Case Study: CES clean energy solutions

Project Information Management (PIM): All Information at the Project Stakeholders' Fingertips

Business Results

• Cross-interface information flow without breaks
• Digital Collaboration (Create, Upload, Search, Share, Chat, Email, Notes, Mobile)
• Decision tracking: From idea to realization
• Productivity, Flexibility & Exception handling
• High gains through fully fledged ML-powered project platform

Snapshot

• Organization: Clean Energy Solutions
• Business Challenge: Project Information Management
• Goals: Modern project management system to support the business growth
• Integration: Loose coupling via Papyrus Adapters
• Solution: Papyrus Capture, CCM, ACM, Content Services, Mobile

The Company

CES clean energy solutions is the competence centre for energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable development. CES operates worldwide and offers complete solutions out of one hand.

The Challenge

On a large international construction project there are many parties working together. In all phases of a project - from planning and design to construction and operation - architects, planners, building services and other experts work with different tools, while interfacing with each other and with diverse artefacts that need to comply to national and international standards and meet project expectations.

Any project may end up wasting budget, failing to reach originally defined goals or fighting with the scope creep and conflicts of interest. This is why CES decided to introduce an intelligent information and data management solution that shall successfully manage the information flow THROUGHOUT the entire project process, covering all aspects of the construction project, and allowing all project stakeholders to effectively work and collaborate.

The Solution

Working together with CES, Papyrus delivered a bespoke Project Information Management solution with integrated document and decision management, digital collaboration and end-to-end tracking tailored to the specific requirements of construction project business.

The new solution provides multiple 'spaces' for different aspects of a project work:

• Private collaboration spaces for each company involved in a project
• A space for people and contacts
• A space for officially proved and ready for construction documents and construction documentation
• A design area where clients and designers can collaborate in the same server space
• A legal area, etc.

Employees can access a certain space, and create documents of their own or drag & drop documents (PDFs, drawings, pictures, and any other information) into folders, while any correspondence coming from outside of the project is captured and automatically allocated to the right project space. Integrated Access Control makes sure that people who work on the project can only have access to those areas that they are supposed to. The system keeps a full track record of all activities, helping avoid any issues with when, where and if a certain artifact was created and made available right from the start.

Integration with BIM (Building information Model) allows to import 3D models consisting of elements, such as windows, walls, etc. that can be worked on, and comments and tasks added, such as an instruction what to do with a wall. All is versioned, which means that the team can work with several versions of a model, and has the complete work saved for later analysis and usage. All documents – Papyrus, as well as non-Papyrus (Excel, Word,etc.) – are versioned with a time stamp, and information who created or changed a content made available at any time to refer to.

Project work is about Collaboration

Employees can take notes during the meeting, and drag & drop a picture into the notes, make comments, etc. Notes are immediately available in the Project Management system, and searchable with the full-text search.

Everyone can use a direct email feature and simply send an email to a certain project mail address including attachments like TIFFs from scans, excel sheets, etc., which are automatically extracted and become part of the project without any need for manual interaction.

And with the integrated chat function, switching to WhatsApp or Skype is simply not needed: If someone needs a document or wants to check the information, it's enough to just click on a person and start to chat. Documents can be shared by drag & drop during the chat, and as all chats are automatically stored in the system, they can be easily found even if its years back.

The solution is available on Mobile, so employees can go onsite, take pictures, make notes and comments, and forward, approve and share documents. They can even create correspondence that becomes immediately available to the project team, while still on the construction site. The app intentionally limits the number of features and icons so that anyone can use it really quickly.

Following the success of the first project, further pilot projects are currently being planned in Austria and abroad. Regarding functional extensions - as a project never starts from zero, CES wants to automate the document and information upload and classification right from the start, which will be a great help for project teams, especially when dealing with large volumes of documents and tight schedules. In addition, the content – created in Papyrus, and uploaded or received from outside – will be enhanced with tasks to be automatically assigned to team members and external companies, making the content actionable.