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About4castplus Case Study: Houlder Ltd.
By onboarding 4castplus as a centralised project management platform, Houlder has increased efficiencies, and significantly improved project delivery.
About Houlder
As an engineering & design firm specializing in offshore and marine major projects, Houlder Ltd. (https://www.houlderltd.com/) helps organizations navigate the challenges of a low-carbon energy transition. Houlder possesses rich capabilities in delivering complex and diverse projects around the globe. From offshore wind farms to shipbuilding, retrofits, and engineering feasibility studies, Houlder’s multi-discipline teams work with clients in multiple global geographies including the North Sea, Korea & Japan, West Africa, South Asia, and the Americas.
The Challenge
Prior to onboarding 4castplus, Houlder had been struggling with getting accurate, real-time information on the status, hours, and progress of projects. Over the years, they had built up a collection of independent systems for specific purposes – along with a considerable number of spreadsheets – to manage projects, resources, and their finances. While these worked for a while, they were not only disconnected from each other, but they were also showing signs of not being able to scale to the larger, more complex projects Houlder was undertaking; in addition to the sheer volume of projects they were managing concurrently. They were eager to find a single integrated solution to not only replace the current disconnected systems but also propel them forward into more robust project management practices. Included in this were key practices such as:
- Project controls
- Labour time capture
- Labour resource management
- Management of purchase orders for materials and subcontracts
- Dashboards and analysis for their whole portfolio of projects
- Revenue management and customer billing for various project contract models
- Data integration with the ERP
The Solution
By implementing 4castplus, Houlder has significantly streamlined their operations, reduced costs, and gained project certainty across the portfolio. They now have real-time visibility into all project costs, margins and activities, and are able to make quick corrections whenever issues arise. With 4castplus as their go-to enterprise platform for all projects, Houlder staff can access the system from anywhere at anytime. What’s more, is that they can all trust that the information is current, accurate and complete – giving them peace of mind that the reports they run are correct and up-to-date.
4castplus now provides Houlder with a single integrated solution that delivers multiple key tools from project management to time & cost capture, along with built-in customer billing, dashboards, subcontract management; all integrated with accounting & payroll.
Compelling Outcome
Houlder's financial auditors are given login access to 4castplus. They are using the system to provide evidence of internal control.
Integrations
All project payroll, accounts receivable and accounts payable data originate in 4castplus and are synchronized to Houlder's ERP in a dedicated data integration.
Efficiency Gains
By eliminating spreadsheets and disconnected systems, Houlder has significantly reduced project overhead, duplicate entry, human error and the availability of one-click standard reports.
Successful Results
Real-Time Labour Tracking for Cost and Billable
A significant element to Houlder’s projects involves a multi-discipline self-performed labour component where both the cost and billable details of any timesheet transaction are captured in 4castplus. This is all tracked to the correct project code on a real-time basis. Since all the 4castplus cost tracking tools feed directly into the integrated Project Management toolset, everything – including cost, hours, billable, progress, etc. – is all contained in one system. This also leads to the ability of the system to additionally deliver key resource metrics such as resource utilization, profitability, productivity, budget-versus-actual, and earned value management.
Standardisation, Efficiency and Process Improvement
A key driver for the Houlder management was to apply greater standardization to their project management practices, processes, reporting and communication. This became an important element to ensure these standards were baked into the implementation of 4castplus. As Houlder continues to grow, they have the assurance that the 4castplus centralized platform will enable them to deliver projects accurately with the highest quality standards.
A Strong Team at Houlder
The Houlder implementation team, lead by Peter Kisten and Jakki Hill, did an impeccable job with the rollout and onboarding of 4castplus. Enterprise software implementations are very challenging and can introduce organisational changes that are delicate to manage. The Houlder team stands out as leading one of the best examples of a well run implementation the 4castplus group has seen in years.
Grow With 4castplus Today
If your company is in need of cloud-based project cost management software as a unified platform for your project teams to successfully deliver projects, we’d love to hear from you!