How an Inspection Services Firm Optimized its Contractor Workforce with FlexiTrack
We work with a fast-growing inspection & qualification services firm specializing in geological & ground investigations.
With a large network of 150+ specialist contractors, team leaders struggled to match the right skills to projects, optimize workforce planning and avoid inefficiencies in resource allocation.
With FlexiTrack, our colleagues transformed contractor management and workforce planning with improved visibility, efficiency, and strategic foresight.
Read below to understand how they now operate with FlexiTrack to enable greater agility and reduce costs, ensuring project success and a future-ready workforce.
Before FlexiTrack: Reactive workforce planning with limited visibility into contractor skills and availability.
A leading, privately-owned ground investigation contractor provides geotechnical and geo-environmental data throughout the UK & Ireland. They deliver an extensive range of ground investigation services for the purpose of informing on the physical and engineering properties of the ground (soil & rock) as well as any potential contamination issues. Their surveying teams number approximately 150, providing utility tracing and detection services as well as stringent soil and rock testing via accredited laboratories.
We found that our customer’s technical & resource planning managers relied on outdated competency spreadsheets and contractor rankings, making it difficult to identify the best talent for each client’s nature of business. Some contractors were overutilized, leading to burnout, while others were underutilized, causing them to take up other work or worse, leave the resource pool. Scopes of work were rushed based on the resources available instead of clear visibility and engagement decisions were made last-minute, leading to higher costs, unrealistic expectations by contractors and project delays while skills were shuffled around.
Some contractors were overutilized, leading to burnout, while others were underutilized, causing them to take up other work or worse, leave the resource pool.
Surveying team managers were responsible for finding, qualifying, on-boarding, training, deploying and monitoring a range of contractors such as geologists, engineers, drillers, lab technicians and surveyors. Investigation planners struggled to match the right skills to projects, optimize workforce planning and avoid inefficiencies in resource allocation.
As their service offering and customer base grew, the need for a more scalable and efficient approach became critical. They needed a platform that would not only streamline the investigation process but also improve operational efficiency and oversight, ensuring they stayed ahead of potential risks while safeguarding customer trust.
That’s where we and our partner platform, MuchSkills, transformed their resourcing from reactive and arbitrary-based, to proactive and skills-based.
Centralizing Workforce Data
With advice & guidance from FlexiTrack, all contractor profiles (skills, experience, certifications, availability) were uploaded into the MuchSkills platform.
AI-driven analysis categorized skills based on industry best practices, providing a real-time skills inventory.
Smart Talent Matching
Project managers used MuchSkills to instantly match contractors to project needs based on skills, location, and availability.
AI-driven recommendations helped reduce search time from days to minutes by amalgamating & optimizing consultant talent, skills, industry best-practice, location & availability
Strategic Workforce Planning
FlexiTrack then guided the client’s leadership to use MuchSkills’ predictive workforce planning to forecast future skill requirements based on project pipelines.
Skills gaps were identified months in advance, allowing proactive contractor sourcing and upskilling of any internal employees aswell.
Performance & Utilization Tracking
MuchSkills provided real-time dashboards to monitor contractor utilization rates, preventing overwork or underuse. Automated insights enabled the client to balance workloads more effectively, improving project efficiency.
FlexiTrack was on-hand to support the development of the dashboards whenever needed and to guide the client in industry best-practice KPI reporting for the various services.
Results & Business Impact
> 30% faster contractor deployment – Reducing time spent searching for the right talent.
> 20% improvement in project efficiency – Ensuring the best-fit specialists were always available.
> Significant cost savings – Cutting unnecessary hiring and reducing downtime for contractors.
> Higher contractor engagement – Contractors felt valued as their skills were better aligned with projects.
And next-level coaching - Managers were able to identify working skills gaps and growth opportunities for multiple roles or competencies that aligned with strategic and operational goals
Contact us to explore further case studies in other sectors.