BT Lancashire Services achieved a 10% Reduction in Capital Program Costs
BT Lancashire Services (BTLS) is a wholly owned company under the BT Group (one of the world’s leading communications services companies). BTLS are responsible managing
Cora for Engineering
Our Construction & Engineering Project Management Software solution helps firms to centralize the management of complex capital and operational projects
More Revenue Through Change Requests by Eliminating Red-Tape
Producing accurate initial estimates with acceptable margins is one thing – it needs to be easy to do. Simple to use forecasting toolset with early warning of overspend on materials, labour or sub-contractors is critical to show the completion number falls close to or ahead of that origin margin.
Highly visible payment schedules and timely accurate invoicing ensures positive cash flow and happy finance people. Android and iOS mobile apps ensure field staff can easily raise change requests, give approvals, take photos and mark them up. Such real-time data is critical to construction and engineering project success.
Cora’s Construction and Engineering Project Management Software solution helps firms to centralize the management of complex capital and operational projects. Cora PPM provides immediate visibility on project portfolios, giving senior management, program managers, project managers and relevant stakeholders the control, governance and insight to make better decisions.
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Simple forecasting, Real-time data and Early Warning
Forecast out, month by month, what skills and materials are needed to complete the job. Compare the “Original Estimate”, to the “Current Estimate To Completion” and quickly get an early warning and sufficient opportunity to fix issues rather than finding out about them too late.
See “Revised Cost Estimates” as change requests are automatically fed into the forecast as they are approved.
Get the Full Picture, Instantly
Project and program dashboards visualize the health of your portfolio; personal dashboards provide a digital ‘to-do’ list. See Forecasts, WIPs, KPIs and more. Drill-down to focus in on any issues.
Easily Create Project Estimates
Link to codes in your finance system, organize by materials, labor, sub-contract and any other cost categories your organization uses. Add margin, import price-lists and make sure your project is profitable from the outset.
Integrated Document Management System
Capture documents in the field or the office. Replace MS Word documents or Excel sheets with built-in “Smartforms”. Capture photographs in the field, update punch lists and checklists from the iOS or Android app on your phone.
Transmittals become easy – group documents and see who has downloaded them for viewing and when.
Smart search for documents using macros and create auto-archive and auto-purge rules to provide clarity and reduce clutter.
Update On The Go with native iOS & Android apps
Create forms/checklists and repositories that can be used in the field for punch lists, site checklists, weather reports etc. Raise change requests, add comments, take photos and mark them up “on the fly”.
Track time with the built-in timesheets functionality, update the percentage complete and estimate how much time is left. This helps to instantly highlight if there is a discrepancy between the schedule and what the person on the ground thinks.
Create Supplier and Client invoices
Track supplier invoices against relevant PO numbers, add a mark-up percentage and issue them to the client.
Pick up on time and materials to automatically produce invoices. Create recurring invoices or invoices that are dependent on a task being completed.
Make sure cash flow is “ticking over” by ensuring working capital is in your business, not your clients’.
More Than a Software Solution
We commit to developing a deep understanding of your business challenges and delivering bespoke solutions that address your needs. We then co-design and implement the solution using a partnership approach.
What Are the Challenges Faced by Project Managers?
For over 20 years Cora’s Construction and Engineering Project Management Software solution has provided organizations with a holistic view of infrastructure, asset and project information and their inter-dependencies. With each engagement we have learned the challenges faced by Project Managers and used that learning to improve our solution.
Our client required a solution to support a number of challenges: around consolidating systems, standardizing processes, project deviation, resource/capacity management and financial control.
Cora Capabilities:
Cora PPM brought a level of configurability that allowed the system to match the current project management methodology within the client organization which minimized implications and management associated with change and provided an easy-to-use, intuitive system.Benefits:
- Our client has reduced their systems from 22 to less than 7, all of which directly integrate with Cora PPM
- Visibility has increased across all projects with specific dashboards and reports displaying key project and financial data, giving the client’s team instant, accurate project status updates
- Early warning signs are available through a number of compliance indicators which is helping to reduce project/budget deviation
- By using our centralised system, our client was able to reduce project deviation from €40 million to €2.5million within 18 months.
Before installing Cora PPM, our client had multiple data sets from multiple systems, e.g. P6 for scheduling, risk management systems, Oracle Aconex for information distribution, MS Excel spreadsheets. What the client didn’t have was the one location that project executives could go to see all the information instantly.
Capabilities Cora Brings
Cora PPM has given our client the view into project data it was looking for. It has also provided consistency – so it has a coherent approach to managing each project.
Benefits:
- Reduced Training: In addition to helping with governance, the Cora solution provides a standard mechanism for our client to manage its data, which means it’s easier for new staff to come on board the Northern Estates programme with minimal training.
- Single View Of The Truth: “With Cora PPM, we can now hold time, cost, risks, issues, commercial data in a platform that is accessible and easily digestible. We chose Cora for those reasons. It takes project information from disparate sources and providing it in an easy-to-read reporting format.” (PPM Technical Lead)
- Reduced Time Reporting: Measurable results in cutting time to report, e.g.
a. Time spent reporting each month cut from 10 hours to seconds
b. Time spent compiling project lists cut from 2-3 weeks to minutes
c. 1000s of projects in a single view - Smarter Decisions: “It allows us to drill down into information and gives our senior management the key decision-making information so they can make informed decisions on all our schemes.” (PMO Services Director)
- Better Governance: “It facilities a consistent approach across a portfolio of projects and allows us to have good governance across a series of projects in a consistent manner.” (PMO Services Director)
Our client went to market for a program & portfolio management (PPM) solution because it required a digitized and cloud-based collaboration tool to deploy across the organization. The desired solution it looked for was a platform that assisted in standardizing work processes across all its business units so they could operate more efficiently and, for example, improve the execution transparency of projects at all tiers of the organization.
Capabilities Cora brings:
- Cora PPM establishes a consistent Project Management process for our client integrated into 4 enterprise systems providing consistent reporting/dashboards with project data resident in a secure cloud server accessible to field teams via mobile apps.
- The implementation minimized disruptions associated with change and provided an easy-to-use, intuitive system.
Benefits:
- Since Cora PPM has been implemented, our client has been able to import the detailed scope of any awarded project and create a dynamic Gantt-style scheduling chart, which will set all projects across the United States off on a level footing.
- It has provided a convenient way to access documentation and standard templates for every project.
- Our client’s business executives can now delve instantly into the detail of each portfolio of work on major projects, delivering significant time savings and making them more competitive.
Are your current processes wasting time and money? Request a Demo today, outline your challenges and requirements and we will provide a solution which will add value to your firm.
Success Stories
Honeywell Building Solutions achieve Global Visibility, Control & Governance
Honeywell Building Solutions is part of Honeywell – the Fortune 100 technology company that delivers industry-specific solutions that include aerospace products and services; control technologies
Automated Logic Corporation powers Project Forecasting and Workflow Processes with Cora PPM
Automated Logic Corporation (ALC) provides innovative building-management solutions that maximize energy efficiency and sustainable building operation while ensuring comfort. Its intuitive products control and monitor
Trusted by leading Engineering & Construction Firms
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Request a demo to find out how Cora PPM can help transform your organization
Our Cora PPM Brochure contains details about the functionality, success stories and more
Free Engineering Solutions Guide
There’s nothing an engineer dislikes more than lack of control. Yet when it comes to project management, control can often be in short supply.
Often there’s no way of knowing the state-of-play on projects – if they are profitable, what work is left in them and when will they be finished.
Maybe your company has grown swiftly and both your processes and systems need to mature fast to manage that growth carefully. New staff might need to be brought up to speed quickly through having standardized systems and existing staff need to align to one way of working. Sound familiar?
What you require is a reliable, repeatable, and robust way of managing your project portfolio. You need tight control on every aspect of your engineering jobs, i.e. exact tracking – and invoicing – for time your engineers spend on site. You need to able to:
- See what’s finished and forecast what’s coming down the line.
- Invoice quickly after a job is complete.
- Avoid getting bogged down in delayed payments.
- Reduce the time spent on documentation and reporting
- streamline your process.
This guidebook, which includes real-life examples, shines a light on some of the challenges you probably face. It then provides the specific engineering project management software solutions you need to address them.
About the Author
Philip Martin is CEO of Cora Systems and worked for a decade in engineering and management roles, primarily for the telecommunications industry, before founding Cora Systems in 1999.
Philip is an electronic systems engineering graduate of Ulster University. He previously held positions with major US multinationals, including 3Com, Tellabs, DSC and Pulse Engineering. This engineering project solutions guide has been produced based on Cora’s experiences of working with firms such as Automated Logic, Honeywell Building Solutions and WSP.Latest Engineering News
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Summary: Learn how WSP in the UK provides a niche PMO service to clients in sectors as diverse as new
January 19, 2021
Success Stories
BT Lancashire Services achieved a 10% Reduction in Capital Program Costs
BT Lancashire Services (BTLS) is a wholly owned company under the BT Group (one of the world’s leading communications services
July 24, 2020
Success Stories
Honeywell Building Solutions achieve Global Visibility, Control & Governance
Honeywell Building Solutions is part of Honeywell – the Fortune 100 technology company that delivers industry-specific solutions that include aerospace
May 29, 2020
Powering Best-Practice Enterprise PPM
Cora is a worldwide leader in providing enterprise project and portfolio management solutions to global organizations and government agencies. We give users from project management to C-level the control, governance and insight to make better decisions. Every day, over €20 billion worth of projects are managed on our platform, supporting hundreds of thousands of users around the globe. We’re headquartered in Ireland, with regional offices in Dublin (Ireland) Bedford (London, UK) and San Jose (California, USA).
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- UK: 0800 043 2078
- USA: 1 (408) 240-4946
- ROW: +353 83 0030121
