OLD HOUSE HOLDINGS COMPANY PROFILE
Old House Holdings is a privately owned company incorporating 3 construction related operating subsidiaries; These are AW Construction PLC, Ashford Construction Projects Ltd and Concept Development Solutions Ltd. The 3 have an annual combined turnover of some £60 million with a wealth of skills and experience at their disposal. Old House Holdings prides itself on meeting client requirements on time and within budget.
AW Construction PLC has been a market leader in regeneration and infrastructure schemes throughout the Midlands for more than 35 years. They boast a 75 percent success rate in repeat business from their Blue-Chip client base. AW's expertise encompasses;
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Infrastructure works |
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Brownfield site regeneration |
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Industrial building and civil engineering |
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Commercial out-of-town development |
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Education |
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Refurbishment and relocation. |
AW is ISO9000 accredited and delivers planned construction programmes with a philosophy of building long-term business relationships. There unrivalled understanding of environmental legislation and regeneration grants, continually results in development solutions for land not previously thought viable.
Ashford Construction Projects Ltd is a proven specialist in Design and Build. Focusing on urban schemes, with work ranging from offices and retail to distribution and production facilities, the company has a wealth of experience and knowledge coupled with a dedication to project delivery. Embracing partnering principles and combining both in-house and external consultants, Ashford is equipped to offer the full range of design and build services. This can be a great benefit to clients particularly at the early stages of a project when value engineering and technical expertise can positively affect the feasibility of a scheme.
With goals of total customer satisfaction and securing repeat orders, the company is deservedly proud of its planning and proactive culture, together with a continuous improvement approach to all aspects of the business.
Concept Development Solutions Ltd is a leading provider of urban regeneration and affordable housing projects. Concept is recognised throughout the Midlands for its expertise and innovation in;
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Providing design and build projects on both green and brownfield sites |
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Multi-tenure schemes requiring innovative cross subsidiary financial models |
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The assessment and creation of unique brownfield remediation solutions |
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The delivery of mixed use commercial and residential solutions for key urban sites |
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Assessment of, and bids for both Central Government and European grant funding |
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The full range of project management services including expert advice on all affordable housing and negotiations with local planning authorities |
The Need
Each of the 3 group companies deal with significant amounts of paper based documents relating to contracts and construction projects. Concept Developments the youngest of the operating subsidiaries had grown rapidly to a £10m turnover, to the point of running out of office space. This meant that a possible relocation was needed to keep on top of the growing Accounts (purchase invoice documents), Tenders and Management / Administration documentation. The other 2 companies had the same issues with regards to archive storage, paper trails and the need to quickly track down the latest document which could be not only on any desk in the office but also out on site or with travelling staff.
Whenever queries regarding deliveries and contract tenders arose they consumed considerable amounts of human resource in progressing and resolving query issues. This was leading to much time delay in tracking down documentation and ensuring that the latest and most current data was being acted upon.
The EBC Solution
Nigel Rose, Old House Group I.T. Manager, chose EBC to implement Canon's ScanFile system initially with one Canon DR3060 duplex A3 scanner. This is network connected and therefore shares information throughout the organisation across a wide variety of company departments.
When the system had been fully implemented, (agreed procedures for indexing actioned) and all relevant users trained - within a 3 month period for Concept Developments, the Group then moved on to implementation at AW - where it took 1 month and finally Ashford - where it took 1 week. AW has 3 Canon DR3020 scanners to cater for the different departments and office layout, Ashford has 2 DR3060 scanners. Concept now has a full Drawing size A0 scanner / copier which is networked, to be able to archive old drawings. Archives are kept on CD.
During the implementation, training and parallel running period AW deliberately attempted to crash the ScanFile system, at no stage has a scanned document ever been lost!The Benefits
The first thing that you notice in visiting Concept Developments is the lack of clutter and the space available given a £10m turnover business. ScanFile has enabled Concept to become virtually paperless - they have in fact got 4 filing cabinets of current project Contract documentation. This has meant that they did not have to relocate premises which saved considerable cost and disruption.
Nigel Rose comments; "We have found the ease of use and implementation of EBC's solution and approach, to provide us with significantly enhanced ease of retrieval of current information. This has meant that we can not only respond more quickly with an improved level of customer service but that we can share data so much more easily. Its brilliant to be able to email a colleague, client or supplier with the relevant information there and then! Where clients, suppliers or relevant third parties don't have email we can also immediately Fax documents from anywhere on the network."
ScanFile uses the same database structure as Microsoft Access and is therefore familiar to many millions of PC users. Old House Holdings have used this capability to develop their own front-end using the Visual Basic program to dynamically link their accounting data, particularly with regard to Contracts and subcontractors, to scanned documents within ScanFile.
Futures
AW has found that breaking down the implementation into manageable departmental sections has greatly assisted with its introduction and uptake by users. They are now investigating Work Flow to help automate the paper-path and further enhance and speed up the processing of data. BAR CODING is equally being considered for self-indexing of a wide variety of documents and forms. ScanFile has already assisted in this respect with Group ISO9000 procedures.
In Summary
AW chose EBC, having gone out to tender with a number of competitive proposals, because of their previous experience and their ability to quickly understand the Document Management solution. EBC proposed a best-value solution and helpful advice in working with the customer to flexibly address his needs at the same time as moving at the customers speed by providing system expansion capabilities.