Why Balfour Beatty Chose Planera Over P6

‍COMPANY OVERVIEW

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Balfour Beatty is a leading international infrastructure group that finances, develops, builds, and maintains the world’s most complex and vital infrastructure. The company operates across the UK, US, and Hong Kong, delivering a diverse range of projects, including construction, civil engineering, and support services. The company’s Special Projects Group (SPG) handles quicker, smaller interior and specialty construction projects.

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CHALLENGE

Complex and Inefficient Scheduling with P6

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Before adopting Planera, Balfour Beatty’s SPG primarily relied on Primavera P6 for its scheduling needs. While functional, the system presented key challenges for their specialty projects:

• Complexity and Training: P6 was challenging for those unfamiliar with it, making it difficult and time-consuming to train new team members.
• Update Friction: The complexity and ease of encountering errors in P6 meant team members were less likely to update the schedule frequently.
• Single-User Focus: P6's single-screen, single-license approach did not easily facilitate the collaborative scheduling needed for a project team (e.g., a superintendent and assistant superintendent).

Ultimately, the Special Projects Group needed a scheduling tool that was intuitive, easy to use for faster projects, and encouraged team collaboration and frequent updates.

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SOLUTION

Adopting Planera for Intuitive and Collaborative Scheduling

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Following vetting by the company’s IT and technology teams, SPG made the shift to Planera. The platform is now used to develop master schedules during the proposal phase. These schedules are then handed over to project teams for execution; teams also use Planera to keep their schedules up-to-date during the build.

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Key Features Driving Adoption:

• Visual Scheduling: Planera’s Canvas – its visual approach to schedule development – was a major factor winning over team members, who feel that it is well-aligned with how they think about scheduling.
• Ease of Use & Updates: Planera's intuitive nature and ease of use encourages team members to update the schedule more frequently, potentially weekly, which is a major change from P6.
• Team Training and Collaboration: Planera’s pricing model allows for multiple users per project, facilitating easier team training and simultaneous work by staff.

RESULTS

Improved Efficiency and Team Buy-In

• Faster Project Delivery: Planera proved effective for the speed required by the SPG.
• Increased Update Frequency: The ease of use encouraged team members to update the schedule more frequently, leading to a more current and accurate schedule.
• Better Team Alignment: The collaborative approach facilitates training and simultaneous work by multiple project staff.

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LOOKING AHEAD

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Following the organic adoption success, a key future goal for the SPG team is to integrate subcontractors into the scheduling process using Planera's collaborative features, a major shift from the “huddle around a shared screen” approach required with P6.

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CONCLUSION

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By adopting Planera, Balfour Beatty’s Special Projects Group transformed its scheduling process from one challenged by complexity and single-user limitations (P6) to a collaborative, intuitive, and efficient system that better supports team training and encourages frequent updates.