Kirklees Estates and Property Management |
Kirklees Design, Estate and Property provide multi-discipline design and maintenance services within the Kirklees Metropolitan Council. They have around 160 staff involved in the service delivery and turnover around £8million in fees. They handle approximately 1000 projects in any one year ranging from single discipline maintenance work through to multi-million pound design projects.
In early 2004 they were in the process of developing their paper based QA system to an electronic version comprising of Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, linking them together using a mixture of hyperlinks and macros. At the same time they were migrating from an aging timesheet system to Timemaster, when the potential of the Workflow module, still under development at that time was demonstrated the new module was also purchased.
Nick Snow, Architectural Manager takes up the story:
"The concept of Orica's Workflow module is simple, but it does rely on each organisation's own quality of documents, and it took us quite a while to get these fully developed - there is quite a change going from a paper based document designed to be completed using a pen, and one designed to be completed on-line. Ultimately, most documents need to be re-formatted."
"We went live in April 2005, and from that date every project over £3,000 in construction value, and some even less all have a Workflow checklist assigned. Any member of staff can now click a button on their computer and see instantly what is required on the project, whether it has been done, (and by whom and when), and what is not required."
Q: "In your opinion what are the main benefits of the Workflow package?"
NS: "Without a doubt, the most important thing is that you can find everything. Previously if I needed a piece of information it could have been in any of six files - each discipline had their own file for the same project, and it could have been in three places; someone's desk, the filing system, or in admin's tray. Now I just click a button and within a few seconds it's on my computer."
Q: "What about the fact that the Timemaster actually completes much of the document for you automatically?"
NS: "I'd got so used to that I'd forgotten it did that. I just can't imagine having to go back to filling in the project information each time on each document and spreadsheet - what a waste of time that used to be."
Q: "It must have been a large system to implement, how did you organise the training?"
NS: "We probably made a mistake in undertaking a "big bang" approach, but we organised the staff into groups and took them through the basics of how the system worked. When it boiled down to it was as much training in the documents and less of the actual button pressing. After a while we undertook audits to see which staff weren't making use of the system and organised re-training for them. There are still one or two people that use a back door - there is a button on the checklist that takes you straight to the document by-passing the audit trail. We are leaving that open for the moment but we will be closing that loop-hole soon."
Q: "And what about the downside of Workflow, did you get staff acceptance of the project?"
NS: "Amazingly for a QA system - yes we did, and for the first time. There are still one or two [people] lagging behind in the department and we have identified some further Excel training needs; staff need to be able to create new sheets, copy cells etc., but in terms of downside I really can't think of one."
Q: "So to sum up - if you were selling it to colleagues."
NS: "This is as near to a paperless office as it is practical to be. We are a Local Authority and are overrun with bureaucracy and because of the need for risk management we probably have double the number of documents we actually need, and Workflow really helps in this regard."
"The main things are 1) we have a checklist for every project which is at everyone's fingertips, 2) The speed of getting information is lightening quick compared to any other system, 3) Agency staff and new starters are productive from day one as there is online help for each document, 4) the system is self auditing - it relieves us from yet another administrative burden, and 5) when it comes to archiving, we can see a complete document history on screen and can instantly retrieve any one from the list at the click of a mouse. Compare that with a stack of files gathering dust in a cellar somewhere - normally we wouldn't even find the cellar!) "
Kirklees are happy for interested organisations to purchase their QA Workflow documents and help files to assist others in starting out with Workflow. Please contact Orica who can make the necessary introductions.