Kier’s digital method for weekly planning

Kier’s scope on Phase 2 is split into two sections; 2C Botley Road Bridge involves the replacement of an existing railway bridge with a new structure that incorporates 4-metre-wide cycle paths / and pedestrian routes on either side of the road. Phase 2D involves upgrades to the station including an additional platform and overhead canopy along with a new western station entrance that includes a ticket office, waiting room, toilets, cafe and shops.

The Oxford Station Phase 2 project is being delivered by Kier on behalf of Network Rail. A key part of the project’s digital approach is the team’s fully digital short-term planning routine. The routine involves three key daily and weekly meetings to collaboratively review the schedule, progress, risks and opportunities. One of the key weekly meetings is the project’s approach to weekly collaborative planning.

"In a project that’s ever evolving and operating in and around a busy live city-centre environment, it’s important that the team stay abreast of all the updates and changes that inevitably do occur. Aphex allows us to not only track performance, but ensure better visibility of all work occurring on site.”
_{Dan Hutchings, Project Director}

Weekly Collaborative Planning

Every Thursday the team dedicate an hour to collaborative planning, where progress against the short-term schedule is reviewed and upcoming key targets and milestones are planned.

Understanding Progress

The initial focus of the meeting is to understand progress and performance. A bespoke Power BI Dashboard is used to review performance, comparing work completed against a historical baseline from the previous week’s plan in Aphex.

Performance is summarised and broken-down by work package and contractor, giving the team a clear overview of progress, the teams and scopes of work that are in need of improvement and why. Along with the dashboard the team’s plan is also visually presented and used to discuss the previous week’s updates against a comparison baseline with detailed delay reasons captured against every task in the plan.

“Once we set a baseline it’s easy to monitor progress against the plan. I don’t need to sit down with a Planner once a week to provide progress updates, I just update my plan and the information is there for the rest of the team.”
‍_{Sam Hodges, Agent}

Every week the dashboard is automatically refreshed, then published and shared with the project team and the data is used in both the weekly collaborative planning and site review meetings. A bespoke Power BI Dashboard has been built that’s now being used across multiple projects to drive consistent reporting across the business unit.

Lookahead Planning

In the second part of the weekly planning meeting the team shifts focus to look at the knock-on impact of last week’s progress on upcoming work. Each agent presents to the team their 12-week plan to achieve key target milestones for their package of work. Agents plan out a 12-week lookahead ensuring key consent periods are forecasted into all plans. Key milestones, resource and constraints are discussed in an open forum and any changes can be made live to the plan.

“Aphex helps connect the team, we’re all working on a live programme and you don’t need to pull up multiple records or information from different places - it’s all there. It’s also easy to interact with and switch between the gantt and visual map.” _{Sam Hodges, Agent}

Ahead of the weekly planning meeting the detailed 12-week lookahead is broken-down and updated by agents in Aphex from a monthly import from the contractual programme. This gives teams a way to easily add detailed sequences to achieve high-level programme deliverables with simple comparison baselines. The team is also all planning in a single connected space so everyone has visibility of the plan.

“Aphex helps to ensure that the operational teams really own the programme. It’s very simple to use and the whole team can easily view the detailed plan. With its feature set, it’s the best short term planning tool currently available.” _{James Tuffin, Head of Operational Planning}