home / clients / thames water

client focus

project extranet
thames water / asset management programme

Business Collaborator Ltd (BCL) worked to aggressive timescales to deliver their online collaboration solution, Business Collaborator (BC), now used by over 2,500 people involved in Thames Water's £3 billion Asset Management Programme (AMP4) .

The Thames Water implementation, known as TWEXnet, enables the management of the 'design collaboration' process within the supply chain, using unique capabilities of the software, and its focus on pre-issue document management and collaboration, in addition to document issue and review. It can be configured (per-project or per-programme) to meet the organisation's needs, and reflect, rather than determine, its processes.

BC is used by a diverse team of individuals, geographically dispersed, from companies such as Costain, MJ Gleeson and Laing O'Rouke, and has helped to take communication to a higher level.

Background
Thames Water operates in one of the driest and most densely populated areas in the country. As lifestyles change, the population grows, and climate change all continue to place more pressure on the water resources. Early 2005 saw the company embark on the latest 5-year asset management programme - a major schedule of work to ensure the continued supply of fresh, clean water and the effective treatment of wastewater across the region.

The sheer size and scale of asset management programmes means that an extensive range of companies and individuals, with a myriad of skills and expertise, need to work together to meet strict project deadlines. It was critical that Thames Water established an extranet that enabled effective collaboration across the various companies to ensure overall success.

The team at Thames Water were already familiar with the use of document management solutions, having used a leading competitors' solution during AMP3. After an in-depth selection process by tender, Thames Water chose BC over the existing incumbent. They found the team easy to work with, the solution cost effective, and it was the only collaboration solution able to satisfy the organisation's key requirements for controlling all project information and promoting effective communication with all suppliers. Another element in BC's favour was that it needed very little customisation to launch the initial collaboration solution.

Paul Meredith, Design Manager at Thames Water said:

“The team displayed a high technical competence, coupled with sound business principles, and carried out an effective business analysis clearly drawn from experience, which showed through in the early discussions. We were aware that Business Collaborator had been used on previous projects in the water industry and chose it because we knew it could cope with major projects such as ours. ”

The Approach
In early May 2005, 50 users from disparate companies piloted the solution. As well as drawing out some additional user requirements, the pilot highlighted the level of training needs that would be required. A full roll out was planned for July 2005 when a further 1000 users were to be introduced.

Due to the sheer scale and critical nature of the programme, a high profile approach was adopted to roll-out involving displaying posters, promotional items and a road show. In order to deal effectively with this major roll-out, it was decided that a 'train the trainer' approach would be most successful. As a result, key users across the many companies involved were identified and trained by BCL staff, who were then able to train other users, as well as being competent in providing level one support.

As well as providing Thames Water with the ability to manage the 'design collaboration' process, all the procedures and templates related to each project are managed through the Project Delivery Process (PDP). Essentially, PDP enables the company to set out fixed processes for projects that can be adapted by users to meet the needs of the project. It contains extensive help and note files that explain what the users should be doing at each stage of the process and can be edited and updated by Thames Water themselves at any time.

PDP helps to reduce some of the risks typically associated with large-scale projects. It has proved to be an excellent training aid and significantly reduces the impact of introducing new people and getting them up-to-speed, something that is particularly useful when there is a need to use agency staff.

Added Value
BCL believes, very strongly, in working closely with its customers to continually evolve and improve Business Collaborator. With this in mind, the company established a Utilities Focus Group that meets on a regular basis to discuss challenges in the industry and to look at how BC can be adapted further to meet business needs. Thames Water is an active participant and provides important input in these sessions along with United Utilities, 4D and other BCL clients involved in utilities such as Costain, Atkins and Mouchel Parkman.

Says Meredith:

“The Utilities Focus Group is a useful forum for hearing about and sharing experiences. It is also very encouraging to know that we are getting a lot right at Thames Water. ”

Thames Water initially used BC for capital projects, but recognizing the power of the solution has since extended it for distributing their technical standards, storing drawings, offering support to its people, and storing a lot of other project support and project team information.

BC has also significantly reduced the need for face-to-face meetings

“It costs less per day for each license than it does for us to drive to the motorway, which is only two miles away. The fact that it can be accessed from anywhere is also fantastic. Staff based as far away as New Zealand have been able to produce, load and comment on designs and drawings overnight within a simple and fully controlled environment and with a full and automatic audit trail. ”

Key Lessons
Carrying out a pilot provides invaluable information and is an opportunity to test and resolve any local system compatibility issues. It also gives the opportunity to evaluate, and quantify, some of the cultural risks and issues identified during development. This is particularly relevant in respect of establishing the most effective methods training.

Adopting a network of local experts and a 'train the trainer' approach to the roll-out helps generate local adoption and ownership of the system - a significant factor when implementing a system to a large number of geographically dispersed users.

Sizing and matching the BC product and server size with local system configurations and predicted usage is key to overall system performance and user experience. Installing a large, dedicated, server from the outset helps ensure that system performance is not impaired by under investment in server size.

next steps