“Different employees such as regional managers and heads of departments and units can have an instant view at resourcing information and know exactly what the situation is. At the same time we are offered better transparency across units and departments.”
Timo Pekkinen, Sweco
Sweco Finland and Silverbucket Ltd have made a frame agreement on implementing Silverbucket’s project resource planning tool. Sweco has been using Silverbucket since the beginning of 2014 and has constantly expanded the use of Silverbucket yearly.
Prior to the introduction of Silverbucket Sweco had several different resource planning solutions in place. However, the use of different tools did not make summarising information any easier which provoked interest towards alternative resourcing solutions. According to Timo Pekkinen, Sweco’s technology director, Silverbucket offers a whole different way to manage resourcing situation. Silverbucket has therefore made a remarkably positive impact to Sweco’s work and operating methods.
Towards comprehensively more effective resource management
The most significant benefits Silverbucket has offered to Sweco have been making resourcing related problems more recognisable as well as improving transparency and predictability within the organisation. As the information is always up to date, different employees such as regional managers and heads of departments and units can have an instant view at resourcing information and know exactly what the situation is. At the same time we have reached better transparency across unit and department boundaries. Silverbucket makes it easy to identify resourcing related problems as situations, where employees’ workloads increase or decrease critically are easily recognisable. This quality contributes to predicting changing situations and reacting to them.
As long term resourcing is in question, with Silverbucket Sweco can also provide their customers important information regarding the overall estimate of hourly-based projects. Customers have been very pleased as we have presented them the project’s s-curve which Silverbucket provides. The s-curve brings realised hours from the past and reserved hours in the future together to the same graph.
Best Silverbucket practises for resource management
In Sweco heads of departments and projects among other personnel utilise Silverbucket in versatile ways. The main resourcing responsibilities are carried by the heads of departments. Also project managers do resourcing in collaboration with the heads of departments. All personnel have also rights to make reservations themselves for instance to vacations and trainings. Sweco has created a shared guideline on how Silverbucket is used within the organisation.
Silverbucket offers different views that Sweco has found excellent to utilise in various resource planning meetings. The heads of departments go over their situation with their employees at least once a month. Additionally, heads of departments update their current resourcing situations for unit meetings which are held once every two weeks. This way the resourcing overview and overall situation can be highlighted conveniently also on a unit level. The extended management team gathers every once a month to take a look at the resourcing overview and managers on lower levels go over work situations on Mondays. Sweco’s aim is to create as long term resourcing plans as possible in order to increase predictability even further and that possible over- and underload situations can be recognised in time.
With the use of Silverbucket Sweco has been able to recognise employees’ real capacities by being able to acknowledge time consuming work. In addition Sweco takes advantage of virtual projects that Silverbucket offers which are used to manage small projects that timewise consume less than a week. In a situation, where a good deal of such work overlaps, a virtual project is a clever way to manage the overall situation.
Enriched cooperation
Sweco’s technology director Timo Pekkinen describes Silverbucket’s technical and user support as an extremely fast service when needed. Pekkinen also gives credit to the way Silverbucket pays attention to customer’s requests and considers given wishes in product development. Sweco’s experience is that their developing needs have been noticed and well heard.
In March Silverbucket launched a completely new product version with an enhanced user interface and brand new functions. Pekkinen applauds the renewed Silverbucket and describes the new interface as very easy to adopt and take into use. Among other features the new quick edit function received particularly good feedback.
SWECO FINLAND
Sweco Finland is an expert in built environment and industry. Our engineers, architects and environmental experts work together to produce profitable and high quality solutions that contribute to the development of a more sustainable society.
Sweco Finland is a part of the international Sweco Group. Of the 14 500 Sweco employees in total, nearly 2000 work in Finland.
Read more about our extensive resource planning tool.
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