Westpark Shannon is Ireland’s Premier International Business Campus hosting 50 client organisations. WSL manage the facilities and maintenance at Westpark Shannon. See www.westparkshannon.com
Sean Mcguire, Facilities Manager at WSL, prepared the case study below for submission to a regional business chamber for the “Best Use of Technology” award (Trackplan had no role in preparing this case study). They have since been shortlisted, awards ceremony due in November 2017.
WSL Management Company provides Building and Estate Management services at Westpark Shannon Business Campus in Shannon, Co. Clare. Based on Campus, the in-house Facilities Management (FM) team at Westpark offer professional services related to all aspects of managing the facilities and amenities in all common areas within the Campus buildings and throughout the entire 38 acre Campus estate.
WSL Management Company are responsible for the implementation of a wide breadth of duties and services on a 24/7 365- day basis. The Campus grounds and its buildings, are immaculately maintained and are home to 50 plus companies, with up of 2,000 employees. A key aspect of delivery of service on Campus is the operation of the “fm helpdesk” which is a one stop shop for all Campus tenant enquiries, requests for assistance or reporting of reactive maintenance items. In addition to day to day management of Campus issues the on-site FM team are responsible for managing 25 third party Service Level Agreement (SLA) maintenance contractors, delivering comprehensive Preventative Planned Maintenance (PPM) schedules of work and ensuring compliance with all bye-laws and statutory requirements.
With the success of the Campus and ever increasing numbers of Campus tenants a need was identified to implement a suitable Computer Assisted Facility Management (CAFM) system to oversee compliance and assist with the management of service delivery. Against this background the following key objectives were set:-
Following an in-depth research, review and validation period WSL Management Company proceeded with a proposal by Trackplan FM who provided a comprehensive fully bespoke-able cloud based software solution. In conjunction with WSL’s IT department the system was integrated with our existing mail server, which facilitated generation of personalised auto responses and updates on job progress.
A key benefit to customers is that it guarantees an immediate 24/7 365 response to any issue arising. A unique job reference number is automatically assigned to every issue. Tenants receive regular updates automatically via the system as the issue is progressed. Additionally, the software assists WSL Management Company in management, scheduling and cost control of routine planned and preventative maintenance tasks. A feature of the software is that it allows WSL FM team to reduce risk and drive compliance through the auto-creation of upcoming planned preventative maintenance jobs, with notifications for upcoming and reminders for overdue work issued when required.
The system is fully bespoke-able and allows WSL to continually update and populate with any new data applicable to the changing aspects of Campus management. The software is cloud hosted and provides a powerful scaleable solution to reflect the ever increasing rate of Campus expansion. Through integration of the CAFM system and WSL’s mail server, save receiving an initial automated response email, for the vast majority of tenant customers the automation of the fm helpdesk function goes unnoticed – i.e. the established personal level of customer service remains intact.
Limerick Institute of Technology is one of Ireland’s largest colleges with 6,900 student and 500 staff. The college is spread across 5 campuses in Limerick, Clare and Tipperary.
There are 7 staff in the central estates team who manage the well-being of the large estate all year round using a team of over 25 third party and internal contractors.
LIT were looking for a solution to help them manage all the sites, reactive and planned preventative maintenance and user requests and related documents in one central easy to use application.
All issues found by LIT staff are sent in by email to one central email address. From the email a request is automatically created in Trackplan’s facilities management software and the LIT estates team are then notified by email, who can then approve the request into a full reactive job. This job is then managed through its life-cycle. The new job is assigned to a site and detailed location and then to a relevant estates team member to manage from thereon. They can then choose to instruct one of the contractors on the system.
Contractors are then notified by email of the work required. The contractor can then login to Trackplan to view their instructed jobs and complete the job via their mobile device or tablet – it works on any device and browser. The contractor can also review all instructed work on the calendar by day, week or month. They can also add notes, upload documents and take photos.
The estates management can get a quick overview of the status of maintenance work by reviewing the Trackplan dashboard which summarises all maintenance jobs by site showing overdue and priority work. They can drill down to the jobs of interest.
The estates team is also making the most of Trackplan’s powerful and easy to use Planned Preventative Maintenance module. Over 50 regular recurring maintenance schedules have been set up which automatically generate and instruct jobs to contractors on differing time intervals from daily to weekly to annually and others in between. Again on the dashboard, management can quickly see if they are “On Track” and compliant with the many schedules of work across the campuses.
Trackplan’s CAFM solution is also helping LIT reduce bags of paperwork with its Inspection and Checklist module. A list of “things to do” can be set up by the estates team. This is then issued to the internal or external contractor on one of the maintenance schedules. The contractor can then review the list on his mobile and sign off the individual items on the inspection list such as the “Sports hub vents” or “Grease Traps”. A great way to manage regular recurring work and reduce time and paper-work for all parties.
KARE is a voluntary organisation providing a comprehensive range of services for individuals with intellectual disabilities and their families in County Kildare, East Offaly, West Wicklow and North Carlow. It has 32 sites and several hundred staff, including volunteers.
In late 2016 Kare published a Request for Tender for a Maintenance Request System.
KARE’s previous Maintenance Request System allowed their sites to log maintenance issues so that they could be dealt with ultimately by their pool of contractors.
KARE wanted to improve their internal processes around maintenance requests and needed a new system to enable smarter and more efficient prescribed workflow and allow better collaboration between all parties including:
Trackplan was finally selected as the chosen solution provider.
Kare could see that Trackplan’s off the shelf cloud-based solution already included many of the required features to fulfil their requirements. And Trackplan convinced the selection panel that it was well able to develop and enhance the solution to meet all its requirements.
The additional improvements would go into the product and so provide Kare with a sustainable solution that would continually improve from other client requirements.
Trackplan’s existing and relevant feature set already included:
Enhancements performed by Trackplan included:
The diagram on the right represents the workflow required by Kare at the time of the RFP, which was delivered by Trackplan.
A full detailed specification was produced by Trackplan and signed off by Kare. Trackplan then performed the additional development over 3 months. Trackplan assisted Kare also with the onboarding of data such as all the users and their associated roles, site access and permissions. Trackplan prepared specific training materials for the site contacts and the contractors. Kare communicated the plan and requirements to all users and contractors.
The new system has been in use successfully since early 2018 with 100s of jobs being raised each month from the 32 sites, and then fully delivered using the required workflow. The main benefits where, greater control of maintenance and the contractors, better visibility for all parties, time saved for the small central facilities team in managing maintenance, and better control over maintenance costs and as a result cost savings are being realized.
Testimonial from Kare
“During the RFT Process KARE were immediately impressed by Trackplan’s off the shelf solution, and also by their ability and willingness to add new developments to more closely match KARE’s specific needs. Trackplan worked closely with us throughout the whole Project, understanding our initial process, but also being flexible when KARE started to realise the potential of the Trackplan software, enabling KARE to update our process with new features thereby increasing the effectiveness of the final application for us.
Of course, improving a process during a Project can lead to delays and stress, but Trackplan were always helpful and patient, and willing to implement the changes requested. This resulted in Trackplan delivering an off the shelf solution that had been adapted to our updated process, introducing extra features like handling RCT Tax, importing Invoices and Accruals into our Financial System, and enabling KARE to keep track of contracts with Contractors to ensure budget and procurement rules were adhered to. All of this with a system that is intuitive and easy to use.
The rollout and go live of Trackplan was smoother than we could have hoped for, and this was due to the work Trackplan did in having everything working in the background and having extensive testing and training materials in place. The Trackplan Project is viewed as a very successful one within KARE and has vastly improved the management of Maintenance Requests for KARE, ensuring that issues in our sites are dealt with quickly and effectively.”
Jason Browne
Head of IT
Kare
Aura Sport and Leisure Management (Aura) is an award winning company managing and maintaining 10 leisure centres throughout Ireland on behalf of local authorities.
They were looking for a solution that would allow the head office to better manage and control the maintenance throughout the sites with an easy to use system.
The central facilities team will now only look at jobs coming from the individual leisure centres, if raised on the Trackplan system. Notifications are sent to head office as soon as a job is raised. Aura have been impressed by how quickly staff have taken to it with minimal training. And of course it works from any device with an internet connection so set up has been very fast with minimal effort.
Leisure centres can also view the status of their jobs once raised and assign work to head office maintenance and allocate to contractors if required. Head Office can then bundle similar work to specific contractors saving costs on call out fees and time for all parties involved in the maintenance chain.
Aura are also able to break down bigger jobs into smaller tasks and view and manage them on the Trackplan scheduler and Gantt chart.
The entire repairs and maintenance budget is to be managed from the Trackplan software.
One of UK and Ireland’s largest food manufacturers and food producers, supplying meat to UK and Ireland. Includes 6 manufacturing sites each with 100+ maintenance driven assets.
Previously Foyle had been using a mixture of paper and spreadsheet-based processes and ad-hoc self-built software across its sites.
A big requirement for Foyles is be to help them demonstrate compliance and strong systems for the many audits they receive from clients, and food bodies such as Bord Bia (Ireland) and the Foods Standard Agency (UK)
Foyle took a 2-month trial in one of their plants and passed annual external audit during this trial period aided by Trackplan.
Then Trackplan provided a 3 days training and configuration with the maintenance managers from each of the six plants.
More than 600 assets uploaded from spreadsheet via Trackplan or entered via interface were uploaded. Each asset assigned to a site and location / sub-location within site.
Assets categorised by relevant asset classes – about 50 asset classes used.
More than 100 planned maintenance schedules were set up with varying frequencies across all assets.
Foyle is using Electronic forms designed within Trackplan interface for regular inspections and checks of some of the assets. These forms attached to relevant planned maintenance schedules.
More than 30 Foyle Users loaded into software with various permissions and access rights (eg one site only, full access)
Planned maintenance schedules and forms housed into categories for easier management.
Stock and Inventory uploaded to manage stock levels and track maintenance driven asset parts.
Set up relevant reports within Trackplan’s dashboards and also on SQL Reporting Services for scheduled reports.
Tag assets with QR codes to bring up asset information and jobs quickly from Trackplan.
Titan Property Developer manage the new builds of houses and apartments blocks in areas of the UK. Typically, they will have several major build projects a year.
They employ one or two main contractors during a project to manage and deliver the construction of the houses and apartments. The main contractor will have their own team of engineers and subcontractors to help deliver the work. And then a variety of other actors are engaged such as architects, surveyors and “employer’s agents”.
The Employer’s Agent will inspect the properties and create a report of snags and defects during the build process. The main contractor and their team are then obliged to repair and fix these snags and defects. The main contractor then review the fixes and finally approve.
This essential process helps drive well built, quality properties.
Also, the new owners of the just built properties are invited to inspect their properties, and create their own list of snags that they find. At this stage there should not be many!
Titan were previously using paper driven processes and were having quality control issues around the snagging process. They were looking for a technology driven process to improve this.
In early 2017 Trackplan were engaged by Titan to deliver the solution the help improve the snagging and defects process. After project meetings with Titan, Trackplan identified required improvements to the existing CAFM platform to provide a perfect fit.
Improvements included:
So now Titan and their project team have used Trackplan successfully on several new build projects with many thousands of jobs and snags being raised and completed. And Trackplan is being used by Titan themselves, the Employer’s Agents, the main contractors and their engineers and the new owners of the properties.
Benefits to date include:
The Australian Open is a tennis tournament held annually over the last fortnight of January in Melbourne, Australia. The tournament is the first of the four Grand Slam tennis events held each year, preceding the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open.
First held in 1905, the Australian Open is now the largest annual sporting event in the Southern Hemisphere. The tournament holds the record for the highest attendance at a Grand Slam event, with 743,667 people attending the 2018 Australian Open. It was also the first Grand Slam tournament to feature indoor play during wet weather or extreme heat with its three primary courts, the Rod Laver Arena, Hisense Arena and the refurbished Margaret Court Arena equipped with retractable roofs.
The Australian Open is managed by Tennis Australia. A central logistics team of 40 staff manage the set-up of the event, and of course the 2 weeks of the event itself. And then the wind down of the event, to be ready for the following year.
Tennis Australia selected Trackplan to:
2 x 2-hour remote training sessions using Zoom to 2 super users.
This “super-user” team have trained the other 30+ staff who will all be using the software.
Over 2,000 reactive and planned jobs are booked in the busy months around the tournament.
Core assets are to be loaded and monitored using Trackplan.
Trackplan has loaded 780 historic jobs into the live area from a spreadsheet provided by Tennis Australia which can then be rescheduled by the team for 2018 / 2019.
Jobs are created by department users and scheduled to engineers by the central team.
Moor Park Golf Club is one of the largest golf clubs in Europe, with two championship golf courses set in 300 acres of parkland in Hertfordshire, UK.
The clubhouse is a Grade I Listed building and hosts weddings, parties, conferences and training courses as well as containing busy restaurants, bars and golf facilities enjoyed by members and visitors.
Moor Park’s in-house maintenance team has 6 people busy looking after the impressive estate on behalf of the members and board of directors.
After a demonstration to the board and maintenance team in late 2014, Moor Park signed up to Trackplan realising that it was a strong, easy to use system that was going to meet all their needs.
Within weeks of the meeting Moor Park have been using Trackplan’s facilities management software to schedule, assign and manage all maintenance work across the estate.
All their assets are loaded into the system and a schedule of planned work automatically creates new jobs and sends out reminders when due.
The maintenance manager can easily view upcoming jobs on the fantastic Trackplan calendar which allows him to move jobs between team members and spread the work load efficiently. Even better, he can create diary notes (or ghost jobs) alongside the live jobs to visualise, prioritise and plan future projects and work.
The entire maintenance budget is to be managed from the Trackplan solution.
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