ground floor to a smaller footprint at first floor level.

New CompEx training room layout

Some might have considered this a problem, but to Peadar Walsh and Michael O’Brien (Douglas calibration Management Team for this area), it was taken as a challenge to see how they could improve their facility and provide a more superior service to their customers.

Individual work benches on wheels were developed to give each trainee flexibility to position their bench adjacent to their work area
Local storage of components (lin bins) attached to each bench now means less walking and more efficiency for the trainees as well

Cable drum storage on rollers

Heavy cable drums now need to be transported to the new first floor location, so a clever platform installed at first floor level in the adjacent workshop allows use of the existing overhead gantry crane to make this task very easy and eliminate any manual handling issues