How Balfour Beatty runs its Daily Action Briefings

The project

60 Curzon Street is a seven-story high-end residential building in Mayfair, London, consisting of 32 units and a range of private amenities.

Designed by Thierry W. Despont, the project has been described as “the culmination of the celebrated interior architect’s lifelong experience of creating and curating extraordinary private homes and hotels worldwide." 

To learn more about the project, we spoke with Balfour Beatty's Project Manager Jon Chew and Construction Manager Joe Ballinger.

The challenge: on-site coordination

Like many processes in construction, teams often default to using familiar methods such as Excel and whiteboards for planning and coordination due to the pressures of project delivery. However, at 60 Curzon Street, a high-end residential project in Mayfair, the Balfour Beatty team took a different approach.

They recognised the challenges that could arise from the daily action briefings (DABs) and embraced innovation by using Aphex from June 2023 until the project’s completion in December 2023. This decision has transformed collaboration, communication and overall project efficiency.

Joe Ballinger, Construction Manager at Balfour Beatty, and Jon Chew, Project Manager at Balfour Beatty, began looking into Aphex for their short-term planning needs.

“We understood that the teams’ short-term planning had become siloed, with loads of different Excel spreadsheets needing to be compiled together. We knew that this needed to change to get the best out of the team.”
_{Jon Chew, Project Manager}

Levelling-up Daily Action Briefings

Jon noted that “we were looking into short-term planning tools and we decided to go with Aphex.” After the initial deployment, they realised they could utilise the Board to run their Daily Action Briefings (DABs). The team drove ownership of tasks by using Aphex as a collaborative tool, ensuring team members felt empowered with their responsibilities on-site.

They were able to drive better communication and track progress more easily, leading to a reduction in time wasted and more time allocated to solving on-site issues and reducing delays.

Jon spoke of how using Aphex Board on 60 Curzon Street, the team was able to replace Excel spreadsheets and site whiteboards with a much clearer and more collaborative way of running through their short-term plan.

“The teamwork we were seeing in short-term planning significantly improved since we deployed Aphex."
_{Jon Chew, Project Manager}

More collaboration and greater clarity

By using Aphex Board, the team increased collaboration on the short-term plan, leading to more ownership and improved on-site efficiency. They also found they could add significantly more information to the plan.

The team used the Board to run through daily items, adding notes, delay reasons, and comments. This allowed the team to break down weekly goals into daily goals and highlight when weekly or monthly commitments were going to be missed.

The team was able to clearly communicate the progress of tasks using the red/green feature. This allowed the team to mark their progress quickly rather than relying on site diaries after the fact. This ensured that the team had an up-to-date view on how the progress on site was tracking when compared to the contractual programme.

"The team benefits from the clear visual aspects of displaying the plan using the board view, and recording of performance through Status and Red/Green in DABS meetings.
_{Joe Ballinger, Construction Manager}

A spectacular residential project

Site teams can struggle with the challenges around collaboration and creating a sense of urgency with short-term planning, involving multiple trades contractors.

Balfour Beatty saw an improvement in communication and collaboration through the use of Aphex, particularly using Aphex Board for Daily Action Briefings.

Through the use of the Board, the team was able to achieve much higher engagement levels in meetings than they could have achieved using spreadsheets and Gantt charts alone. This increased sense of ownership in the plan made the project more efficient.

Aphex Board View helped improve processes and efficiencies, leading to the completion of a spectacular residential project. The Balfour Beatty team and their subcontractors created an environment that increased collaboration, resulting in positive outcomes and excellent feedback from the team.