How Construction Companies Save 15% on Labour Costs

Labour is the single biggest expense in construction, typically making up 40–60% of total project costs. Even marginal inefficiencies — a handful of unrecorded minutes here, an unapproved overtime stint there — add up to a significant financial impact over the life of a project.

Here is how BuildRight Construction, a mid-sized firm running 180 field workers across 12 active sites, trimmed labour costs by 15% after rolling out hours24 Australia.

The Challenge

BuildRight relied on paper timesheets and basic spreadsheets. Site supervisors gathered handwritten records at day's end, which were then punched into the payroll system once a week. The process was sluggish, riddled with errors, and offered zero real-time visibility into where labour dollars were going.

Common headaches included workers rounding up their hours, no reliable way to confirm on-site presence, no project-level cost insight until after payroll ran, and 3–5 hours per week burned on data entry and corrections.

The Solution

BuildRight rolled out hours24 Australia's mobile time tracking with GPS geofencing at every site. Workers clock in through the app on their phones, and the platform automatically confirms they are within the designated site boundary. SmartTrack terminals were added at the two busiest locations for an extra layer of verification.

The Results

In the first three months, BuildRight recorded a 15% drop in overall labour costs. The gains came from three sources: eliminating time theft and rounding (8%), curbing unauthorised overtime (4%), and removing payroll processing errors (3%).

Real-Time Job Site Accountability

GPS geofencing gave project managers instant visibility into who was at which site. This proved especially useful for workers who moved between sites in a single day — something almost impossible to track reliably on paper.

Project-Level Cost Tracking

With accurate hours linked to specific sites and tasks, BuildRight finally had real-time project-level cost data. Managers could catch budget overruns early and shift resources before minor variances ballooned into major problems.

"We knew time tracking was a weak spot, but we had no idea how much it was really costing us. The return on hours24 Australia was immediate and substantial."
— Mike Torres, Operations Director, BuildRight Construction

Construction firms of any size can achieve comparable results. Schedule a demo to see how hours24 Australia works on your sites.