Drive Engineering Case Study

Background

Drive Engineering founded in 2011 by Director Paul McCormack is a Queensland-based project engineering company that specializes in the infrastructure sector. They have a team of highly skilled and experienced civil engineers who take on large and complex projects primarily for the Queensland Government, supporting them with infrastructure upgrades and construction rebuilds. Robin Vogrincic and Karl Rawnsley, two highly respected engineers within their field have known and worked with UniPhi for more than a decade prior to joining Drive Engineering. The relationship has developed over many years of open, honest communication on the concerns of project and program management within their industry and the software needed to resolve these concerns.

The Challenge

By 2020, Drive Engineering was beginning to manage more complex infrastructure projects, so Robin reached out to us. Both Robin and Karl knew what they needed and that we could quickly deploy our software. They had secured a major M1 ‘Watland Street to Sport Drive project valued at over $265M with the Queensland Government. UniPhi is also being used for the estimated $45M Pacific Highway M1 Exit 41 project by Karl Rawnsley. Overall today, UniPhi provides Drive Engineering the ability to run multiple projects simultaneously using the same platform without corruption of the unique data initiated in the master project.

Given the size and complexity, Robin and Karl knew they needed project management software and service they could trust and quickly implement to adapt and manage throughout the project’s lifecycle.

The Solution

UniPhi’s software is a cloud-based, mobile SaaS product for project and portfolio management that is highly integrative and configurable. With a full suite of modules that have customisable functionality and capabilities necessary to support complex projects within any private or government sector.

The initial deployment resolved their immediate needs in contract management consisting of:

• progress claims,

• documents control,

• registers,

• EOTs, RFI,s Variations, et al

This was rolled out quickly due to the experience in-house with Robin and Karl collaborating with their UniPhi key contact, Simon Day a trusted ex-colleague, friend, and expert user of UniPhi.

As the stages of the project developed, further functions were implemented. UniPhi now supports the project in contract management, document control, cost management and in-field surveillance services. The infield services demonstrate the breadth of the product as Drive’s engineers capture daily inspection logs, issues and more. This streamlines data capture and provides automation of many repetitive administrative tasks.

UniPhi is always seeking to improve and better support our clients and during a UniPhi initiated feedback session Karl raised a progress claim administrative task that was increasingly labor-intensive. Here’s what was happening and how UniPhi resolved it.

Karl advised that under Queensland’s BIFA Act 2017, a ‘reason’ for variations or ‘Acts of Prevention’ for any variances with the Contractor’s monthly payment claim need to be included in the payment schedule that is sent to the owner/stakeholder for payment. This ‘reason’ was being manually entered into UniPhi. There were 100s of items per claim per month, taking upwards of 12 hours to input, due to the size and complexity of the project. The quantitative information for this progress claim came from a spreadsheet captured in the field and imported into UniPhi. If comments could be made in this sheet and imported as well, hours of work could be saved.

Had this feedback session not taken place the issue would have continued with UniPhi completely unaware of the frustration being caused for Karl and the team at Drive Engineering. Appreciating their candor the issue was logged as a priority client feature request to resolve, before their next end-of-month claim.

The UniPhi developers expanded the import routine to include the ‘reason’, resolving this complex issue within a week.

The Outcome

UniPhi’s client engagement strategy combined with the strong long-term relationship with Robin and Karl from Drive Engineering allowed the swift collaboration for an efficient initial deployment. With this latest automation feature added we were able to generate another lasting benefit quickly and effectively. Karl comments on this new automated feature;

I’ve now finished my August progress claim which utilised UniPhi’s newest feature (i.e. the ability to import ‘Reasons’ into the payment schedule instead of manual insertion).

This new import feature works well, ticks the legislative boxes and saved us nearly a dozen hours this month alone. It is a testament to yourself and UniPhi to receive feedback and be dynamic enough to implement the requested change to make your UniPhi users work life so much easier, all in less than 1 week. This change will save us hours of manpower each and every month.

The benefits realised with data automation and great collaboration are:

• Time saved

• Cost savings

• Productivity redirected to other tasks.

• Prompt progress claims submissions and payments

• Transparency of the data with reduced manual data entry.

• Quality control, facilitates traceability for information audits and compliance

• Improved accuracy in the data, increasing confidence and trust of the submissions with the stakeholders.

It’s initiatives and results like this that maintain UniPhi's passion to support and share in our client’s objectives. By fostering our relationships with end users who are supporting the software we are constantly building a better product, solving more problems and improving construction outcomes. Karl’s final comment endorses this perfectly, he states:

On behalf of Drive Engineering, thank you for receiving and actioning our feedback. May our 10+years of partnership continue, especially with the exciting AI developments UniPhi appear to be researching and developing.