As a technical engineering office, the Geotechnik-Team company from Innsbruck takes on important planning work for construction projects. In the mountainous terrain of the Austrian Alps, subsoil investigation is of central importance. This is because on this terrain, to an increasing extent, only sites that are "problematic" are available for building projects. This means that organic and thus compressible soils, land with high groundwater levels, steep slopes or landslide-prone zones are increasingly being used as building ground despite these deficiencies. At the same time, the quality requirements for structures are becoming ever higher. This is precisely where Geotechnik-Team comes into play. The company then plans, monitors and ensures, for example, the project-compliant execution of excavation and slope stabilisation as well as so-called "foundations", in which the load-bearing capacity of building ground is increased by piles or columns. In addition, the company with its eleven employees also undertakes construction planning and the preparation of expert reports and analyses for construction projects. Customers are public clients such as the province of Tyrol or housing associations. For time recording of the project work done and project controlling, Geotechnik-Team uses the solution ZEP - Time Recording for Projects by the company provantis IT Solutions.
"As engineers, we are naturally very tech-savvy and all have the corresponding programming skills. Time recording for our projects via pure Excel lists therefore seemed too banal to us from the beginning."recalls DI Markus Götsch, partner and project manager in the field of geotechnics and hydraulic engineering at Geotechnik-Team, at the beginnings of his company in 2008. For this reason, the company initially developed its own software solution for time recording.
"So far, ZEP has never let us down. The system works and meets all our requirements for a modern time recording system".
However, with an ever-increasing volume of projects, the complexity of the requirements for the in-house solution also increased. At the same time, the effort for the further development of the system also grew. This, in turn, was at the expense of the availability of the employees in charge of further development for their actual activities in the project business. "At some point, the effort for the further development of our own time recording solution became too much for us. We decided to focus on our main business in the future and to look for an external solution for time recording."explains DI Götsch.
"Invoicing is absolutely part of the process when it comes to ensuring the smoothest possible flow between time recording and billing"
Through an internet search and a tip from their own company environment, Mr Götsch and his colleagues came across the cloud-based time recording solution ZEP from the company provantis IT Solutions.
ZEP stands for Time Recording for Projects. The web-based solution has been on the market since 2000 and offers project-oriented companies a complete solution for time recording and verification, travel expenses, project management and controlling as well as invoicing.
Since 2014, ZEP has also been in use at the company Geotechnik-Team. In addition to pure time recording, the company also uses the invoicing module. DI Götsch: explains: "Billing is absolutely part of the equation when it comes to ensuring the smoothest possible flow between time recording and billing."
In addition to the variety of functions, the engineer sees the advantages of time recording via ZEP in particular in the clarity and intuitive user interface. He explains: "We looked at other solutions during the project selection process, including one of the leading controlling and management software solutions for architects and engineers. However, the user interface seemed far too overloaded and 'colourful' for our needs, so we finally decided on ZEP."
In addition to the user-friendliness, according to DI Götsch, what speaks in favour of ZEP is the possibility to get an up-to-date project overview at any time and to be able to check who has worked on a project and when. "Project overview and control are indeed very easy via ZEP. The billing of the project work done is done via the corresponding module, which takes over the necessary data from the time recording at the push of a button."confirms a satisfied project manager.
Although the initial consideration was to operate ZEP in-house on its own server, Geotechnik-Team now uses the solution in the cloud computing model. The solution is operated in a certified data centre. The employees of Geotechnik-Team access the solution via internet and web browser.
"So far, ZEP has never let us down. The system works and meets all our requirements for a modern time recording system".This is the satisfied conclusion of DI Markus Götsch after almost four years of using ZEP.
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