When project growth outpaced old safety processes, Figurehead Construction faced a choice: keep patching systems together or rethink safety entirely. Here’s how they built a future-ready safety culture — and won time, compliance, and confidence back.
For years, safety at Figurehead Construction was managed alongside delivery. Construction managers did their best to cover it, admits HSEQ Systems Manager Adrian Di Cosmo, but without a dedicated function to drive consistency across projects.
By 2024, as projects continued to scale, that approach was no longer sustainable. The Victoria-based contractor created a dedicated health, safety, environment, and quality role, appointing Adrian with 15 years of Figurehead project experience to take it on.
Until then, site safety was underpinned by a patchwork of Procore, SharePoint, handwritten forms, and scanned PDFs.
The gaps soon became impossible to ignore:
Handwritten and paper-based inductions, SWMS, and Safety Data Sheets (SDS)
Plant inductions bottlenecked by multiple PDF versions in Procore
Slow and fragmented reporting with key data split across systems
“We were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole,” Adrian recalls. “By the time we had those bigger jobs with 150 trades a day, we knew it was too risky to manage safety that way. That’s when you can start dropping the ball. Safety and quality are two areas we refuse to do that.”
Put simply, the builder needed a dedicated digital safety platform — or risk falling behind.
The tipping point came when it became clear the old patchwork of systems couldn’t keep up. Larger jobs and rising client expectations meant a dedicated, digital safety platform was no longer optional – it was essential.
For Adrian, the brief was clear: find a digital safety platform that could bring consistency, visibility, and efficiency across the business.
It had to deliver on various fronts.
All-in-one capability: A platform consolidating health, safety, and environmental management in one place.
Ease of use: Accessible to everyone, from large commercial projects to townhouse builds with smaller, potentially less tech-savvy tradies.
Smarter reporting: The ability to quickly generate safety insights without spending days pulling data into spreadsheets.
The ability to professionalise safety in the eyes of clients and auditors was equally important. Charged with managing Figurehead’s ISO accreditation, Adrian recalls his first ISO audit under the old ways of working.
“Trying to prove compliance was extremely difficult. I had to go through multiple jobs, find paperwork in different locations – a nightmare. With HammerTech, it’s all in one place, that company-wide view.”
The switch was also about futureproofing.
Adrian adds that tender submissions now increasingly ask for detailed health and safety statistics. Relying on paper inductions and disconnected systems risk not only inefficiency but lost future opportunities.
Having overseen multiple system rollouts at Figurehead in years past, from financial systems to Procore and procurement platforms, Adrian braced for handholding or even resistance.
Yet HammerTech proved the smoothest transition so far, he says with a smile.
“HammerTech has been picked up the most easily by everyone in the business. We really only needed to spend an hour with each site showing them the tools and demo project.
“During the onboarding earlier this year, I went on leave for three weeks. My phone didn’t ring once. That really speaks for itself. Normally I could spend months trying to get people to understand a new system.”
Figurehead rolled HammerTech out across all live projects at once, cutting over from old systems and onboarding subcontractors within a week. While some SWMS had to be resubmitted, Adrian describes the transition as ‘really simple’.
And subcontractors, already familiar with HammerTech from other main contractors, needed little convincing: “You don’t have to drag them through another new app. They’ve already got it. They know it. That buy-in is really good, it’s already there.”
Compliance was just the baseline. Gains have also come in the form of stronger audits, time back for teams, and a level of consistency the business had never achieved before.
Strengthened Compliance and ISO Confidence
ISO accreditation, previously difficult to evidence consistently, is straightforward today. All safety records, inductions, and SWMS are now accessible in one place – ready for audits and tenders.
“If we had stayed with our old system, we wouldn’t have managed compliance with our health and safety plan. We would have lost ISO accreditation, and with it, a lot of project opportunities.”
Time Back for Construction Teams
What once took multiple people to manage can now be handled by health and safety reps in a single day. Site teams are now freed to focus more time on quality and delivery.
Project-wide consistency
Instead of site-by-site variations and workarounds, HammerTech enforces one simple, standardised process – ensuring every project meets the same level of detail and compliance.
Buy-in: from the field to the boardroom
Rather than resisting change, site teams embraced it. Some have even begun suggesting further efficiencies by leveraging HammerTech.
“Our teams were ready for a better way of doing things, and HammerTech was the right fit. It's intuitive with plenty of functionality. I’ve never had a system where users were coming to me with ideas for how to make it better.”
Beyond compliance and consistency, the real impact has come from the everyday tools site teams now rely on. Adrian says digital inductions and daily sign-ins have already removed the burden of paper while giving supervisors clear visibility of who is on site and what tickets they hold.
SWMS are now easier to upload, sign off and track too, with teams able to instantly see who hasn’t signed on. Incident and injury reporting has also become simpler, with a noticeable rise in submissions giving Figurehead greater visibility.
And with the Bulletins function, critical messages reach workers instantly through SMS or the site sign-in screen, replacing noticeboards that Adrian says often went unread.
For Adrian, the real change lies in what comes next. HammerTech Insights is giving the business a clearer view of patterns in its safety data, turning reporting into a proactive tool for prevention.
“Let’s say we start seeing hands and fingers as a top injury location. Do we decide that gloves become mandatory across all sites? We just didn’t have that kind of visibility before.”
For the first time, safety data can inform preventative measures, not just reactive reporting.
The team is also exploring the HammerTech TV app to display live safety and permit boards on site: “There's a level of professionalism that comes with that setup that we typically associate ourselves with.”
Without HammerTech, Adrian is clear about an alternative future:
Compliance challenges – ISO accreditation at risk
Lost tenders – Inability to demonstrate safety stats to clients
Operational inefficiency – Multiple big projects becoming unmanageable
Reputational risk – Ongoing reliance on paper processes while scaling
“You can’t really go wrong with HammerTech. You just jump in, follow the prompts, and you’ll meet the standards we require.”
Sector: Multi-residential, commercial, and community construction
Size: 80+ employees; 90+ completed projects
Location: Melbourne, Victoria
Timeline: Founded in 2007; ongoing partnership with HammerTech