Hick Bros approached Mutu for help after finding it in the Circular Economy Directory. Mutu is an online platform that helps organisations manage their resources in a smarter, more sustainable way - just what Hick Bros was looking for.
The solution
At its core Mutu is a resource management tool that helps companies like Hick Bros manage their plant, equipment and materials. By registering all the gear at Hick Bros on the Mutu platform, team members have been able to open the app on their phone and book any equipment they need to do their jobs. This also gives the business an overview of where things are and who has them. This visibility reduces unnecessary purchasing and hiring of gear that already exists. On top of this, Mutu automates basic asset management tasks. It does this by checking in with staff to confirm what gear they have and triggering reminders when things like calibration or servicing are due.
Mutu also helps Hick Bros repurpose surplus materials to other job sites. Site Engineer Aaron Jin has embraced Mutu and describes the process: "When you come across materials you no longer need, in less than a minute you can photograph and list them on Mutu. The listings are then shown to everyone at Hick Bros to see if anyone wants them".
Whenever these items are claimed and reused, Mutu delivers real-time sustainability data back to Hick Bros via a range of dashboards. Mutu can report on metrics like procurement costs saved and waste emissions redirected from landfill. Hick Bros can use this data to include in the tendering process as an example of a measurable sustainability initiative that has been implemented on site.
Benefits
Using Mutu has helped Hick Bros improve the use of the things it already owns and reduce hiring costs. This is eliminating unnecessary purchasing, reducing waste sent to landfill and ensuring resources are used right up to the end of their life.
The reuse of equipment and surplus materials has saved more than seven tonnes of carbon emissions. Hick Bros has used the Mutu platform to find reuse opportunities for an average of $4500 worth of materials per month that are surplus on their various sites across Auckland, from pavers to water tanks. And with Mutu’s online dashboards, any time a reuse activity is completed on the platform it is visible for everyone in the business to see. To help encourage this type of behaviour Mutu also includes a leaderboard to show who is having the most positive sustainable impact across the business and rewards them with prizes.
Pete Ralph, Sustainability Manager at Hicks Bros, says Mutu has helped save time and resources, as well as providing a useful tool for tracking positive environmental impact.
“Mutu has allowed us to move our reuse behaviours from emails and text messages into software,” he says. “As we continue to grow, the efficiencies we gain from using a platform like Mutu really help save us time.
“The other advantage of this is that we can now track and report on these actions and present them to our clients to show the positive sustainable impact we are having across our sites.
“The fact that Mutu is app-based has made it really easy to roll out across the business and means that whenever someone identifies a reuse opportunity they can have it up and on the Mutu platform in seconds.
“If you are not using solutions like Mutu on your sites you are going to be left behind. The time and cost savings we are seeing coupled with the sustainability impacts and reporting capability clearly indicates to us that software like this is going to play a critical role in the future of the construction industry.”
Business/organisation name: Mutu
Main contractor: Hick Bros
Date: Ongoing since September 2022
