Oracle Customer Success—John Wayne Airport

John Wayne Airport Comes in Millions Under Budget on Half-Billion-Dollar Airport Improvement Program, Thanks to Project Transparency

Oracle’s Primavera tool enables us to tightly control public-works project budgets, as well as to provide seamless access to related information, resulting in important savings.

— Larry Serafini, Deputy Airport Director, Facilities, John Wayne Airport

John Wayne Airport is a commercial service airport in Orange County, California. Owned and operated by the County of Orange, it is located approximately 35 miles south of Los Angeles, between the cities of Costa Mesa, Irvine, and Newport Beach. The service area includes more than three million people within the 34 cities and unincorporated areas of Orange County. In 2013, the airport served more than 9 million passengers.

John Wayne Airport plays a unique and crucial role in the Orange County community. It is the only airport in the county that provides commercial passenger and air-cargo service and is the primary provider of general aviation services and facilities in the area. It is home to local law enforcement air operations and to medical/mercy flights. John Wayne Airport is the gateway through which millions of passengers travel each year to their homes, their families, their vacations, and their businesses.

Business Challenge

Standardize and automate processes and closely track the cost of major projects—such as a seven-year, US$543 million airport improvement program—to ensure on-time, on-budget completion
Create a single, secure system for project information to create transparency, improve financial control, and streamline auditing and due diligence, with the goal of optimizing use of public funds

Results

Completed seven-year airport improvement program on time and millions of dollars under budget with careful planning, management, and controls supported by Oracle’s Primavera enterprise project-management solutions
Created a single system of record that enabled project transparency, and provided concrete, timely, and accurate data for robust budget management and control of capital projects

Retrieved project and budget information for audits in days versus weeks or months, ensuring timely reporting, meeting audit requirements with ease, and giving project managers more time to focus on proactive analysis and primary responsibilities
Improved insight into forecasted versus actual costs and schedules and promoted collaboration between all contractors involved in the airport improvement program by integrating Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management with the airport’s building-information modeling system
Enabled project-management staff to proactively look for trends and indicators, such as impending delays or opportunities for greater efficiency and collaboration, as a direct result of process automation
Gave contractors, vendors, and county staff an expanded view of project and subproject costs and progress, enabling them to identify opportunities to better manage current and future project portfolios
Fostered accountability of project team members—including county staff, airport managers, contractors, and vendors—and improved ability to rapidly address emerging issues, thanks to greater transparency
Ensured the security of sensitive airport-project data with the ability to effectively define and limit what information individuals can access based on their roles, for example enabling contractors to view schedule data but not cost estimates

Why They Chose Oracle

After conducting a thorough analysis, the County of Orange/John Wayne Airport selected Oracle’s Primavera solutions, including Primavera Unifier Project Controls and Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management, as its project management platform of choice as it began to prepare for the execution of the airport improvement program. It determined that the solutions provided a best-in-class, project-lifecycle management environment for capital planning, project delivery, and cost control.

The airport also recently looked to continue its use of project-management solutions for additional projects. It vetted solutions and elected to stay with Oracle’s Primavera solutions as the foundation for its next-generation, project-management platform, expected to go live in late 2014. Specifically, the airport determined that Primavera Unifier provided the flexibility to accommodate modified business processes and workflows needed for wide-ranging projects of various sizes and contracting models.

Execution

After acquiring the Primavera solution, the airport examined its project-management processes to leverage the best practices that the flexible solution supports.

“We spent approximately six to eight months incorporating business processes, such as change orders, payments approvals, submittal reviews, and responses to requests for information, to name a few, into the Primavera system. This foundation was essential, and we completed deployment in one year,” said Larry Serafini, deputy airport director, facilities, John Wayne Airport.

During the project, the airport also integrated Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management with its building-information modeling system for expanded real-time insight into and visualization of costs and schedules.

About John Wayne Airport

Headquarters

Santa Ana, California, United States

Employees

165

Annual Revenue

$100 to $500 Million

John Wayne Airport

Partners

“Oracle partner Faithful+Gould helped us with product reviews, which eventually led to the county’s selection of Unifier. Faithful+Gould then facilitated the configuration process. The team guided us throughout the process, and helped with the architecture for business processes and programming. As the project ramped up, Faithful+Gould staff members worked closely with our project management team to determine how to capture data needed to meet stringent administrative requirements,” Serafini said.

Faithful+Gould staff remained on site for the project duration in the role of cost managers and administrators. As the terminal renovation program drew to a close, the focus turned to standardizing the rest of John Wayne Airport’s projects and programs. The team re-evaluated the business processes and adapted the processes to smaller projects—still within the Primavera system.

Oracle Solutions Used

Primavera Unifier Project Controls

Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management

Published: Sep 10, 2014