W L Straughan & Sons Ltd, established in the early 1980s, is an environmental contractor based in Bedlington, Northumberland. They deliver contracting services that include the hire of plant and machinery, site clearance, groundworks and landscaping. W L Straughan and Son Ltd supply their services across the North East of England to clients that include local businesses, councils and primary construction contractors.

The company wished to take on more work whilst maintaining current staffing levels. They asked Smartspeed to assist them in re-designing how their business worked so that more projects could be handled with less effort.

• Implemented effective routines to speed up administration
• Created a capacity management tool to improve project scheduling and labour planning.
• Defined a number of routine meetings to make sure that all of the necessary management functions are operating correctly.
• Introduced key performance indicators to further improve management decision making.
• Developed an ISO9001 compliant Quality Management System to keep all of the improvements made in place.
• Established a new process for handling 'Request for Quotations' (RFQs)  to improve customer responsiveness as well as rate of success.

• 3 month admin backlog cleared in one week.
• Communications between the senior members of staff has improved and issues arising from projects has significantly reduced.
• RFQs now being turned around four times faster than before the new process.
• Quality Management System established and embedded.