How Clarke Underground Unlocked the Full Power of WorkflowMax
WorkflowMax Optimisation Case Study
Clarke Underground is a specialist underground construction company providing expert project management across all types of underground service installations. With a team of licensed, highly skilled operators and a fleet of top-tier machinery, they handle every stage of the process — from initial design and service location through to the installation or replacement of underground utility services, including full traffic management. They required seamless end-to-end capability in their digital workflow, for accurate job costing, phase tracking, and operational reporting – which they see as essential to not only a well run business but a profitable one.
In order to achieve this – Clarke Underground reached out to ConTech Solutions. ConTech Solutions helped Clarke Underground move beyond basic WorkflowMax usage - delivering phase-level job tracking, real profitability reporting, and faster job creation through targeted system optimisation.
The Challenge: WorkflowMax Wasn't Unlocked By The User to Deliver Full Visibility
Clarke Underground had been using WorkflowMax as their primary job management platform for years. While the system was operational, the business recognised it wasn't extracting full value from the software.
The core problem: labour and non-labour costs couldn't be clearly separated within jobs. This gap limited reporting depth and made it difficult to accurately measure job profitability, track performance by phase, or identify operational inefficiencies.
Leadership decided it was time for a structured review of how WorkflowMax had been configured - and how it could be made to work harder for the business.
The Approach: A ConTech Solutions 300-Point Audit and Structured Rebuild
Clarke Underground engaged ConTech Solutions’ specialist with over a decade of full-time, hands-on experience with the WorkflowMax and Xero.
The engagement began with ConTech Solutions' proprietary 300-Item Existing Account Health Audit - a diagnostic tool designed to surface configuration gaps, productivity losses, and under-utilised platform capabilities.
The audit uncovered both issues the team already suspected and a range of improvement opportunities they hadn't previously identified.
Key Improvement: Introducing WorkflowMax Phases
The most impactful change was the introduction of Phases. Phases in WorkflowMax is a feature within WorkflowMax Jobs that allows you to break a job down into distinct stages or sections (e.g. Design, Build, Review), so you can track time, costs, and progress separately against each part of the project.
This structural update allowed Clarke Underground to separately track - while still logically grouping - labour, materials, and associated costs within each job.
With Phases in place, the business could now measure:
Actual time vs. estimated time - by phase and across the full job
Actual costs vs. estimated costs - with clear labour/material separation
Profitability at both job level and individual phase level
Standardised Job Templates for Faster Quoting
ConTech Solutions also worked with the Clarke Underground team to identify their most common recurring project types. These were converted into standardised job templates - enabling faster, more consistent quote and job creation across the business.
The Outcome: A Scalable, High-Visibility WorkflowMax Environment
The result was a WorkflowMax setup that works as a genuine business performance tool - not just a job tracking system.
Clarke Underground can now rapidly generate multi-phase quotes and jobs with clearly separated labour and material components, giving the business a level of consistency, reporting depth, and operational visibility it didn't have before.
The new structure delivers:
Deeper insight into job and phase-level profitability
Improved cost tracking and financial forecasting
Faster quote and job creation through standardised templates
More accurate reporting to support operational decision-making
Clearer visibility across the full project lifecycle
“WorkflowMax was working well for us, but we knew we weren’t getting everything we needed from the software.
ConTech’s health audit identified not only issues we already knew about, but many opportunities we had never considered.
The introduction of Phases and the new reporting structure has completely changed the depth of insight we now have into our jobs, costs, and profitability.
We can now quickly build detailed multi-phase quotes and jobs with reporting capabilities we simply didn’t have before.”
Ready to Get More From WorkflowMax?
If your business is using WorkflowMax but suspects you're not getting full value from the platform, ConTech Solutions can help. Our account health audit is the fastest way to identify what's holding your setup back - and what's possible.