The Kimmins Contracting Corporation has been serving industrial and commercial construction clients since it was founded by William Kimmins in 1923. Fifty years later, the Williams Group and Kimmins combined to offer demolition contracting services to the industrial community. The 1980s saw the Kimmins headquarters relocate to Tampa, Florida, and in 1991, Kimmins expanded again to form the Earthwork and Mine Service Group, providing earth moving equipment and services to Florida’s phosphate industry.
By 2002, Kimmins was on the leading edge of the new millennia’s green construction movement when they opened their stone and aggregate crushing and recycling operation. Kimmins’ turnkey services include:
- Industrial demolition
- Commercial and residential demolition
- Selective demolition
- Tank decommissioning
- Asset recovery and recycling
- Hazardous material removal
- Design-build projects
- Earthwork
- Civil sites and utilities.
Kimmins has an impressive array of diverse industrial projects under its belt, ranging from repairing runways at MacDill Air Force Base to expanding the Hard Rock Casino for Florida’s Seminole tribe. They are now a much sought after partner for comprehensive design-build projects, industrial demolition, and civil construction.
Kimmins faced with paperwork nightmare
Frank Inturrisi is the operations manager shouldering the responsibility for Kimmins’ fleet of 48 vehicles and 300 pieces of heavy construction equipment. Like many fleet managers who turn to the Whip Around digital solution, he found himself dealing with a paper-based administrative nightmare. “I’ve got 6 of the biggest boxes full of paper, and I wouldn’t have a clue where to find anything, but we have to keep inspections for 3 years.”
Inturrisi sets the Kimmins fleet operations standards pretty high, measuring success at nothing less than 100% DOT compliance, with all vehicles online as close to 100% of the time as possible.
The company owns 75% of assets with about 25% leased, with many of those in lease-to-purchase deals. Like many enterprises in the heavy industrial sector, Kimmins reports that vehicles being offline and out of action is their “biggest revenue killer”. Drivers can’t work, and machinery can’t be transported.
The construction industry has traditionally been resistant to digital technology, lagging behind other sectors which quickly embraced the benefits of the digital age to cut costs, boost productivity, and increase revenue. Inturrisi ran into some of that resistance at Kimmins, reminding us that “Drivers and staff are always skeptical around anything new or change.” But confronted with the demanding maintenance challenges combined with mountains of paper generated by DOT archiving requirements, Inturrisi knew that it was time for an upgrade.
The importance of compliance
With DOT and OSHA compliance both extremely important in this industry, Daily Vehicle Inspection Report (DVIR) archiving demands required by the DOT were drowning the team in a sea of paperwork. Like many businesses, the larger the fleet size the more burdensome the paper-based DVIR administration and storage becomes.
Inturrisi, like many others in his position, is largely focused on compliance and safety, so proper equipment inspections and maintenance is key.
Discovering Whip Around’s paperless solution
Kimmins discovered the Whip Around solution to their paperwork nightmare when Whip Around’s Albert (A.W.) Ross reached out to Inturrisi. At the time, Inturrisi mentioned that Kimmins was focused on DOT compliance and safety issues and that he hated the administrative burdens caused by all the paperwork.
Even though he wasn’t actively seeking a digital solution to his DOT compliance problems at the time, he recalled: “As soon as I checked it out I knew (Whip Around) and Albert were great. We got along, and I knew we were onto a winner.”
The experience using Whip Around
With Whip Around, inspections at Kimmins commence at 6am. The operations teams are in place around 7:30am. To create a robust inspection and maintenance program, Inturrisi uses the vehicle inspection times as the timestamps for calculating the hours worked by each driver.
A Kimmin’s in-house mechanic also endorsed the streamlined Whip Around process explaining: “All in all I really like this. It makes my job easier without all the paperwork.”
Transitioning to a more efficient process
Kimmins drivers are adapting to the new Whip Around approach as well. There is a learning curve as the company makes the transition from cumbersome paperwork to smartphone convenience, but many drivers have already discovered the advantages of Whip Around technology.
Inturrisi summed up the transition at Kimmins for us saying: “The tech-savvy drivers always take photos and it’s great, but some don’t as they don’t understand how it helps them showing that there’s something wrong. We’ve had drivers who love it from Day 1, and we’ve had drivers who don’t like it at first but soon change their tune.”
Inturrisi realizes that Kimmins needs to incorporate more technology across the business as the construction industry catches up in the smart digital age of Industrial 4.0. In that spirit Kimmins also recently implemented Trackabout, but performance wasn’t quite up to the Whip Around standard. Inturrisi said about the intuitive Whip Around solution: “I love the simplicity.”
Get started today
With Whip Around, smartphone technology and convenience lets you take control of the cumbersome DVIR process in a way that enhances a robust maintenance program which drastically reduces fleet downtime. With the Whip Around mobile app, drivers and operators can conduct vehicle or equipment inspections anytime, anywhere. That means that they can flag faults in real time and forward details to your maintenance teams with photos and comments.
For fleet managers, the Whip Around custom form builder also makes it easy to select from the template library, or build inspection forms tailored to your fleet’s specific operational and maintenance needs.
Current paper checklists or Excel spreadsheets can be converted to mobile inspection forms in minutes. Each driver has his own individual login so it makes it easy to track who has conducted an inspection automatically, complete with automated time, date, and GPS stamping. DVIRs are managed with ease, and faults can be forwarded to in-house mechanics or external teams to make repairs a faster process, leading to less downtime.
To see firsthand how Whip Around can meet the needs of your organization, request a demo for a custom walkthrough of the platform and app with a product specialist.
