VBM Enterprise Grade Information Management System
"Organise your Company around Vantage VBM and watch it come to life"
Case Study - VBM at Downer Engineering
Downer EDI Engineering is one of Australia’s largest providers of engineering and infrastructure services with more than AUD 1.3 billion in revenues and 7,000 employees across Australia, New Zealand and Asia.
The company provides large scale engineering services in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region across multiple sectors. These include Resources, Energy, Business and Consumer Technology , Oil / Gas / Petrochemical, Transport, Water and Environment , Commercial and Public Buildings.
“There were specific issues that needed to be addressed with Downer EDI Projects and we found VBM to be the solution after a rigorous process of evaluation.
Some three years after the launch of the system, VBM remains a core business system readily and effectively used daily by managers and staff. As an important part of the company’s information systems, VBM has proven its value many times over and has helped in enabling Downer EDI Engineering to continue to achieve the highest standards of engineering excellence”.
Grant van Rensburg General Manager – Projects West Downer EDI Engineering
The necessity to manage and co-ordinate projects with large volumes of documentation and document revisions throughout the life of a project is critical in enabling Downer EDI Engineering to effectively deliver on projects and project tasks.
Downer EDI Engineering recognised the limitations of current systems and set about reviewing existing solutions and identifying requirements. The need to put in place a secure, versatile and robust Information Management System with capabilities extending beyond the systems currently available and which could provide management and staff with an effective and easy to use tool saw VBM continually rate at the top of assessments and the company identified VBM as the leading solution. Downer EDI Engineering selected VBM.
A process analysis was undertaken and the flexible taxonomy and strong templating capabilities of VBM enabled rapid integration with the company’s existing world-best business processes and, where processes required improvement or replacement, analysts were able to design and structure their processes knowing that VBM could successfully realise them.
Downer EDI Engineering implemented VBM and immediately and successfully addressed their Document control and co-ordination requirements. The well planned, trouble free rollout and quick user uptake saw VBM become an integral part of the daily workflow of the Downer EDI Engineering workforce.
The risk control, productivity and cost benefits that VBM delivers to Downer EDI Engineering are considerable and tangible.
Benefits include:
For more detailed information on resolved issues please expand the table below by clicking the (+) icon.
Lack of filing structure of electronic documents and records filing. No stability or security over Explorer folder structures. Different structures “evolve” for different projects. No restrictions over what different users have access to
Ability to deploy standard project filing structure which can only be changed by approved users. User access permissions can be set up and Documents can be CLASSIFIED. The Job/activity filter means that the structure doesn’t need to be re-created for each job
Long file names and paths cause Explorer error
Document Certificates (Code + Title) can be up to 255 characters long
Windows Explorer allows users to inadvertently delete, move and duplicate files
VBM keeps the user away from the native files. VBM documents cannot be deleted
Lack of control and ability to save and share emails outside Outlook .pst file
VBM creates Outlook emails directly. Importing emails into VBM creates a .msg file (including attachments) external to Outlook .pst file. All users can access the .msg file
Lack of facilities to archive project records at completion
Archive Manager provides a link to the hardcopy archived records
Lack of control over delivery and update of approved templates/ forms. Team members use outdated forms/templates from desktops
Assign a default template for each Category which is then used whenever a user creates a new document in that Category. Template is only available when its Work Status is set to approved.
Lack of revision control. Different revision conventions required for different departments/document types (eg FREEFORM, ENGINEERING = A, B, C, 0, 1 etc)
VBM allows automated revision conventions to be set up for each Category including Major.Minor.Micro as Alpha/numeric.Alpha/numeric - Alpha/numeric - Freeform - Engineer - Date or Date/Time
Lack of coding/numbering of documents and records is difficult to maintain. Separate Excel spreadsheet registers normally maintained requiring significant effort to keep up to date
A coding/numbering convention can be set up for each category to automatically generate codes whenever a document is created. An Excel report can be generated of any document list. This replaces the need for conventional spreadsheet register
Lack of user adherence to approved file naming conventions. Lack of control of file naming and saving results in the significant lost information
Document title convention can be set up for each category resulting in strict adherence to approved conventions
Lack of facilities to track document delivery
MyComm reports show who, when, why, how documents delivered
Lack of facilities to work on document packages (eg tenders, contracts, feasibility reports etc)
VBM allows sets of documents to be packaged and revision development to be tracked via baselines
Lack of facilities to protect a document or revision from inadvertent changes
User LOCK/UNLOCK control, check-in/check-out, documents set to Approved work status are automatically LOCKED and can’t be UNLOCKED (thus protected)
Lack of control and access to documents and records at remote site offices
All project information head office + site is accessed via a single method (VBM) even though repositories can be located at remote site offices (with minimum 2MB network link)
Lack of facilities to track Document/Drawing/Package development
Document life cycle can be tracked using WORK STATUS. The effort cost of Documents and Packages can be tracked by setting Budget hours, updating Actual/Forecast to complete and reporting % complete
Lack of facilities to capture intellectual property of the relationships between documents
Relational Documents allows documents to be linked and viewed based on their context (ie intellectual property is captured)
Sending documents as email attachments impacts network space and throughput. Lost productivity as multiple copies are created and resent. Review of a document by 5 team members results in multiple replies which then need to be collated and re-reviewed
VBM provides single instance files. Can create emails with hyperlinks to VBM documents so that all reviewers comment (with track changes) within the same file.
For further information on VBM or to discuss your information management requirements contact Dee Broadmore Direct on 0434 549 709 or email dee@vantagekey.com.au
