About Bridgnorth
Since beginning life as Star Aluminium in 1933, Bridgnorth Aluminium has gained over eighty years of experience in the aluminium rolling industry. Their 27 hectares of land are home to world-class manufacturing assets, from the casthouse to state-of-the-art Litho Centres. Bridgnorth Aluminium Ltd’s assets include a casthouse, rolling mill, two Litho Centres, a multi-slitting line and finishing lines. Having manufactured aluminium strip since 1933, Bridgnorth Aluminium Ltd has firmly established itself as a trusted supplier of rolled aluminium products.
The Project Overview
In early 2022 Bridgnorth went to market to look at refreshing their ‘client-server’ based current Workforce Management system that had been in place for circa 20 years.
Comprising Time and Attendance, Access Control, HR, Scheduling, Payroll and Visitor Management for over 500 employees it was a big and complex rollout with many challenges to overcome.
The Project Team
Chronicle Computing
Howard Lancaster – Sales Consultant
James Zalewiski – Installation Lead
David Bassam – Developer
Zac Ballard – Product Trainer
Zac Ballard – Product Trainer
Rupert Lassen – Project Lead
Bridgnorth Aluminium
Steve Denton – IT Director (Project lead)
Tom Patton – IT Manager
Michelle Shotton – Payroll
Michalis Loupasis – HR
Elliott Lynch– Training Manager
The Chronicle Implementation
Project Summary
In total around 150+ hours was spent by Chronicle on the following pre-installation activities.
- A site survey
- The design and development of the implementation plan
- The specification and development of numerous system changes
- The creation and testing of the SAP Success factors integration
- The delivery of product walkthroughs
- Onsite and off-site user training
- The creation of a custom self-servicing video
- HR training, Payroll training, Access Control and Time and Attendance training.
“The flexibility of the Chronicle Online product and their attitude and willingness to adapt their solution to Bridgnorth’s working rules was second to none”.
Michelle Shotton – Payroll Bridgnorth Aluminium
Site Survey
Chronicles Lead engineer James Zalewski and Bridgnorth’s Project Lead Steve Denton, completed a review of all 49 doors/turnstiles/barriers and safe swipe points.
Pictures were taken and notes of every unit using our smart phone app. Details included access, power, data, specific usage (reader in / out, safe swipe Y/N).
“Due to the size of the site, the volume of doors, turnstiles and barriers needing to be controlled and the ongoing Health and Safety Fire Reporting concerns, careful planning was required to sequence the installation to minimise disruption”
Rupert Lassen – Project Manager Chronicle
Installation Plan
With the data from the site survey, Steve Denton and Rupert Lassen could create over the period of a couple of days the installation timeline and sequence of doors to be installed.
Special hardware was needed to be purchased or was custom made, such as stainless-steel back plates to mount readers on, special relays to control turnstiles and IP65 rated waterproof boxes to house door controllers externally.
System Build
As part of the standard methodology used by Chronicle an excel project pack is shared with the client to collect all of the shift patterns, lunchbreak, rounding and overtime rules. This data was then set up and configured into Chronicle by the Project Manager.
Early on the software was released to Bridgnorth, so the key stakeholders could follow the process and development of system build and custom work.
Hardware Preparation
To spread up installation and to avoid issues on-site Chronicles installation team prepared and tested all 49 devices in the Chronicle office prior to shipping. In addition, all the software and hardware was configured with the correct naming conventions provided by Bridgnorth to make the monitoring and management of Chronicle simple and easy going forward.
Ali Youaf one of Chronicle Apprentices and the Installation Team Darius and Jack preparing 49 devices
Training of Engineers and Tweaks to hardware and software
With Bridgnorth wanting a ‘Safe Swipe Muster Point’ feature, all Chronicle engineers and support staff had a training session on the new functionality. Plus, Chronicles Development team made numerous changes to the way the hardware and software worked to support this new function.
One of the main challenges was to stop the hardware clocking people IN or OT and actually to create a new class of record…a safe swipe.
What is Safe Swipe?
In the event of an emergency at Bridgnorth the fire alarm signals and this tells Chronicle to immediately open or close certain doors, an automatic email sends numerous dedicated fire marshalls a custom fire roll call report electronically. This shows who is in the various buildings or not and which employees have swiped safe on various terminals within a custom 7- minute window.
The idea is Chronicle knows which people are onsite due to employees / contractors and visitors attendance being tracked through doors, barriers and turnstiles.
This means that when the fire alarm goes off – all employees / contractors and visitors have 7 minutes to go to a muster point and swipe that they are ‘safe’. This data is recorded in real time and takes them off the Fire Roll call report. The result is that after 7 minutes the fire marshals have a simple report with a list of people unaccounted for. The report is also grouped by location within the 27-hector site.
Fire Reporting
- Safe Swipe Points
- Custom Fire Report visible in Gatehouse, on tablet, printed and mobile app.
- Custom Safe Swipe Audit Report – to show who swiped safe during the 7-minute fire alarm window.
- Fire Panel Integration – live data if there is an emergency
- Automatic Fire Report email triggered 7 minutes after the fire alarm has gone off to Fire Marshalls
- New Visitor request screen in Employee Self Servicing – date, name, company, access levels
- Ability to control which doors fail safe or secure, when the fire alarm goes off.
It took 5 Chronicle engineers over a one-month period to install all the equipment at Bridgnorth.
The team encountered weather delays when installing external equipment due to heavy November rain and wind. However, stayed late on numerous occasions to get the job completed and the various milestones reached.
The staged Implementation of 50 Doors, Safe swipe points and Terminals was carefully sequenced to create minimum disruption to the daily Operation of Bridgnorth
The biggest challenge was that Bridgnorth required no parallel run of clocking data due to number of staff and all data being captured from turnstiles.
It effectively made it impossible to swap over and run parallel two systems, so Chronicle had to time installing the critical units for a the go live on the 1st of a month for payroll processing.
Darius installing late into the evening due to weather delays ->
“Installation was challenging on our 27-hectare site due to the size and number of devices being installed. The team at Chronicle meticulously designed a custom installation plan that caused minimum disruption to our day-to-day operation and stayed late when encountering challenges to successfully deliver on time”
Michelle Shotton – Payroll Bridgnorth Aluminium
Time and Attendance, Access Control and Muster Point Data Capture
In order to achieve the desired solution technically and within budget, Chronicle used an extensive range of data capture methods to achieve Bridgnorth requirements.
Partnering with US provider ATS and UK provider Grosvenor the hardware below was used in conjunction with our Chronicle Online software to control 49 doors, turnstiles, barriers and provide safe swipe or clocking points around the 27 hector site.
Bridgnorth Integrations
Bridgnorth is owned by a Viohalco who use SAP Success Factors globally to manage employee data. It was critical for Bridgnorth that Chronicle Online integrated with SAP in order for new starters and leavers to be managed seamlessly plus updates and changes to employee data not requiring double entry.
Success Factors SAP Integration – As part of the work Chronicle developed an overnight import of data from Success Factors. The data being migrated includes the employees shift/roster, manager name, home address, bank account name, number and sort code. The various unique employee codes such as payroll and employee number plus, date of birth, start date, leave date, monthly pay value, other bonuses, job description, weekly target / contracted hour value, telephone numbers home and work, department and work / home emails.
Import of historic holiday, sick and absence records – Bridgnorths Payroll and HR team wanted to start using the Employee Self Servicing and Holiday request features in Chronicle immediately so the development team extracted data from Bridgnorths old Workforce Management system for the previous year and a half and imported it into Chronicle for all 500 people.
Bespoke Bradford Factor Calculation
The Development team at Chronicle when importing the historic sickness also back filled in worked days, allowing Chronicle and Bridgnorth to produce a Bradford Factor report immediately. In addition Bridgnorth had a custom version of Bradford factor that doesn’t look at a calendar year or rolling one year period but looks back over 1.5 years. This was developed and tested early on in the implementation.
Chronicle General Software Enhancements
- Absence Request Feature in Self Servicing – work trips and other specific types only.
- Self-Servicing Overtime – reasons and notes done by employee
- Changes to Personnel fields in Chronicle – additional email address – personal and work
- Ability to relabel Employee Custom Fields
- 2 New Access Control Movement reports – ability to see who has come through a specific door over a date range and an employee movement specific report.
Health and Safety
- As part of the due diligence Bridgnorth required Chronicle to be a Safe Contractor Accredited company. The nature of their business meant the site was hazardous and all engineers had to wear high vis vest, hard hats and safety glasses due the nature of its operation and Health and Safety regulations.
- https://www.safecontractor.com/
- 1hr Health and Safety Inductions for all engineers
- Hard hat, high vis vest, goggles, boots for all engineers.
“Completing the Safe Contractor assessment gave Bridgnorth total peace of mind that Chronicle had its internal processes, training and documentation in place for such a complex job.”
James Zalewski -Installation Manager Chronicle
Bespoke Rules
- Bespoke Overtime rules for 4 on 4 off shifts
- Bespoke flexi time rules – flexi holiday and calculations
- Ability to define repeating Bonus payments to staff – daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly
“A significant amount of custom development work was required to enhance the offering, pre and post installation in order to provide a good fit for Bridgnorth. The work was specified by Rupert Lassen and Steve Denton.”
David Bassam -Development Director Chronicle
- Production of a Custom Training Video – to help 500 staff self service
- Employee Self Servicing Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbs5k7UcRME
- 5 x Onsite Training Sessions over 3 days with all managers and users of Chronicle
Suzanne Warner and Zac after training
- New employee tag/department report
- Custom Payroll Report
Other
- Our development changed everyone’s email in the Chronicle system adhoc
- Added and removed tags in bulk
“Development of bespoke work has been super quick and easy with Chronicle, all work is specified and clear timelines provided plus you actually get to speak with the lead developers. I particularly like the test system in place to view the work prior to it going live to all staff.”
Michelle Shotton – Payroll Bridgnorth Aluminium
