Arvid Gjerde is Making Roadways and Bridges Safer — and Saving Lives Along the Way

Overview

Arvid Gjerde AS has been working in traffic protection for over 40 years in Norway, specializing in the installation of road and bridge guard rails that keep roads and drivers safe. They strive to provide installation services that meet their high standards on quality and efficiency, while keeping costs low for their customers.

To advance its business, Arvid Gjerde empowered its team with an integrated, Domino-based software infrastructure to manage all project management steps from initial sale to final installation. However, with several companies competing for the same projects in Norway, the business challenge it faces is to outdo the competition and win those projects based on high-quality service, efficiency, and cost.

Their digital business began in earnest in 2006, with HCL Notes. Thirteen years later, and with multiple process enhancements to meet new requirements, the system that now runs all aspects of their business is a fully integrated and web-enabled platform based on HCL Domino.

The story

To Norwegians, it’s a welcome sight to see the weekly ritual of the familiar Arvid Gjerde trucks setting out to do their guardrail work on a Monday morning and returning on Thursday night after a successful week. Arvid Gjerde is one of the top guardrail providers in Norway and is known for its highly competent workforce. The work consists of conducting site analyses and measurements to generate proposals for guardrail projects and then carrying out those installations for projects it wins. When bidding on projects, Arvid Gjerde frequently competes with several other Norwegian companies in the guardrail market. Historically, the key to successfully winning projects has been attributed to the company’s great reputation, high competency and efficiency, and competitive pricing.

Arvid Gjerde’s business began in 1972 with both the advanced ideas from founder Arvid Gjerde about road safety … and a back hoe! Business grew over the years and the digital transformation took hold in 2006 with the HCL Notes client and the establishment of the strategic partnership with iSi, the HCL Business Partner  instrumental in establishing the sophisticated software platform based on Domino that “drives” their business today.

Marcus Brevik, CEO of Arvid Gjerde, is proud of the work his company does to effectively use its powerful toolset to convert customer prospects to clients and then successfully execute on those projects. Brevik attributes the company’s success to its loyal and competent employees, its highly equipped top-grade machinery, its comprehensive software, and its longtime partnership with HCL Business Partner, iSi. Together, these elements form the company’s key to success.

Transformation

Arvid Gjerde had already made their own calculating system on the old platform DataEase when Arvid Gjerde’s digital journey together with iSi began in earnest in 2006. The Notes client was introduced for communication with and amongst the workforce.

Back then the Notes client was already integrated with a GPS solution. This was used for calculating material needs, such as the number of road guardrails required, based on the GPS track. Over the years it has evolved into the current solution, which is integral to Gjerde's infrastructure. This is because it uniquely integrates a variety of disparate technologies that perform complementary business-critical functions: Domino for data collection and replication, Electron, an application capable of running webpages offline, running the Domino applications and the use of REST APIs to transfer road data stored in Domino into Arvid Gjerde's accounting system, as well as the sending of road data to the Norwegian road authority.
 

Business data is continuously available in on- and offline mode and via mobile devices, which is especially important for the road teams who often find themselves in areas with low or no internet connection.

The software platform allows the team to:

• Manage and make accessible the data needed by the road teams to execute projects, such as how many guardrails are needed, what type, and where to install them
• Take care of customers as a CRM system that allows all workers, whether on the road or in the office, to address customer requirements and manage interactions
• Perform continuous quality-assurance tasks that monitor and report, in real-time, the health of their top-grade trucks ($1m each), the needs of the crew (gloves, tools, parts), and the rapid dispatchment of repairs where needed
• Collaborate on job tips, techniques, and lessons learned, that in turn feeds back into system improvements and fosters employee pride and loyalty

Results

Year over year, it’s been proven that the ability to work closely with iSi and continuously monitor, enhance, and tune the platform to address new requirements — while maintaining high efficiency — is the key to its success. Marcus Brevik sums it up by saying,

"At Arvid Gjerde we like to say we are making roadways and bridges safer in Norway — and saving lives along the way!"