30min+

CVL is a large-scale, high-profile project bringing together leading contractor, Balfour Beatty, and delivery partners across various disciplines over numerous work sites. This requires a consistent, accurate and accountable record-keeping process, ensuring that no detail is missed on resource allocation, activities, working times and delays.

Prior to seeking a centralised solution, site records were kept in various formats and platforms: WhatsApp group messages, email threads and Word documents. The quality, accuracy and breadth of site data were also highly variable. This made it difficult for Balfour Beatty to have full clarity on project delivery and subcontractor management.

"Before Gather, we were very much reliant on paper-based systems. We didn't have a consistent process in place for site reporting. We mostly used Excel spreadsheets. Reports came back in Word documents," Balfour Beatty's Senior Technical Manager Peter Johnson recalled of the chaotic process of recording and reporting. "In the end, we didn't have any site data to provide us with useful management information going forward."

Timer saver for site team

Gather's record management system (RMS) offered Balfour Beatty a solution for capturing, managing and analysing site information across multiple sites, programmes, disciplines, subcontractors and supply chain partners.

Using Gather's intuitive, mobile-native site diary app, field teams could capture and share consistent, quality records digitally. This significantly reduced the need for paper-based reporting and back-and-forth messaging between different teams, both between Balfour Beatty and its subcontractors and between site and office staff.

Programme Manager Paul Shipton quantifies the difference Gather RMS made: "It takes two to three minutes to complete a record at the end of each shift. Our team was also able to enter the data as they completed tasks during the shift. This has saved us an incredible amount of time."

Connecting site and office

On top of the time saved finishing records, Gather also saved site supervisors from unnecessary trips between the office and sites.

Using the site document function on Gather, project managers could upload all the necessary documents the field team would need for that shift, including task briefs, drawings and safety documents. This function has saved site supervisors an hour a day on average, as they no longer needed to physically transport paper documents back and forth between sites and the office.

Office-based teams could also use Gather to save time not just for themselves, but also for the field teams.

Project managers could batch-plan shifts in advance by setting up a model shift and cloning it for similar shifts. Once planned, the shift record would have 64% of its fields pre-filled. This would save over 30 minutes per record for the site supervisors.

Seamless onboarding

For new technology, induction and adoption are always challenging, more so when a project is already in full swing. To ensure a successful project-wide rollout, Gather and Balfour Beatty collaborated closely on the following key areas:

• In-person training: Gather's dedicated account managers delivered multiple on-site training sessions for key project members.
• Self-guided learning: Users could learn more about Gather through its multimedia online learning platform, Gather Academy.
• Dedicated support: Gather's responsive customer success support assisted Balfour Beatty's users whenever they submitted queries on the platform.
• Cultivate champions: Both Gather and Balfour Beatty encouraged existing users to become Gather superusers, who would in turn share their expertise and good user experience with new users.
• Top-down support: Balfour Beatty ensured that the leadership was fully on board with using Gather RMS to secure necessary resources for project-wide adoption.

Making project management easy with data

Effective project and commercial management hinges on having accurate, timely information on the actual progress on site. This is key to making the right decisions about resource allocation and budget adjustment.

Gather provided the Balfour Beatty office teams with a consistent flow of quality, structured productivity data from site. Project and commercial management gained considerable confidence using actual, reliable data.

From understanding resource allocation to tracking working times, to identifying delays and investigating the reasons behind them, the site intelligence the Balfour Beatty team captured using Gather provided much-needed clarity, precision and granularity.

Gather's built-in expertise helped to keep contracts healthy for the Balfour Beatty team. Through its tagging functions, the project team could easily identify and substantiate early warnings as soon as the data came in from the field. Project managers and commercial managers could then flag potential issues before they became major problems.

Having a body of rich, reliable, objective data on site activities also energised collaboration with supply chain partners and subcontractors to find solutions. Communications became rooted in data, strengthening relationships between all parties.

Keeping stakeholders informed

Clear, timely, data-based communications with all stakeholders were key to Balfour Beatty's success on CVL.

The real-time intelligence on site has effectively eliminated surprises from project management by flagging potential issues early through tagging or scoring on the Gather platform. This has armed Balfour Beatty with the confidence to proactively engage with TfW and other stakeholders. The result was reinvigorated relationships grounded in trust and data.

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