John Wayne Airport cuts approval cycle times in half on infrastructure projects

John Wayne Airport (JWA), the sole commercial service airport in Orange County, needed a centralized system to help efficiently manage an increasing number of projects, both in size and volume—all while delivering high-quality projects and responsibly managing public funds.

JWA is located approximately 35 miles south of Los Angeles and serves more than 10 million passengers annually. JWA is achieving compelling results from a thorough process review, technology selection, and implementation exercise.

A longtime user of Primavera Unifier, JWA recently added Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) for program/project managers to integrate project schedules as well as plan and execute capital improvements. JWA is running their projects more efficiently thanks to Primavera Unifier’s consistent central system for process management and Primavera P6 EPPM’s scheduling and planning functionality.

Task, funding, safety, and approval cycle improvements

Task authorization

The previous task authorizations process JWA followed consisted of two steps, each with its own approval cycle. Now, instead of managing separate cycles to approve the change and authorize the budget commitment, these steps are consolidated into one automated workflow. The result is a 50% time savings.

Funding allocation

Funding allocation was also a multi-step process at JWA. In the past, the organization would complete a budget authorization step with an approval workflow.

Once that step was completed, JWA conducted a second workflow to approve allocation of that budget to a specific task/project. The organization now completes both tasks through one automated process by streamlining and automating processes through Primavera Unifier.

The time devoted to funding allocation has been cut in half by consolidating these steps.

RFIs and submittals

Request for information (RFI) and submittal workflows were managed using a manual, paper-based process prior to implementing Primavera Unifier. Now, JWA can efficiently include more team members in the reviews. RFI and submittal routing and approvals are automated and can be completed from anywhere.

This additional feedback provides more complete information. All comments and relevant information are easily accessible with the related RFI or submittal, helping minimize follow-up.

QA/QC safety inspections

Inspectors bring their mobile devices into the field to capture and status issues by managing the quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) inspection process using Primavera Unifier. The system auto-creates a violation report for non-conforming work, safety, or environmental issues based on data entered into the daily report.

The violation report is automatically routed to the construction manager in real time when the inspector checks the violation report box on the daily report form from the field. Through this process, both the project manager and construction manager receive notification of a violation immediately instead of at the end of the site walk, which could be up to two hours later.

These hours can be significant—particularly for safety issues. Another benefit of this process: there is a full and complete record. In the past, some issues would have already been resolved by the time the site walk was complete and a violation report was never issued.

JWA has also saved time by consolidating a two-step process into just one: daily reports cover all aspects of a project. Previously separate non-conformance reports had to be created.

Now, by selecting a box on the daily report, non-conformance reports are automatically generated for those items, resulting in an estimated time savings of 25% to 33%.

How process improvement gets work started faster

Process improvement is important, but it is a means to an end, not the end itself. For JWA, the above process improvements help keep projects on schedule and even reduce the schedule durations in some cases.  

On average, JWA crews start work a week faster than they did in the past due to streamlining and automating the task authorization and funding allocation processes. JWA crews’ heightened responsiveness is a huge improvement whenever a maintenance issue arises.

JWA has also implemented a work authorization process within Primavera Unifier that releases a small amount of money to initiate work in a matter of hours. In the past, it took two to three days using a paper form approval cycle.

John Wayne Airport continues to evaluate, execute and improve

Primavera Unifier’s flexibility helps manage almost any process—as well as the tool’s integration with other systems. JWA continues to plan, execute, and improve.

What’s next: the use of additional mobile functionality to support geo location. Primavera Unifier will integrate with Oracle’s Primavera P6 EPPM to better align schedule and resource planning with cost, enable digital signatures to further reduce paper and manual processes, and potentially integrate with John Wayne Airport’s ERP system, Oracle JD Edwards, EnterpriseOne.

Learn more about Primavera Unifier.

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