McCabe Group works in partnership with hundreds of developers and contractors to carry out groundworks and civil engineering projects ranging in value from £100,000 to £5 million.

The group's site project managers rely on receiving documents such as contracts, blueprints, drawings and plans to get the job done. Communication between sites and partners is essential and McCabe's preferred communication tool between office and site - the fax machine - was holding up work and costing the company approximately £1,000 per week in downtime.

Project reports, contracts, briefs and sketches are consistently on demand by McCabe managers. However, they had to find an outlet near the site from which to send and receive information via fax, or head all the way back to the office. There had to be a way to send and receive information more efficiently. McCabe Group IT Manager, Nigel Kilford was tasked with finding a way to address the main issues:

1. Identify a cost effective method to send information remotely

2. Eliminate the risk of losing transmitted pages

3. Guarantee that received information was protected and stored efficiently.

"We needed to find a cost effective way to send and receive architectural drawings, blueprints, contracts, plans and sketches remotely. Most of the time there is no electricity on site, let alone a telephone line," said Kilford.

Mobile fax machines were considered. However, after researching the costs involved and the inconvenience of portable connections, toner, reams of paper and the machine itself, this solution was not an option and still required an electricity supply.

Kilford then researched PDA options. Even though some devices can now receive attachments, the screens are not big enough to allow managers to view the information they need.

Finally, Kilford turned to eFax, an idea innovation from j2Global. eFax converts faxes to Adobe Acrobat (PDF) or TIF image files and sends them to an individual's email inbox as email attachments.

The flexibility of the eFax service means that the user has access to inbound/outbound information on the move. eFax eliminates the need for electricity, paper and bulky peripherals. It also allows files to be stored electronically. Never again would information be destroyed, mislaid or held up.

Kilford was so impressed by eFax's ease of use, he signed up six extra eFax accounts during the free trial. He then equipped each project manager with their own eFax virtual fax number and a laptop to access the emailed faxes whenever and wherever they choose.

"The fax is essential to our business," said Kilford. "We were reliant on paper-based systems which were time consuming and (the paper faxes were) easy to lose. eFax has drastically decreased our downtime by 40 hours per week, around £1,000! We're so impressed that we're even considering replacing the six fax machines in our group offices with eFax."

eFax has proved a hit with project managers and ground workers alike. Even those who are technophobes found eFax easy to use. All they have to do is open their email where the information is waiting for them.

Thanks to eFax, time management has drastically improved, managers spend more time on site, jobs are being completed faster and communication between offices, sites, clients and suppliers has never been more efficient. eFax has improved McCabe Group's project efficiency ten fold.