Network Rail Uses Gather to Collaborate with Contractors at Birmingham New Street
£300,000+
saved on scope change applications
350+
records captured
39x
return on investment
About the project
Built in the 1960s, the concrete roof above all 12 platforms of Birmingham New Street has been deteriorating. In early 2023, Network Rail launched the £7.5 million Birmingham New Street Concrete Spalling Repair Works project to repair the roof, closing two concurrent platforms at a time. Gather was chosen to be Network Rail's record management system for repairing platforms seven and eight, working closely with the principal contractor J. Murphy & Sons.
This ambitious project was completed on time in February 2024, delivering over 500 essential repairs. Since the project's conclusion, Network Rail has continued accessing and analysing its project data on Gather for internal knowledge sharing.
Highlights
Total clarity of site progress at all times. Gather's key insight dashboard updates and analyses productivity data as the field team submits new actuals.
Collaborate with confidence using objective, accurate, consistent data among all stakeholders, fostering trust, joint decision-making and efficient communications.
Accurate, standardised reporting with automatic record sharing options. Gather makes it easier for everyone to access, understand and act on project information.
Asset owner Network Rail partnered with Gather for managing construction records and tracking project progress for repairing platforms seven and eight of the Birmingham New Street Concrete Spalling Repair Works project. A total of 383 site records were captured, reviewed and analysed jointly by Network Rail and its principal contractor J. Murphy & Sons (Murphy) to ensure clarity on all site activities.
Timely insights on productivity enabled quick, data-based optimisation, saving over £300,000 in change of scope and payment applications. Prior to using Gather's site record management system (RMS), Network Rail's project management team was facing multiple challenges in the face of budgetary constraints and tight deadlines, including:
- Translating the complex schedule on Oracle Primavera into straightforward, actionable daily activities for the site team
- Tracking daily progress against overall programme and schedule
- Lack of consistency, structure and accuracy in site records
- Managing and communicating with different contractors, who often submitted site diaries in different formats and levels of detail
- Limited visibility on site activities and performance for the office-based project team
With its intuitive mobile interface, Gather RMS was able to help Network Rail address all of the above challenges by ensuring maximum buy-in from the contractors and their site team.
Mobile-native app securing adoption
For any technical solution to work, implementation is key. This is especially important for capturing site records, because it depends on the willingness and ability of the site team to input quality, consistent data.
Built natively for mobile devices and tablets, Gather made it easy to report daily progress by entering the actual hours worked, materials used, and document variances in productivity. The project team could pre-populate up to 60% of the information for each shift, making the workload lighter and transitioning to digital site records more smoothly.
"I found Gather beneficial for myself, the team and also the project. It assisted us with managing and tracking our planned versus actuals, resource, plant and equipment allocations and user-friendly interface when out in the field," explains William Grant, Site Manager, J. Murphy & Sons.
Collaborate using concrete, accurate data
A major benefit of having a library of consistent, structured insights on site activities was improved collaboration. All stakeholders had access to the same data that had been captured using the same format and to the same level of accuracy and detail. This single source of truth made it easier to track progress, resolve issues and make informed decisions.
For example, if the Network Rail project team saw that a particular task was falling behind schedule, they could easily identify the responsible contractor and work together to get the task back on track.
Letting the data do the talking removes emotions and finger-pointing. Using Gather's Power BI key insights dashboard, all parties have a clearer understanding of the what, when, how and why of project progress.
This data-led transparency and accountability fosters long-term trust and confidence between the client and the contractor. Scheme Project Manager Andy Johnson comments on the peace of mind having the best-in-class RMS: "Gather allows me to assess live project progress against the programme as submitted by the contractor. This has introduced a new level of transparency and improved working relationships between Network Rail and Murphy."
From insights to actions
Data is a means to an end. Gather has been working closely with Network Rail to translate site insights into concrete, streamlined actions. On this project at Birmingham New Street station, the rich, structured site data enabled Network Rail and Murphy to take actions on a daily basis.
Specifically, Network Rail and Murphy held daily progress stand-ups, weekly progress reviews and ad hoc production meetings using the site insights collected with Gather RMS.
- Daily progress stand-ups: At the start of each day, Network Rail's project team used Gather's key insight dashboards to review progress, identify any potential problems, and devise a plan to tackle these issues with the contractor.
- Weekly progress reviews: Using automated report generation and sharing functions on Gather, all stakeholders were updated on progress and invited to collaborate on production issues on a weekly basis.
- Ad hoc production meetings: When an issue arose on site, Network Rail's project team used Gather to identify, diagnose, and develop a plan to resolve the issue. This helped to minimise disruptions and maximise efficiency.
Transparency in change and payment applications
Managing change of scope and applications for payments is key to the successful delivery of any project. Without robust, reliable commercial and site data, navigating change and payments could be treacherous, risking not only imploding the budget but also tarnishing client-contractor relationships.
With a robust, structured single source of truth shared between Network Rail and its principal contractor Murphy, assessing, approving and agreeing on scope change requests and applications for payments became a straightforward process.
With the consistent, accurate, searchable data of site activities and planned versus actual production, Network Rail's project team is equipped with all the resources to scrutinise labour, plant and time allocation to each of the relevant activities included in change requests. This has resulted in total savings of well over £300,000.
Similarly, Network Rail leaned on Gather for payment applications. Internal documents indicate that Gather data provided a learning opportunity for both Network Rail and Murphy on the accuracy of payment applications.
At early stages of adopting Gather, there were more changes to applications. Once "double-bubbling" was removed and both parties mastered how to better access actual activities versus applied-for activities, changes in payment applications effectively disappeared. In other words, Network Rail and Murphy achieved a more synchronised, accurate and efficient way of processing payments.
Such improved transparency and quality of application submission reduced the amount of accruals and variance work to be assessed. This contributed to efficiency in project management, as well as trust between the asset owner Network Rail and its principal contractor Murphy.