Primavera P6 at National Highways’ Major Projects
National Highways is the government-owned organisation responsible for modernising, maintaining and operating England’s motorways and major A roads. The Major Projects business unit is responsible for the delivery of road infrastructure, for example, construction of new roads and road widening schemes.With the expansion in road traffic, demand for new roads has grown. The budget for infrastructure projects increased massively to £17 billion per year. The increase in budget represents both an increase in the value of projects and the number of major construction projects. Project sizes span from £50 million up to £7 billion.
As the scale of projects increased nationally, so did the requirement to collaborate further with alliance partners and the supply chain. Major Projects introduced a suite of new Project Controls software after going to tender. National Highways needs to ensure the contracts into which it enters represent value to the taxpayer and that they will deliver value for money throughout the life of the contract.
Oracle Primavera P6, an enterprise project planning software, hosted by Oracle Cloud, was selected to meet the project scheduling and resource management requirements.
Optimising Primavera P6 for Major Projects
National Highways’ current relationship with Locana commenced in 2021 following a tender to identify a partner who had the relevant credentials and experience of managing large and complex Primavera P6 environments. Locana won the tender due to the quality of the presentation, solution, and price. Locana met with the team at National Highways and gave confidence about the level and depth of competence and culture to complete the project successfully.
As an Oracle Partner, Locana has extensive experience in Oracle Primavera P6. Locana currently supports many large asset owners, their main contractors and consultancy organisations have their own P6 environments.
The onboarding process went smoothly: Locana measurably enhanced the existing system and worked in the live environment from day 1, after configuration. There was no delay due to cutover – the Major Projects team continued to work without disruption.
“The onboarding was painless. The Locana team was very helpful and straight away what came across was the knowledge and experience of the team. We didn’t have to explain things in a huge amount of detail for the team to understand what we were trying to do. It was quick because Locana could pick up the reins and improve on the status quo for us.”
— Steven Goodfellow, Head of Profession with National Highways
Locana put in place third line technical support for Primavera P6 and became responsible for a series of projects to support National Highways’ strategic priorities programme. Locana utilises an extensive knowledge base and works with Oracle to manage the release of new Primavera P6 features, security updates, and deliver early life white glove support.
Steady state and ongoing support
Locana is now working in a steady state with National Highways and assists with P6 feature enhancements, if P6 is not functioning as expected, or when National Highways needs a change in the system configuration.
With so many contributors to the system, over time the information they enter builds up, often without providing any benefit. As an example of the close relationship between National Highways and Locana, in a project named “Housekeeping” the Locana team worked to cleanse multiple projects of redundant data which was negatively impacting the performance and user experience.
Locana works with National Highways aligning the Project Control systems to create a more efficient environment for suppliers, contractors, and management. Locana streamlines the data held in P6 to make the user experience faster and easier and enables National Highways to upgrade the P6 environment in line with Oracle updates.
Steven said: “Working with the Locana team was fantastic. The team is quick to respond, and fast to action requests. We receive reports from our Customer Success Manager, Anna Almond, that show progress and how we’re managing the budget. Budget constraints are tight. Locana’s service is responsive, helpful, and the team has showed they have ability to get to the root cause of any issue. We monitor how many tickets are raised, the resolution time, and have seen a great improvement in the system. In addition, from qualitative feedback the user experience has improved.”
Contact Anna Almond to find out how you can optimise your Primavera P6 environment today.
About National Highways
National Highways is the wholly government-owned company responsible for modernising, maintaining and operating England’s motorways and major A roads.
Real-time traffic information for England’s motorways and major A roads is available via the Traffic England website, local and national radio travel bulletins, electronic road signs and mobile apps. Local Twitter services are also available.
