Lancashire buildings firm plans £1.8m investment with help from the Made Smarter scheme

As a result, Wareing Buildings has become one of the first in its industry to take up a suite of state-of-the-art technology.

It worked with Made Smarter to support its adoption of Tekla PowerFab, a suite of software which enables more efficient management of the steel fabrication environment, providing a flow of information throughout the project life-cycle.

Wrea Green-headquartered Wareing Buildings submitted its proposal via specialists, Westley Consulting.

Bosses worked with Rick Patterson to develop a comprehensive digital strategy which demonstrated how embracing digitisation would enable the manufacturing and construction business to achieve an almost 10 per cent productivity gain – equivalent to £3,774 per staff member versus existing productivity levels and a return on investment of more than 220 per cent.

The support marks the first phase in Wareing’s smart digitisation project, which forms part of a wider three year investment and development programme. It is predicted that investment into additional buildings, equipment and technology will total £1.8m.

Matt Hastwell, senior draughtsman at Wareing Buildings, said: “Though we already employ digital technology and BIM at the design stage of every project, the majority of our everyday activity – including the processing, tracking and delivery of steel fabrication jobs – has remained a largely manual process.

"We knew that an information management system, through which all of our daily activity – including material ordering, fabrication schedules and deliveries – could be easily processed, managed and accessed would turn our outdated processes on their head.

“Since implementing Tekla PowerFab, the benefits have been clear to see. We are projected to make significant savings in time and money as a result, and we will be reinvesting that freed up resource back into our client relationships, ensuring every single customer is receiving an improved, modern day service from Wareing."

Rick Patterson from Westly Consulting said: “Its wonderful news to see investment going into a key Lancashire construction firm and enabling a major step forward with this new technology. Many other manufacturing firms could benefit from this exciting new fund and embrace digitisation within their company.”