AmcoGiffen: Industrial Innovation— by Rail or Cloud

AmcoGiffen employs around 1,300 staff members, but that number keeps growing as the engineering industry in the UK speeds up post-lockdown.

With a network of 10 regional offices, AmcoGiffen’s annual revenue turnover approaches £300m. They are often associated with rail since they are a Principal Contractor to Network Rail with 50 years of service supporting the Rail Network, including the London Underground. However, AmcoGiffen also has close partnerships with the sustainability, energy, and infrastructure sectors.

Business Challenges

After evaluating several major cloud service providers, AmcoGiffen’s Head of Planning and Project Controls, Chris Coles, wanted the company to make more progress on its digital transformation journey. Coles believed a more holistic, cloud-based system would allow AmcoGiffen and their partners to move away from a siloed, isolated data reporting experience toward a more integrated, efficient view and understanding of their data.

2020 ushered in several new business challenges for AmcoGiffen, beginning with the pandemic in March. Due to recurring software, hardware, and database problems, there were operational issues after going remote. AmcoGiffen needed to improve its planning and internal reporting. They also needed better access to their data. For example, there had been times when users were forced to XER-out while inside client databases, making successful data transfer problematic.

AmcoGiffen has quickly grown from a relatively modest business to quite a large company. Throughout the transition, they needed to keep their data integrated and transparent for all stakeholders involved in each project.

Like many engineering and infrastructure contractors working with supply chain and rail industries, AmcoGiffen has faced pressure to utilize more cost-effective planning, scheduling, and estimating tools to deliver their projects at or under budget. However, their existing on-premise platform lacked cutting-edge capabilities. Regarding project controls especially, the executive team wanted to improve their data storage technology and planning and scheduling systems.

Why AmcoGiffen Chose LoadSpring

Coles, Head of Planning and Project Controls, created a business case for LoadSpring, creating different avenues for a cloud project controls-based budget. Then Coles helped move it forward from start to finish—due mainly to his previous experience and ability to coordinate his team of planners.

Although switching from on-premise software programs to a cloud-based platform might seem straightforward, Coles stressed that the transition had been a very intense process. One reason is that cloud-to-cloud migration is not as simple as switching data management platforms.

First, there was data in many different formats: AmcoGiffen needed to migrate from Oracle P6 8.2 to 1912—two entirely different software versions. Therefore, migrating all the data seamlessly was much more intensive than just a flick of a switch. Because of the glowing customer, client, and in-house user reviews of LoadSpring, there was a robust internal impetus for AmcoGiffen to start.

The cultural issues were predictable but challenging: We’ve done this for years, so what’s the point of doing it this other way? Because many software program applications have often been used for decades in the AEC space, migrating your cloud while negotiating with multiple stakeholders can feel like pouring molasses.

One thing that helped AmcoGiffen with the difficulty of the transition was working with LoadSpring support. Being used to working with rapidly growing AEC companies, LoadSpring’s service team shepherds customers through rapid changes. Data—working with and reporting it—is another area where LoadSpring excels.

Solutions

A key benefit of using LoadSpring for AmcoGiffen has been flexibility: or the ability to tailor the product to what they want. And because customer support is directly through LoadSpring, response times are fast.

AmcoGiffen successfully updated all their data via the newest version of Oracle P6, despite having previously utilized outdated versions of software. LoadSpring’s support team lifted the migration burden from the hands of their internal IT team, who didn’t have time to learn an entirely new version of a software program while also tending to internal hardware and networking updates.

AmcoGiffen can now keep up to speed with numerous ongoing projects: roughly 90-100 every four weeks in the Northern region of the UK alone. Since they oversee multiple areas in the UK, they manage hundreds of projects at any time.

The ability to turn on and off people’s access has also alleviated considerable anxiety regarding user provisioning and concerns about varying levels of technical knowledge. Now, AmcoGiffen can rest easy knowing that only users who know how to manipulate and input data correctly can access the necessary databases—while others have precisely the information they need whenever they need it.

Another part of adopting big contracts is the need and new ability to give clients and partners access while controlling who can see what. AmcoGiffen can now manage competence capabilities, as well. Because of strict user provisioning, those at the executive level don’t have to worry about users unfamiliar with the programs not knowing how to update data or inputting information into the wrong fields.

Being able to foresee expenses and successfully forecast has also been hugely beneficial—as opposed to the traditional bidding route where bidders can be charged more than necessary because of a lack of transparency. Due to general economic uncertainty, the need to drive down costs has been pronounced during the pandemic.

AmcoGiffen now yields the best data (i.e., “good data in, good data out”), driving down costs while driving up and improving product quality for the best price. This success is partly due to LoadSpring’s dedication to transparency and collaboration.

Future Possibilities

AmcoGiffen foresees a continuation of working with more clients who want them to demonstrate they have technological resource capability and control over their supply chain. They need the ability and flexibility to churn reports out according to client schedules—which are not entirely within their control.

For example, a client may have many jobs requiring scaffolding. Now, AmcoGiffen can provide that client access to their data, which is incredibly beneficial. The ability to foresee resource and demand planning, coupled with new cloud-based capabilities, will likely improve engagement.

“Long-term, the requirement for planning is only going to grow,” Coles says. “And AmcoGiffen is already in an excellent position.”

In short, LoadSpring’s partnership with AmcoGiffen demonstrates industrial innovation at its finest.