Costain Group Uses Global Best Practices and Collaboration to Maintain Growth and Keep High-Profile Projects on Track
 
 

Costain Group Uses Global Best Practices and Collaboration to Maintain Growth and Keep High-Profile Projects on Track

Printer View Printer View

The Costain Group, one of the United Kingdom’s leading construction and engineering companies, is at the forefront of the drive to develop and improve the nation’s infrastructure. In its targeted sectors, ranging from waste to transport, Costain plays a major role in the provision of new facilities. The company’s strategy, “Choosing Costain,” aims to make Costain the automatic choice in terms of both business and technical excellence.

Costain’s current contracts include the US$617 million (£397 million) contract for the design, construction, and commissioning of 44 different facilities for the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority. In addition, Costain has, as part of a consortium, a US$350 million (£225 million) contract with Southern Water to manage the design and construction of a new wastewater treatment works in the Brighton and Hove area. Costain is also heavily involved in the nuclear sector, including a US$462 million (£297 million) contract for full engineering, procurement, construction, and inactive commissioning of the Evaporator D project at Sellafield.
In 2010, the New Civil Engineer magazine named Costain the Contractor of the Decade.

To continue to manage its global portfolio with excellence and consistency, Costain Group created the “P6 Costain Way,” a suite of standardized processes, based on industry best practices and Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management and Primavera Risk Analysis. The company used Primavera to manage projects totaling US$1.75 billion—some 85% of its global portfolio—within 18 months of going live. Using Primavera also helped Costain to complete two major high-profile U.K. highway-widening and improvement projects ahead of schedule and well under budget.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Costain Group

  • "Oracle’s Primavera solutions maximize our ability to deliver projects more efficiently and reliably, on schedule, on budget, and with the intended payback." – Phil Budden, Planning and Project Controls Manager, Costain Group

  • Streamline collaboration between globally dispersed teams of partners, associates, and subcontractors working on multiple engineering and construction projects undertaken by Costain’s diverse operating entities
  • Maximize business efficiency and excellence to sustain double-digit growth in profit and revenue through 2010 and beyond
  • Enforce rigorous, best practice-based, globally recognized risk management processes to deliver realistic project bids that help minimize cost and schedule overruns and gain timely payback

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Replaced Oracle’s Primavera SureTrak, used successfully for 15 years as a standalone resource planning and control tool for midsize projects, with a single instance of Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management
  • Built a single, integrated project database and gave planners, partners, and customers a real-time view of budgets, cash flow, resources, and performance against schedule
  • Leveraged industry best practices in Primavera P6 to create the “Costain Way,” a suite of standardized processes to enforce project management consistency and excellence, globally
  • Used Primavera P6 to help develop and communicate best practices enterprisewide and to continuously improve project delivery and performance for clients
  • Implemented Primavera Risk Analysis, a full lifecycle risk analytics tool, enabling users to calculate costs and risks, determine contingency response plans, and assess their effectiveness
  • Used Primavera Risk Analysis’ computational algorithms based on globally accepted Monte Carlo methods to determine project costs and completion dates with 90% confidence
  • Enabled completion of two major, high-profile U.K. highway-widening and improvement projects, both well ahead of schedule and under budget, thanks to collaboration in Primavera P6
  • Used Primavera to manage projects totaling US$1.75 billion—some 85% of the company’s global portfolio—within 18 months of going live
  • Leveraged Primavera P6 and Primavera Risk Analysis together to manage Costain’s most complex joint venture projects at one of London’s primary transportation hubs, facilitating collaboration between nine planners from two organizations to deliver the client’s project on time and on budget
  • Won the Construction News 2011 Best Use of Technology Award

Why Oracle

Costain chose Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management to enable it to capture and standardize best practices with a single planning environment, backed by an enterprise project data repository.

“We selected Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management to help us to achieve business excellence and innovation through seamless, global collaboration with customers, partners, and subcontractors. Also, Primavera Risk Analysis enables us to prepare professional, realistic project bids based on leading-edge risk calculation and modeling tools,” said Phil Budden, planning and project controls manager, Costain Group.