How leading organizations around the world are using capital program savings to their competitive advantage

Global leaders have identified their vast capital spends as a huge opportunity to ensure organizational stability and competitive advantage in industries including: oil & gas, retail, hospitality, education, utilities, healthcare, and renewables.

Efficiencies throughout project and asset lifecycles provide decades of savings

Capital programs are critical to any organization’s success due to the programs’ length and breadth. For example, which projects an organization determines to pursue impacts costs, revenue, and service levels for decades into the future and crosses functions as vast as hiring, finance, and ongoing operations.

Summary of results

Attaining tangible benefits from project planning / prioritization

By using Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) and Primavera Unifier, Ameren, a major U.S. utility, was able to reduce the time needed for project justification scoring by 90%, reducing project justification times of 30 to 60 minutes to just three to five minutes.

One key process improvement: Ameren developed, routed, and approved concepts instead of full scopes and estimates. This improvement saves approximately 80 to 100 man-hours of work per proposal, across an average at least 60 per year. This is a huge savings of about 675 man-days a year.

The utility had started seeing proposals begin to decline before implementing their new process administered by Oracle Construction and Engineering solutions. Going through the laborious and time-consuming process of scoping out a project for review, only to have it not be approved, discouraged engineering from developing project proposals.

Now, the right quantity and quality of concepts are being submitted and the engineering groups are no longer frustrated. The new process has resulted in a significant increase in the project approval rate, increasing from just 21% to 92%.

Ameren also achieved an 85% time savings on project evaluation and planning meetings since all relevant parties had access to the relevant data.

“Now instead of coming to the meeting and being asked questions, we come to the meeting with the answers.”

Matt Pasley, Manager, Field Support and Analysis, Ameren

Ameren can now focus on what is important to both the company and their customers—providing uninterrupted, cost-effective energy—by removing significant inefficiencies.

Improving project execution to increase the value of your capital investment

Universities are like mini cities in many ways – including their extensive infrastructure, diverse population, and ever-changing needs. The University of Connecticut is no exception. It’s not unusual for the university to manage 25 construction projects at any given time.

Like any project owner, the university wants to manage, deliver, and maintain projects in the most efficient and effective manner possible. All owners can benefit from applying saved time and money toward investing in additional projects.             

Many owners, like universities, also have stringent governance regulations spanning a range of areas. For example, university funding cycles are often impacted by changes to state funding that can disrupt universities’ plans.

Universities must have the flexibility and agility to respond to changes like these, that are out of their control.

The University of Connecticut started looking for an integrated system to streamline their processes, connect existing systems such as finance and gain the value of standardization across their projects.

By implementing Oracle’s Primavera Unifier, the university reduced quarterly reporting from two weeks to just 30 minutes. In the past, budget, risk, and schedule information were assembled from multiple spreadsheets and a database and manual updates were made for each project location.

Project managers typically spent three to five days updating all inputs before extracting them for the report. Business process professionals devoted two weeks to compiling, reviewing, formatting, and submitting the reports.

University project managers complete the process in just five minutes, and business process professionals take only thirty minutes, using Oracle’s asset lifecycle management tool. In addition, the reports provide valuable information faster and are submitted two to three weeks earlier.

Primavera Unifier also helps the university handle bonded money. It’s critical for the university to analyze and report on annualized program cashflow with changing annual funding - including the financial impact of delaying a project.  

The university can look at future cashflow requirements for a specific year—and adjust project schedules to match project funding for that year—by integrating Primavera Unifier and Primavera P6 project portfolio management software.

What took a consultant three days in the past can now be accomplished in-house in 15 minutes anytime there’s a funding change or new project proposal.

John Wayne Airport (JWA) 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.

By implementing Primavera Unifier, the airport was able to consolidate two previously disconnected processes, approving a change and authorizing the budget commitment, resulting in a 50% time savings.

JWA achieved the same 50% time savings in funding management by consolidating their budget authorization and budget allocation into one workflow.

With safety being top of mind for any public infrastructure, especially an airport, JWA improved their non-conformance reporting into their daily reports. The airport achieved a 25-33% time savings.

Efficient management throughout operations and maintenance

The duration of operations and maintenance dwarfs all other stages of the project lifecycle. Measured in decades rather than months or years, how facilities are operated, maintained and renovated can have a significant impact on an organization’s bottom line.

BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina needed a central system to support their rapid growth, as they managed 143 facilities—spanning 21 states—including critical data centers.

They went through a thorough needs evaluation and system selection process, landing on Primavera Unifier to redefine how they managed everything from budgeting and audits to work orders and preventive maintenance.

The organization’s results have led to Primavera Unifier being expanded to other functional areas within BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, including inventory management.

Using automated workflows and tracking, the company closes out internal work orders 50% faster, “wowing” their internal customers.

Corporate audit preparation has gone from 80 hours to just minutes per audit and they have achieved zero failures on audit reports.

BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina has achieved 100% on-time payments to their contractors, increasing the pool of contractors who want to work for them and eliminating time wasted expediting payments.

With easy access to current and past budgets and actuals, developing budgets now takes just minutes instead of close to a month. Budgets are approved more quickly, and more often, thanks to improved accuracy and trust in the numbers.

Learn how your organization can use capital program management to your competitive advantage. Take a tour of Primavera Unifier Essentials, a new way to get up and running on capital program management best practices quickly and easily.

Oracle Construction and Engineering, the global leader in construction management software and project portfolio management solutions, helps you connect your teams, processes, and data across the project and asset lifecycle. Drive efficiency and control in project delivery with proven solutions for project controls, construction scheduling, portfolio management, BIM/CDE, construction payment management, and more.

Related posts:

• Ameren provides excellent customer service with Oracle Primavera solutions
• John Wayne Airport cuts approval cycle times in half on infrastructure projects
• Scottish Water relies on Oracle's Primavera solutions to manage large volume of projects