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The Client

James Longley and Co. Ltd. established since 1863, undertakes building contracts in the south of England and central London with values between £1M and £15M.

The Task

Improved co-ordination and resource management of multiple contracts. Improved bid and contract presentations to Clients.

Background

Longley undertakes both traditional and Design-and-Build forms of contracts in sectors ranging from healthcare and education to commercial, public service and heritage. Their sites are based throughout the South East with headquarters in Crawley.

The Company was one of the first to realise the value of project management software to provide both management of individual contract and overall co-ordination of resources throughout the Group and are long-established users of Hornet - upgrading from Hornet 5000i to Hornet Windmill in 1996.

Specification

In 1996 Longley reviewed the use of Project Management software, requiring a system that would:

• cater for planning of at least 400-500 activities over a three-year period.
• use precedence networking as the basis for control.
• link effectively to existing Paradox and QBasic data
• facilitate effective initial planning of main and sub-projects, key activities and personnel and allow an agreed construction programme to be generated on which cost, procurement and information schedules can be based.
• permit specialist subcontractor programs to be included into the master network.
• permit comparison of activity weeks completed with activity weeks scheduled at any point in the duration of the works.
• simplify progress reports.
• provide all the information necessary for management consideration and intervention with respect to resource availability, material procurement and key dates.

What Hornet did

Provided Hornet 5000I to James Longley in the mid 80's and then in 1996 upgraded their system to Hornet Windmill for Windows. Hornet also provided assistance and training as the company felt it needed to generate its own customised suite of reports.

The Outcome

Longley decided that the upgraded Hornet Windmill met their criteria. Longley's in-house development of Hornet's standard features is typical of a business that wishes to have a 'customised' system capable of facilitating the effective management of resources across a wide range of concurrent projects.