Case study / Workforce Intelligence
Labour and Productivity Intelligence: From Datascope to Portfolio Workforce Visibility
Background
Detailed site attendance data. No way to see across it.
Datascope is widely used across construction, residential development and infrastructure to manage site access and workforce attendance — capturing who is on site each day, what role they perform and how many hours they clock in. On any active project, the platform records a rich, structured picture of daily workforce activity. But like most site-level tools, it was designed to work project by project.
For a business managing multiple live developments simultaneously, this created a familiar gap: the data was there, but the portfolio view wasn't. Site managers and operations leadership had no reliable way to compare headcount, hours and workforce composition across projects without manually pulling and compiling reports. Productivity benchmarking — combining labour data with actual cost information to understand what each site's workforce was costing — was practically impossible at scale. The business engaged Acumine to build the reporting layer that changed this.
Workforce data locked at project level
Datascope held detailed daily attendance data for every site — but it was fragmented across individual project views. Getting a picture of total headcount, hours worked or workforce composition across the portfolio required manually extracting and compiling data from each project separately.
Labour reports produced manually
Any summary of labour averages — headcount per month, hours by subcontractor, workforce by person type — required a manual effort to extract, aggregate and format. These reports were produced reactively and on request rather than being available to operations and leadership as a live, always-current resource.
No productivity benchmarking across sites
Combining labour attendance data with actual cost data from the finance system — to derive productivity metrics such as net cost per person and net cost per hour — required a manual cross-referencing exercise that was rarely done in a structured, repeatable way. Benchmarking one development against another was effectively impractical.
Data quality required active management
Turnstile-based attendance data is only as accurate as the clocking process. Ensuring consistent designation of person types, subcontractors and project codes across sites — and providing a mechanism to record clockings where turnstile access wasn't appropriate — needed to be addressed before the data could support reliable reporting at portfolio scale.
What Datascope captures
Rich daily workforce data across every site — by person type, company and hours.
Datascope records a structured daily attendance picture for each project — capturing not just how many people were on site, but who they were, who they worked for and how long they were there. This data was the foundation of the reporting platform, supplemented by live cost data from the finance system to enable productivity analysis.
Daily attendance
Headcount and hours clocked in — every site, every day
For each project, Datascope records a daily attendance summary broken down by subcontractor company and person type — Directors, Managers, Supervisors, Operatives, Apprentices, Trainees and Visitors. Each record includes the number of people present and the hours clocked in, providing the granular daily data needed to calculate meaningful weekly and monthly averages.
Workforce composition
Who is on site and in what role
Breaking down headcount by person type — distinguishing operatives from supervisors, managers from apprentices — gives site management and operations leadership a consistent view of workforce composition across developments. This supports conversations about resourcing levels, supply chain engagement and whether the right mix of people is present to support the programme at each stage.
Finance system integration
Actual costs combined with labour data for productivity metrics
By connecting Datascope attendance data with actual construction cost data from the finance system, the platform extends beyond headcount reporting into productivity benchmarking — calculating net cost per person and net cost per hour across developments. This gives commercial and operations leadership the data to compare efficiency across the portfolio in a structured, repeatable way.
The solution
A live workforce intelligence platform across all live developments
Acumine built a Microsoft Fabric and Power BI platform that pulled Datascope attendance data automatically each morning via API — aggregating daily site records across all live developments into a single, structured model and refreshing the dashboard with the previous day's figures before the working day began. A connection to the finance system added actual cost data, enabling productivity metrics to be calculated and compared across sites without any manual effort.
The dashboard is interactive throughout — every visualisation can be filtered by project, subcontractor company, person type and date range, allowing users to focus on the specific combination of sites, supply chain partners and workforce categories most relevant to their current question.
01
Workforce trends by day, week and month
A stacked column chart showing average daily headcount broken down by person type, with a line tracking average hours clocked in — switchable between daily, weekly and monthly views. This gives operations and health and safety teams a clear picture of workforce volume and working patterns across the portfolio over time, with the ability to drill into any combination of project, company and role.
02
Average daily headcount and hours by project
A matrix showing the average daily number of people on site and average daily hours clocked in for each development, month by month — with weekend days excluded from calculations to give an accurate working-day average. This view lets site management and leadership compare resourcing levels across developments consistently and identify where headcount is tracking significantly above or below expectation.
03
Average daily headcount and hours by subcontractor
The same monthly average breakdown structured by subcontractor company — with rows expandable to show the breakdown by person type and date. This view gives the commercial and operations teams visibility of how each supply chain partner is contributing to site workforce over time, supporting conversations about engagement levels and resource allocation across the programme.
04
Average daily headcount and hours by person type
A breakdown of monthly average attendance by person category — Operatives, Supervisors, Managers, Apprentices, Trainees, Visitors and others — giving health and safety and operations teams visibility of workforce composition trends across the portfolio. Rows are expandable to break down further by date, making it straightforward to identify shifts in the balance of person types on any development over time.
05
Productivity benchmarking
By combining Datascope attendance data with actual construction costs from the finance system, the platform calculates net cost per person and net cost per hour across developments — giving commercial and operations leadership a structured basis for comparing productivity performance between sites. These metrics, standard benchmarks in the industry, were not previously available in a consistent and automated form.
Outcomes
Portfolio workforce visibility that manual reports couldn't provide
A live portfolio headcount view for the first time
Operations leadership and site management had a consistent, always-current view of headcount, hours and workforce composition across all live developments — updated automatically each morning without anyone needing to prepare a report. Labour averages that previously required a manual exercise to produce were available on demand, filtered to any project, company or person type combination.
Subcontractor workforce engagement made visible
The breakdown of average daily attendance by subcontractor company gave the commercial and operations teams a data-driven view of how each supply chain partner was resourcing their commitment across the portfolio. Patterns of under-resourcing or inconsistent attendance — previously identified only through site observation — became visible as a trend in the dashboard.
Productivity benchmarking became a structured capability
For the first time, the business could compare net cost per person and net cost per hour across developments in a consistent, automated way — without any manual cross-referencing between Datascope and the finance system. This turned productivity benchmarking from an occasional ad hoc analysis into a routine operational view available to commercial and leadership teams.
A platform applicable across any site using Datascope
Because the solution connected to Datascope via API and pulled data across all projects in a single automated pipeline, new sites were picked up automatically as they were configured in the platform. The reporting environment grew with the portfolio without requiring manual additions or structural changes to the underlying model.
Technology
Datascope workforce data structured for portfolio reporting in Power BI
The solution connected to the Datascope API via a Microsoft Fabric data pipeline, pulling daily attendance records across all live projects each morning and structuring them into a consistent model alongside actual cost data from the finance system. Power BI delivered the reporting layer — with interactive filtering across project, company, person type and date, and daily refresh ensuring the dashboard always reflected the previous day's site position.
This challenge — site-level workforce data captured in Datascope with no portfolio view across it — is one Acumine encounters consistently across housebuilders, contractors and infrastructure businesses. If your teams use Datascope and your operations leadership lacks a consistent cross-site view of headcount, hours and productivity, Acumine can build the same reporting platform for you.
Work with Acumine
Using Datascope and no portfolio view of workforce performance?
If your sites are recording attendance in Datascope but your operations and leadership teams have no consistent cross-site picture of headcount, hours and productivity, Acumine can build the platform that connects it — aggregating your Datascope data automatically, combining it with your finance system for productivity benchmarking, and delivering the workforce intelligence your business needs without any manual reporting effort.