As the gateway to South Australia, Adelaide Airport is the state’s most important piece of tourism and trade-related infrastructure. Nearly eight million passengers travelled through the airport’s terminals in FY2023, while the airport’s management also works with hundreds of organisations, from airlines to essential maintenance contractors, retailers and tourism operators within the terminals.
Ensuring the right people gain the right access to the areas they need is critical — and it is the reason Adelaide Airport Limited (AAL) has chosen INX Sitepass to help manage the flow.
AAL manages both Adelaide Airport and the general aviation and international training airfield, Parafield Airport, with a diversified business that spans airline operations, property management, parking infrastructure and management, ground transport, retail stores, facilities maintenance and construction.
The airport has ambitious growth plans comprising a $1 billion-plus investment over the next five years and needs an efficient contractor and visitor management system to oversee compliance and safety across its complex footprint while reducing administrative workload.
After vetting its options, Adelaide Airport selected INX Sitepass and has been phasing in the software across operations since 2018, introducing additional functionality and upgrades to support the changing needs of the business over time.
The challenge
Managing the movements of millions of people a year requires a vast operation and Adelaide Airport is no different.
The airport has more than 200 internal employees but was experiencing a growing need to oversee contractors and visitors and ensure security and regulatory compliance. It has hundreds of contractors on its books – and with business expansion plans on the horizon – managing contractor documentation, licensing, inductions, and insurance information was proving to be a challenge.
Each contractor accessing the airport is required to complete safety and security clearances, contractor movements and work orders need to be tracked, and activity records across multiple airport locations and departments need to be logged.
In addition, all other stakeholders on site, such as baggage handlers (who are engaged by the airlines), must be registered in AAL’s system to receive the necessary access and identification cards to perform their role.
Without centralised visibility into the contractor ecosystem and visitor registration, inefficiencies and additional risks could arise.
By the end of 2024, it is expected the number of staff will grow by 30% to meet the airport’s strategic growth plans and gaps would only widen without a streamlined contractor management solution, as AAL Workplace Health and Safety Manager Michelle Walters explains.
“We’re planning to grow the business over the next 12 months and invest in the business in the next five years, and as you can imagine, we’ll need to onboard a lot more contractors during this growth phase too,” she says.
“It’s why we needed to implement a robust digital solution to help improve our visibility and monitoring of all personnel on-site.”
Evaluation
To address these challenges, Adelaide Airport thoroughly evaluated contractor management software options and selected INX Sitepass. This evaluation revealed that INX Sitepass provided comprehensive features for streamlining onboarding and site inductions for contractors through a cloud-based system.
Automated alerts, notifications, and compliance reporting within INX Sitepass also offer robust oversight capabilities that are critical for Adelaide Airport’s safety and governance needs.
“The primary purpose of selecting and implementing INX Sitepass was to streamline our process to ensure that any contractors on site receive the necessary health and safety information and induction training to keep them safe on site,” says Michelle.
“And the monitoring and reporting capabilities will also help us to be better prepared to respond to an emergency situation as we will be able to more quickly and easily identify visitors and contractors on site.”
With the software’s scalable design and dedicated customer support, Adelaide Airport felt INX Sitepass would be well-suited as a long-term platform to manage contractor relationships as the airport continues its expansion.
Implementation
INX Software’s upfront planning, training, and change management support ensured the implementation process caused minimal disruption to business operations.
Contracting companies receive coaching on how to set up their contractor workforce within the system and ongoing support is provided to contractors and visitors to encourage adoption of the software on site.
During conversations with the INX Software team, AAL also recognised an opportunity to integrate the software’s visitor management capabilities alongside the contractor management solution.
“We transitioned to the INX Sitepass visitor management system in September 2023, which means that all visitors and contractors to AAL’s sites are now managed through one central system,” says Michelle.
Results
The impacts of implementing INX Sitepass have been transformative for Adelaide Airport. INX Sitepass delivers greater transparency into the airport’s contractor ecosystem with centralised data on visitors, inductions, and more.
The system has reduced administrative workload and contractors have expressed positive feedback on INX Sitepass‘ user-friendly interface. With streamlined onboarding and document management processes, and better reporting, AAL can start to access data-driven insights to adjust policies around safety and risk mitigation.
The system upgrade and integration of visitor management was completed in late 2023, and while improvements have already been observed, more benefits are expected as the system becomes more embedded across the organisation and adopted by its contractor network.
“As we learn more about the system and its capabilities, we expect to see further improvement in our safety maturity by creating efficiencies, improving transparency on contractor activity, streamlining our processes, and reducing manual tasks,” says Michelle.
Overall, INX Sitepass has given Adelaide Airport the scalability, efficiency and risk management capabilities needed to manage the contractor workforce and support the airport’s ambitious future growth.
Summary
As Adelaide Airport continues pursuing its vision of being Australia’s favourite airport and long-term strategic plan to meet South Australia’s booming tourism and trade demands, INX Sitepass will be an integral platform enabling and securing this growth. INX Sitepass has delivered the robust, user-friendly contractor management solution Adelaide Airport needed to elevate stakeholder safety, reduce administrative burden, amplify accountability, maintain compliance and minimise risk.
