GeoSea, an offshore marine engineering project specialist, has awarded the BiFab yard a contract to produce piles worth up to £26.5 million for the Moray East Offshore Windfarm development. This will create a maximum of 82 jobs for the yard. 

 

Sean Power, vice president business development at DF Barnes said: “This announcement is the first stage in a long process that aims to develop and secure a sustainable business. We have made a long-term commitment to BiFab and are actively leveraging our global skills and expertise to position the company for future growth.

 

“We are really grateful for the support we have received from the trade unions, local politicians and the Scottish Government and its agencies. The high quality skills amongst the local workforce on the Isle of Lewis will be critical to our long term success. Although we are pleased to secure this work, we are working flat out to secure additional contracts.” 

 

Paul Wheelhouse MSP, Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands said:  "The award of this contract is great news for BiFab and the wider Isle of Lewis community. The Scottish Government’s continued support, and collaborative approach with DF Barnes, has helped secure, at peak, 82 good quality jobs for this yard.’’

 

Source: Insider 

 

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A major increase in staff numbers, such as the BiFab yard is hoping for, can cause unforeseen problems for staff performing HR, admin and accounts job roles if the company’s method of recording time worked has not been updated. 

 

For example, it is very easy for staff to fill in paper timesheets incorrectly. Sometimes this can be deliberate time fraud, but sometimes it is just new staff getting confused, or people forgetting to fill in their timesheets until a week later, by which time they’ve forgotten their exact shift details and are likely to just fudge it. 

 

Even if the details are all correct, most paper timesheets must then be manually transferred to a database (usually an Excel spreadsheet) before being sent to payroll software. 

 

There are many opportunities for human error to kick in during this time-consuming process – e.g. making an unrecognised typo in entering, or misreading employee’s handwriting (1 or 7? O or 0 or D?).

 

Incorrect data can also foul up HR tasks too, making it much more difficult to spot issues like adherence to the Working Time Directive or someone taking three 30 minute breaks plus lunch.

 

At Time and Attendance Scotland, we offer specialised attendance management software which can work either with smartcards or with biometrics. 

Our smartcards are about the size of a credit card and fit nicely into most wallets. The radio frequency technology means that you don’t need to physically swipe the cards, just hold them up near the reader terminal. This reduces wear and tear.

 

For the ultimate deterrent against time theft, we can provide a hand scanner and/or a fingerprint reader. Smartcards can be lost, or swapped with colleagues to input fake times. This isn’t the case with hands and fingers!