The inaugural CheckProof Industry Excellence Award winners on going digital from the ground up, and the moment their frontline teams bought in.
When CheckProof launched the Industry Excellence Award in May 2026, the team at Brice Aggregates may not have expected to be the first name on the crystal. But spend half an hour talking to David Cooper and Scott McLeod at Needingworth Quarry, and it’s obvious why they were.
Brice Aggregates hasn’t just adopted a digital platform. They’ve rewired how their entire operation communicates, from the pit face to the procurement office to the weighbridge. They track deviations, predict failures, manage a five-kilometre conveyor system, and hold every team member accountable for driving issues to resolution. And they did it by putting the tool in the hands of their frontline teams first.
We sat down with David Cooper, Maintenance and Procurement Coordinator, and Scott McLeod, Quarry Manager at Deanworth Quarry, to talk about what operational excellence actually looks like when you’re running a working quarry.
The Problem That Started Everything
Before CheckProof, Deanworth ran on paper. Operators filled in forms, handed them in, and hoped someone would read them.
Scott remembers the moment that changed his thinking.
“An operator had filled in the paperwork and his machine went down. I traced it back and found he’d first raised the issue six months earlier. Nobody had picked it up. He got frustrated and stopped reporting altogether.”
That’s the real cost of paper-based maintenance. Not just the breakdown itself, but the operator who stops trusting the system because nothing ever happens. The issue doesn’t disappear. It just goes underground until it stops production.
Scott had come from the aircraft industry, where digital traceability is a given. He knew there had to be a better way. He saw CheckProof being trialled at another quarry and brought it to Brice Aggregates.
One System, One Truth
Ask Scott what operational excellence means at Needingworth, and he sums it up neatly.
“It’s one truth on a system. No confusion about what’s happening where on site. CheckProof is constant. It’s reliable. It gives me visibility and makes the site more predictable.”
That word, predictable, comes up repeatedly. For a quarry manager running a large site with multiple production areas, five kilometres of conveyor belt and a team of thirty, predictability is everything. It means knowing where the next issue will come from before it arrives. It means spending money where it’s needed, not where you’re firefighting.
Brice Aggregates now uses CheckProof across daily plant inspections, EHS and quality compliance, geotechnical and environmental monitoring and workforce planning. It’s how the site runs now.
The Moment the Frontline Bought In
David is direct about what made adoption work.
“Once the team started to see they were getting answers for the stuff they were raising, that’s what accelerated the change. It was the buy-in from the frontline teams.”
20%
Reduction in overall site costs since implementing CheckProof
£8,000
Estimated procurement savings per month, driven by better predictability and competitive sourcing
5 km
Total conveyor belt network managed and monitored through CheckProof at Needingworth Quarry
When the system first went in, some operators thought it was a punishment tool. They assumed flagging an issue would land them with extra work. But when they started seeing engineers arrive, parts get ordered, and problems actually get resolved, the dynamic flipped.
Now, when an operator raises a deviation in CheckProof, it goes directly to the right person. Someone owns it. There’s accountability, visibility and a timeline. The operator can see their issue moving from flagged to ordered to resolved. That’s what builds trust.
David’s advice to any quarry considering the same journey is simple: “Get it on at your frontline teams straight away. Involve them. When they feel like it’s not going to punish them, it’s there to help them, you get buy-in quick.”
What It Looks Like in Practice
On the day of our conversation, a Hitachi 690 excavator had flagged a serious malfunction. David walked us through what happened.
The deviation was raised in CheckProof. Because it was tagged as a serious malfunction, it went straight to site management. Within half an hour, Hitachi had been called, fault codes from the app had been sent to their engineers, and a replacement machine had been moved into position. The swap took fifteen minutes.
Before CheckProof, that would have been a phone call to the assistant quarry manager. Whether it got picked up depended on how busy he was. If he had a lot on, it might not get followed through at all.
Managing Five Kilometres of Conveyor
Needingworth runs six numbered conveyors spanning over five kilometres. The team has tagged them like a motorway: every ten metres is numbered. Weekly checks run through the head, structure and tail of each conveyor, with the specific location logged against every deviation.
Over time, this creates a heatmap of where problems cluster. If a particular stretch of conveyor is generating more deviations than others, it’s a signal that something deeper needs attention. Scott says they can now predict where the next batch of issues will come from and pre-order parts before they’re needed.
“It gets us spending where we need to spend and stops us spending on the nice-to-haves. When the firefighting starts, that’s when the cost goes through the roof for a quarry like this.”
The Numbers
Scott mentions the profound impact this has had on costs.
Since tracking maintenance and procurement through CheckProof, the site has seen a 20% reduction in overall site costs. On the procurement side alone, David estimates savings of around £8,000 per month, driven by better predictability, more time to source competitively, and less emergency purchasing.
The mechanism is straightforward. When CheckProof’s platform helps flags a deviation early, the team has time to find the right part at the right price. They can search across the UK and Europe instead of panic-buying locally at a premium. Predictability gives them a procurement window that didn’t exist before.
“We’re not firefighting. CheckProof gives us notice before we have a failure. That’s the difference. That’s where the saving comes from.”
The Culture Behind It
When CheckProof Account Manager Richard Wake nominated Brice Aggregates for the award, it wasn’t just the numbers that stood out. It was how the team works.
Scott describes the culture at Brice as an “upside-down tree”. Management exists to support the workers, not the other way around. The operators are the ones who see the quarry every day. The job of everyone else is to give them the tools and support they need.
CheckProof fits into that philosophy because it gives frontline workers a voice. When they raise a deviation, it’s heard. When they flag a safety issue, someone acts on it. The technology just makes it visible and traceable.
“When the teams feel like they’re getting the support, they make the effort. Their voice is getting heard. That’s what drives everything here.”
What’s Next for Brice Aggregates
David and Scott are clear: they’re not finished. The next phase includes contractor inductions via QR codes, so subcontractors complete safety data sheets and risk assessments before they even arrive at the weighbridge. They’re building out stores and inventory management so the team has full visibility of what’s on site. And they’re working towards supplier integration, so when a deviation is raised, the right supplier can be notified directly.
But the idea David is most excited about is knowledge capture.
“A lot of knowledge walks out the gate and is never seen again. We’re absorbing all that knowledge into CheckProof. When someone has the same issue in future, the answer is already there.”
Scott McLeod, Quarry Manager, receives the award from CheckProof's Richard Wake.
Every time a fault is diagnosed and solved, the solution gets logged against that asset. Over time, the platform becomes a living knowledge base. When an alarm goes off on the plant, an operator can look up the fault code and find the diagnosis and fix, even if the person who originally solved it left the company years ago.
Why This Award Matters
The CheckProof Industry Excellence Award was launched to recognise customers who are raising the bar in how they operate. Brice Aggregates is the inaugural recipient in the Operational Excellence category, and it’s hard to imagine a more fitting first winner.
This isn’t a team that adopted a tool and moved on. They’re building on it every quarter, pushing it into new areas of the operation, and using it to capture institutional knowledge that would otherwise be lost. They’re making their quarry more predictable, safer and more efficient, and they’re doing it by trusting their frontline teams to lead the way.
As CheckProof COO Linn Karlsson put it: “They haven’t treated digitalisation as a project, but as a natural part of how they operate and improve. That mindset is exactly what this award is about.”
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