Baxall Construction – Optimizing Business-Wide Use of Deltek PIM

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An interview with Chris Tompsett, Contracts Director, Tracy Middlewood, Executive PA and Vivian Fordham, Supply Chain & IMS Manager

Regional contractor Baxall Construction has delivered project management, design, and building services to the South East of England for nearly 60 years. An employee-owned company with a trusted history as a family business, Baxall specializes in the education, health, leisure, and commercial sectors, where it has nurtured many repeat clients.

In recent years, Baxall noticed that some of its clients were struggling to manage and maintain their new buildings after project completion. This marked a significant opportunity for the business to deliver more support once construction had been completed and signed off. For example, the company expanded its offerings to include building and facilities management services.

Delivering such diverse projects requires a connected and robust software environment that can easily manage project documentation, timesheets, personnel records, approval processes, reporting and more – and in a way that’s compliant with ISO standards. So, Baxall turned to its existing Deltek Project Information Management (PIM) solution.

Recognizing the Need to Optimize Deltek PIM

To help enhance engagement and unlock even more benefits, Baxall created a solution working group, identified the areas they wanted to focus on and reached out to Deltek to deliver a series of optimization workshops.

“We came into the first optimization workshop session with a list of areas we wanted to focus on, and Deltek showed us what we could deal with now and in the future,” says Chris Tompsett, Contracts Director at Baxall Construction. “It was then that we realized that we hadn’t implemented some of their past recommendations – and to prevent that from happening again, we’d need to make a conscious effort to keep reviewing and engaging with Deltek.”

The team also noted that when Deltek PIM updates rolled out, it was rare that employees would fully engage with the enhancements. And this, coupled with a lack of focus on regular engagement with the Deltek team, had led to missed opportunities to optimize, automate, and simplify manual and routine processes.

Improving Engagement with Regular Deltek PIM Workshops

The optimization workshops provided many positive surprises for Baxall, kickstarting a culture of continuous engagement and learning for its Deltek users.

“We realized that we’d made a lot of assumptions about what the solution could and couldn’t do,” says Chris. “The first workshop was almost like a therapy session in which we realized there are better ways of doing things – and they’d been there all this time.”

One particular highlight for Chris included the discovery that human resources could tag documents, such as training certificates, to individual employees so that they could view their own history of training and certifications.

“We’d been trying to work this out for so long,” says Chris. “It was a real lightbulb moment for us. And it just kept happening with each session. We’d ask Deltek’s consultant, ‘can we do this?’ and sure enough, we almost always could.”

Baxall also realized how to optimize many of its routine tasks, including automating aspects of its approval processes and removing the need to manually print, scan, and share timesheets.

“We’ve learned so much, and we intend to keep continually optimizing how we manage our project data, resources, and processes,” says Chris. “But just knowing that we can do it isn’t enough – we need to keep training people properly. And that’s why we’ve set up sub-working groups to keep the momentum going.”

These sub-working groups consist of key people focused on enabling specific Deltek PIM goals and capabilities. Each group works together until they have achieved their specific goal before disbanding and/or starting on the next project.

“Our Deltek groups are working brilliantly,” says Chris. “As for the future, we’re going to keep collaborating with Deltek and each other, so we don’t lose sight of what we want to achieve.”

Three Lessons in Process Optimization

Since starting its optimization workshops, Baxall Construction has found that Deltek PIM can do much more than it initially thought.

Chris and his colleagues Vivian Fordham, Supply Chain and IMS Manager, and Tracy Middlewood, Executive PA, share their three key lessons for Deltek PIM optimization.

1. Start with your basic processes
   Chris recommends starting small and taking baby steps. “It’s easy to get fixated on digital transformation and trying to connect everything all at once, but you need to take baby steps. Look at smaller, low-risk processes to optimize and automate, and use them as a template for future optimizations. Going back to basics with Deltek meant we could spend more time optimizing our existing processes rather than adding new layers of cost, confusion, and complexity.”
2. Normalize regular health checks
   Vivian advises businesses and system managers to make the time to keep everyone involved and engaged, “You may think that because everyone is so busy, there isn’t time to keep people engaged with a solution, but the truth is you need to create the time for it. Sure, two of you can attend a workshop and relay the information, but there’s a chance that you’re going to miss the benefits that others may find invaluable. And that’s why it’s important to keep checking in on your users and engaging them in the latest changes.”
3. Be clear about what you want to achieve
   Tracy believes that a big part of undertaking a successful optimization process is putting in the preparation time. “Before you begin a series of training sessions or workshops, you need to be totally clear about what it is you want to achieve. If people are pulled into a session without a clear idea of what they can learn, it can turn into chaos. You need to nurture engagement by showing people what they can achieve and why it matters. And that’s when the ‘wow’ moments will begin to happen.”

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