GERC Lowers Project Planning Duration and Costs by 50% and Reduces Contractual Risk with More Efficient Project Management
 
 

GERC Lowers Project Planning Duration and Costs by 50% and Reduces Contractual Risk with More Efficient Project Management

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GERC is one of the most dynamically growing companies in Ukraine’s construction industry.

Established in 1990, the company offers full services in residential, commercial, and industrial construction. The company’s major activities include general contracting and design, integrated design of industrial and civic structures, construction and civil engineering, digging and concrete works, management of complex, construction projects, technical auditing of buildings and construction, as well as property-management auditing. GERC’s construction projects include municipal infrastructures, industrial buildings, office and residential buildings, as well as shopping malls.

To increase project management efficiency, reduce corporate risk exposure, and increase the company’s ability to grow business, GERC needed to replace disparate, scattered project information sources in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project with a single, integrated view of the company’s complex, construction projects.

GERC created a project department consisting of a dedicated team working with Oracle’s Primavera P6 Professional Project Management to optimize its planning and reporting capabilities, introduce detailed benchmarking for internal and external resources, and increase the number of concurrent projects three-fold, while shortening project planning duration and costs by 50%.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from GERC

  • “We manage hundreds of external building contractors and internal resources with Oracle’s Primavera P6 applications, without the need to deploy a complex ERP application. Primavera P6 has enabled us to manage more projects simultaneously than before, more accurately, more efficiently, and with far fewer contractual risks.” – Marina Chernova, Head of Planning and Control Department, GERC

  • Optimize project management methodology and tools to strategically pursue and build numerous, simultaneous construction projects—for municipal, industrial, commercial, and residential infrastructure—and complete more projects on time and within budgets
  • Reduce exposure to the corporate risk of being caught by unexpected project status, such as exceeded budgets and unjustified changes in contract terms that risk profitability and customer value
  • Enable accurately forecasting project cost, revenue, and completion date
  • Replace disparate sources of project information scattered across Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project deployments with a single, integrated view of the company’s complex, construction projects
  • Increase the company’s ability to grow business in existing markets or pursue new markets with a standardized and centralized solution that easily scales to support greater work volumes and drive profitability

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Created a project management office, based on Oracle’s Primavera P6 Professional Project Management—which users with no special training can master within 30 minutes—enabling 14 project managers to provide 80 construction and real estate specialists with comprehensive project data
  • Enabled the company to manage all external contractors and internal resources with Primavera P6 Professional Project Management and Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management Web Services without the need for an enterprise resource planning tool
  • Used Primavera P6’s capability to handle sophisticated and large-scale construction projects—where many different stakeholders are involved and efficient collaboration is essential—to increase planning efficiency by 80% and reporting efficiency by 60%, while reducing the time required to plan projects by 50%
  • Eliminated major risks, such as unjustified changes in contract terms after contract expiration, because all relevant contract data is stored in Primavera P6 and available at any time for making informed decisions
  • Leveraged automated data collection to provide a daily reporting of all required information on behalf of the company’s complex construction projects—such as budget consumption or completion of specific construction tasks by a subcontractor—data that was previously less accurate and available only at month-end
  • Optimized project management team structure, resource management, benchmarking, and contractor management by automatically assigning project tasks to team members and monitoring work execution by means of timesheets
  • Increased the number of projects completed on time and without exceeding budget by four projects per year and tripled the number of projects that are executed simultaneously
  • Optimized resource usage and operations from the initial planning stage to shorten project planning duration by 50%
  • Improved resource planning, scheduling, and reporting productivity by enabling each project team member to simulate how his actions affect subsequent tasks and the overall course of the project
  • Enabled team leaders to manage more projects simultaneously, increasing the number of concurrently completed projects threefold since 2008

Why Oracle

“We compared Primavera P6 Professional Project Management extensively with Microsoft Project. Primavera exceeded Microsoft Project by almost all parameters, enabling project managers with many participants to standardize processes across teams and projects,” said Marina Chernova, head of planning and control department, GERC.

Implementation Process

The implementation, which occurred between February and May 2008, was completed on time, within the expected budget, by Oracle partner PMSOFT, which now provides GERC with technical support.

The implementation was out-of-the-box. GERC acquired an additional module (Trigger) developed by Oracle Partner PMSOFT, which triggers predefined actions within Primavera P6 as soon as certain values are reached.

Partner

“Many companies implementing Oracle’s Primavera use just a small portion of the solution’s capabilities. The expertise of Oracle partner PMSOFT helped us to realize its great potential,” Chernova said.

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