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How Forterra Used Mobile to Transform Safety Reporting
Forterra PLC is a leading manufacturer of building products for the UK construction industry, built on a solid foundation of traditional values and advanced technology solutions. With a history dating back to 1790 as The Butterley Company, Forterra and its predecessors have played a key role in shaping the UK’s infrastructure. Since rebranding as Forterra in 2015, the company has cemented itself as a top-tier manufacturer of essential building products.
Impact
- Supported ISO certifications (9001, 14001, 45001, 50001, 6001) with better audit management.
- Enhanced near miss and incident reporting via the "Near Miss and Hazard Spot" process.
- Enabled site teams, drivers, and mobile users to access and input data directly from the field.
- Replaced cumbersome SharePoint forms with an easy-to-use Observations module.
Outcome
Intelex gave Forterra a modern, unified platform that empowered employees across all sites to easily capture, access, and act on safety data—driving greater visibility, accountability, and continuous improvement. This transformation laid the foundation for stronger safety performance, streamlined compliance, and long-term operational resilience.
The Challenge for Forterra
Before implementing Intelex, Forterra was operating with a legacy EHS software system that no longer aligned with the company’s pace of growth or operational complexity. Despite having had a digital solution in place for 15 years, the system lacked basic capabilities such as mobile access and online functionality. This limited its use to desktop computers—excluding key frontline users like drivers and facility staff—and ultimately hindered data collection and engagement. Employees had to rely on cumbersome workarounds like long SharePoint forms for behavior-based safety observations, making it difficult to gather timely, consistent data across 20 geographically dispersed sites.
The company’s expansion through mergers and acquisitions had resulted in a patchwork of management systems that created inefficiencies, increased administrative burden, and made it difficult to align safety processes across the organization. Forterra needed more than just a software upgrade—they needed a unified, flexible platform that could scale with their operations, streamline processes, and support their broader goals around growth, sustainability, and employee engagement. The lack of mobile capability, inconsistent reporting methods, and over-customization in their previous system led to frustration, lost time, and missed opportunities for improvement.
“To gain exactly what we wanted to achieve from the system, which was an easy end user experience, more effort on system changes meant the end user would have a more useful and easier process to navigate.”
Paul Humphreys, Head of Health and Safety, Forterra PLC.
“As Forterra continues to invest and grow, we will continue to look to our Intelex software system to support both our compliance requirements and provision of information and data to
inform us of future work and strategies for improvement.”
Paul Humphreys, Head of Health and Safety, Forterra PLC.
How Intelex Helped Forterra
The implementation of Intelex at Forterra began with a focused, phased approach designed to deliver immediate value where it mattered most. Phase 1 prioritized high-impact modules—Incident Management, Audit Management, Safety Observations, and Action Plans—which quickly gave employees a more accessible, intuitive way to capture and respond to safety data. Tools like the “Near Miss and Hazard Spot” process, now digitized and mobile-enabled, saw rapid adoption and became the largest contributor of records in the system. For Paul Humphreys and his team, this shift felt like a long-overdue modernization—bringing their safety processes into the 21st century and creating a clear path for stronger engagement and accountability.
As these core applications rolled out, the impact rippled across the organization. Managers were now required to complete safety and financial audits on a recurring schedule through the platform, instilling greater discipline and visibility at all levels. The ability to track and analyze data at the site level gave HSE professionals better insight into risk trends—helping them address root causes instead of reacting to symptoms. For the first time, teams could access and act on real-time data regardless of their role or location, which helped build a shared understanding of safety performance and operational goals across Forterra’s 20 sites.
Beyond the immediate gains in efficiency and accessibility, the rollout of Intelex also reinforced Forterra’s broader cultural priorities—like its Roadmap to Zero Harm and commitment to continuous improvement. Employees across departments, including quality, logistics, and HR, began to experience the benefits of a more connected and transparent system. What started as a technical upgrade quickly evolved into a company-wide transformation—one that brought people, data, and processes into closer alignment with Forterra’s long-term growth and sustainability strategy.