PCL Constructors Inc.
PCL Constructors Renovates Internal Processes with Windows Vista and 2007 Office System
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Company Overview
Reaching a centennial is a monumental achievement for any company. For PCL Constructors Inc. (PCL), it’s an event the organization has been building up to for a long time. The company began in 1906 as a small Prairie contracting firm that built four-room country schools. Today, PCL is the largest general contracting organization in Canada and the 10th largest in the United States. The company is behind the construction and preservation of some of North America’s most recognizable architectural landmarks, including Calgary’s historic Centre Street Bridge, Vancouver’s Library Square, Toronto’s Air Canada Centre and Hollywood’s Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
Business Challenge
The PCL Family of Companies – which includes more than 2,500 professional and administrative staff plus upwards of 5,000 tradespeople - can be credited with driving countless commercial, industrial and infrastructure projects throughout Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean.
As PCL’s business is run out of 27 offices and numerous individual work sites, its teams are rarely in the same place at the same time; however, the ability for them to collaborate is critical. Each project requires a diverse group of specialists and tradesmen, and nearly every project will undergo some modifications, whether driven by the architect, the customer, or even the building process itself. In such cases it is critical for all stakeholders to be updated as quickly as possible, no matter where in the world they may be.
“When modifications are made to any project, there is a large group of people who need to be updated right away and who need to receive the new information as quickly as possible,” says Brian Ranger, G.M. Systems and Technology, PCL Constructors Inc. “Over the years, we have developed a culture of collaboration to help us improve our processes and make working with team members, partners and clients, easier and more efficient.”
Safety and quality considerations also mean that each construction project has a strict set of rules and guidelines that need to be followed. A large volume of documents are needed to ensure these guidelines are observed, and it’s important for PCL to be able to quickly disseminate these documents to team members who need them. The company has other significant document management needs as well, requiring tools to effectively update, store and secure project documentation.
“Managing documentation and workflow on a construction project is extremely important to us, as it’s a big part of what our teams do on a day-to-day basis. Requests for information occur throughout the life of a project, and each request needs to be properly managed, answered and communicated to all the right parties. In many cases, the answers to these questions will identify potential costs changes, both for our work and the work of the trade contractors and/or subcontractors. Price change requests are sent out, the responses are collected, a complete cost estimate of the change is produced and sent to the client for approval with the appropriate backup detail,” says Gerry Salm, Manager Operations Systems, PCL Constructors Inc. “Along the way, records of communication have to be backed up and both filed electronically and in paper form. By the end of the change approval process, this can mean 15 different steps have to be taken by the project team, which translates into a lot of time. We hoped to find a technology solution that would help simplify the process and help us become more productive.”
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Solution
Working with Compugen Inc., one of Canada's largest privately owned and operated IT services providers and PC systems integrators, PCL decided to upgrade from Microsoft® Office 2003 and Windows XP to the 2007 Microsoft® Office system and Windows Vista™ operating system. Compugen recommended this solution based on PCL’s current collaboration, document management and workflow needs.
“Compugen staff helped us understand how Microsoft's new products can be brought together to meet our business needs,” says Ranger.
Mobility Optimized
Windows Vista makes work easier for the central IT team at PCL by providing a suite of deployment and upgrade tools. Among them is a file-based disk imaging format called Windows Imaging Format (WIM) which makes customization and deployment of the images simpler. Using Windows Vista also ensures information security is also simplified with Windows Defender, BitLocker Drive Encryption, device driver installation control and enhanced firewall tools.
“Compugen really knows the new desktop deployment features of Vista,” says Crawford. “Their help in this area has been invaluable.”
However, for the company’s dispersed teams, it’s the operating system’s mobility support that makes the biggest difference. With Windows Vista, PCL is able to help ensure its teams are connected and productive wherever they are.
With statistics from Safeware Insurance indicating that 600,000 laptops lost or stolen each year in the U.S. alone, support for mobile users typically adds to the complexity of the IT environment, and usually adds information security concerns. BitLocker Drive Encryption in Windows Vista Enterprise helps keep PCL data safe even when a laptop is lost or stolen by ensuring the contents of the hard drive are secure even if it falls into the wrong hands. PCL is also able to provide mobile teams with more secure wireless Internet access, improved power management to expand laptop battery life, improved offline folder and synch management, and integrated Tablet PC functions. The company is also able to leverage Windows Meeting Space to easily enable ad hoc peer to peer meetings, as well as enhanced network diagnostics to help resolve connectivity issues and optimize its desktop infrastructure while at the same time lowering total cost of ownership.
Finding and using information is also made easier with the search, organize and information visualization tools in Windows Vista, thus helping PCL to improve productivity. Windows Vista provides the company with access to a fundamentally different search capability—one that is integrated throughout the operating system—in the Start menu, Control Panel and in document folders. Users who frequently search for a particular type of document or specific content will be able to save time by storing searches for future use. Additionally, previews and scalable thumbnails in the search results make it even easier to find information. PCL’s mobile workers who store information on a number of devices such as a cell phone, laptop and desktop computer will find it significantly easier to keep all their devices synchronized with the help of the improved data synchronization features of Windows Vista.
“We think the powerful integrated search capabilities in Windows Vista are a perfect fit for PCL. They can save the company valuable time by helping employees more quickly and easily find just about anything on their PC or Intranet,” says Evan Hoke, Project Manager, Compugen. “As a company which generates a lot of data and needs access to it sometimes at a moment’s notice, we think PCL’s employees will benefit greatly from these features.”
Office Work Redefined
With the Microsoft Office system, PCL will be able to streamline the way the organization does business. The suite of solutions gives PCL access to powerful tools that help increase personal productivity, simplify how people work together, make processes and content management more efficient, and improve the quality of business insight across an organization.
“Compugen identified a number of issues and opportunities related to the new Office products that have saved our team time and effort,” claims Ranger.
With a redesigned user interface, for example, the 2007 release creates a streamlined, uncluttered workspace that minimizes distractions, helping PCL employees focus on their work.
Time and task prioritization is simplified within Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration software. A new To-Do window enables PCL to integrate tasks, e-mail messages flagged for follow-up, upcoming appointments and calendar information in one convenient place. It also includes tasks from Microsoft Office OneNote® 2007 and Windows SharePoint® Services Web sites, creating a consolidated view of day-by-day priorities.
Streamlining workflow is simplified with the review and approval workflow capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. Users can access these tools directly from within the Office 2007 authoring applications, reducing the time required for managing documentation. To initiate a document review workflow, users need to only select the workflow from within their Office client. Once reviewers are chosen the solution automatically sends out an e-mail message and an Outlook task to notify them that their input is needed. When the process is completed, reviewers are able to save the document back in the document library, where it remains readily accessible. SharePoint Server 2007 also maintains a full workflow history so both end users and IT administrators can track the steps that occurred in their workflows and future steps in the workflow process.
“Since document management is so critically important to PCL we knew they would really appreciate the enterprise content management capabilities within the Microsoft Office system,” says Hoke. “Document tracking within the 2007 release is great, but when it’s combined with the software’s records management ability—including legal holds and retention and auditing policies—it becomes very impressive indeed.”
Business Benefits
Introducing a whole new desktop platform to an organization can be challenging for any company. PCL found that the combined features of Windows Vista and Office Enterprise 2007 are compelling enough to warrant this significant investment of time and effort so early in the game.
Optimized productivity
By providing a collaborative framework that engages PCL, our clients, consultants, designers, engineers, trade contractors and subcontractors a SharePoint 2007 solution will reduce the end-to-end cycle time of construction processes and therefore the overall construction cost to our clients. The solution will be integrated with our existing Project Management systems to capitalize on existing information and further reduce internal efforts.
“We couldn’t be more excited about the integration between programs within Office 2007,” says Ranger. “When we return to that scenario of documenting a project change and the 15 steps it required, I don’t think it’s surprising that some of that process would fall behind, creating complexity and even more work down the road. Using Office 2007, this whole process will be reduced to checking a few boxes on a single form. The time savings from this one tool alone will be impressive.”
Improved insight into data
The ability to create dashboards is also quickly turning PCL employees into fans of the 2007 release. Now employees are able to more effectively plan their day and focus on the most important and strategic tasks by viewing their personal dashboard within Outlook 2007. Additionally, PCL will benefit from creating project dashboards within SharePoint Server 2007, providing team members with business intelligence (BI) tools in a simple to use and convenient way. The SharePoint Server 2007 dashboards incorporate dynamic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Microsoft Office Excel® 2007 spreadsheet software workbooks, and Microsoft SQL Server™ Reporting Services reports, delivering a powerful BI solution to the desktop.
“We’re already getting great feedback from users,” says Crawford. “People who were effective users of Microsoft Office products before, now find they are much more productive within the suite. I’ve even heard that a few people are so hooked on the new interface they find it quite hard to go back to the older look.”
Enhanced collaboration
Since collaboration is the biggest part of PCL’s day-to-day work, the company’s favourite features and tools within Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system are those which make it easier for its teams to work together across any distance.
“Our employees are excited that Windows Vista’s Network and Sharing Center and the Network Setup Wizard make it easy for them to create, configure and troubleshoot network connections without much user intervention,” says Crawford. “Since Windows Vista is able to discover and sustain connections to wireless networks more easily and securely than ever before, we’re hearing that users who may have been mystified by how exactly to connect wirelessly can now do it without any trouble.”
Windows Vista also gives PCL’s mobile teams greater peace of mind by making it easier to securely access documents and programs on a remote computer. As well it enables work to be done more efficiently and effectively from any location with an Internet connection.
Windows Meeting Space also provides small group collaboration for groups of up to 10 users — on or off the corporate network. PCL can use Windows Meeting Space to forward presentations to other Windows Vista PCs, enabling users to share documents and jointly edit them easily and securely.
Secure Now and in the Future
Project document control tools such as enterprise-scale repositories, per-item security and integrated information rights management protections, and streamlined workflows for document processing help PCL to make sure critical documents are never lost and are accessed only by authorized users. At the same time, the collaboration tools allow external partners and clients with greater access to appropriate records.
“I think it’s significant that we did not carry out an exhaustive ROI study for adopting Windows Vista and Office Enterprise 2007. The potential for improving our business with these technologies is so obvious to everyone that we didn’t feel it was necessary,” says Ranger. “Instead we immediately put together a team to evaluate the effort required to role this suite out and to better understand the added value that could be realized with these products. “It’s even more important to keep in mind that although this implementation may put us on the cutting edge of technology, we are essentially a conservative company when it comes to adopting new technology. In this case we see a lot of value and a lot of opportunity for uses and benefits and knew the opportunity was worth examining.
“We’re excited about where we can take these tools in the future,” Crawford adds. “We’ve hardly scratched the surface of what they can do.”
Microsoft Office System
The Microsoft Office System is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.
For more information about the Microsoft Office System, go to: www.microsoft.com/office
Microsoft Windows Vista
Windows Vista can help your organization use information technology to gain a competitive advantage in today’s new world of work. Your people will be able to find and use information more effectively. You will be able to support your mobile work force with better access to shared data and collaboration tools. And your IT staff will have better tools and technologies to enhance corporate IT security, data protection, and more efficient deployment and management.
For more information about Windows Vista, go to:www.microsoft.com/windowsvista
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Compugen products and services, call 1-800-387-5045 or visit the Web site at: www.compugen.com
For more information about PCL products and services, visit the Web site at: www.pcl.com
