How Balfour Beatty streamlined short-term planning on London Power Tunnels 2

The project

London Power Tunnels 2 (LPT2) is a £1 billion project to future-proof London's electricity supply. The project involves replacing the aging power infrastructure that has served the capital since the 1950s with new high-voltage cable circuits. These run through deep tunnels beneath the city's streets.

Balfour Beatty is responsible for cable installation and jointing works across the project. This work involves installing cables through pre-built tunnels and shafts, then facilitating specialized jointing work to connect the cables before testing and energizing them to feed into the National Grid system.

We spoke with Sally Sanders, Senior Planner at Balfour Beatty, to learn how they transformed their approach to short-term planning with Aphex.

The limitations of spreadsheets

Before implementing Aphex, the team used Microsoft products to manage their short-term planning.

As Sally explains, “We started with Excel. The site manager would try and run that on a weekly basis. But there was no control system there to make sure updates were done in time."

Another problem was that tasks couldn’t be linked. “You couldn't link activities, so if something had moved, you have to manually go in and update the next task.”

This meant that the delivery team had to spend more time manually managing the update process — time that they were eager to find a way to save.

The team then moved to Microsoft Project, but this presented its own challenges.

"Project is not the simplest of software. Folks didn't immediately understand how to have predecessors, change calendars, things like that. So it then just fell on the planners to run the short-term programs."
_{Sally Sanders, Senior Planner}

A live view of the plan

Sally and the team knew there was a better way. Having previously seen the positive impact of Aphex on Crossrail projects, Sally knew it could help transform planning on LPT2. The team particularly needed help coordinating tower works with civil works underneath, including jobs installing cables coming up from the tunnel.

“It’s really positive to see what’s happening on site at any time. The coordination that’s required on our project is quite intense. Aphex not only gives a visual representation of what’s happening, but also automatically shows issues and potential clashes," Sally says.

Today, the team uses Aphex every single day. "They have a daily pulse meeting where they go in and do their daily task lists and get the thumbs up and down to see whether they're on track," Sally explains. "That obviously makes the six-week lookahead run a lot smoother."

One of the biggest benefits has been having a live system that the entire team can access.

"Having it as a live system means the team can go in every day and check the plan. Things change so quickly, but now everyone gets a view of what's going on. It's not like the old six-week lookahead, where it's out of date as soon as it's been issued."
_{Sally Sanders, Senior Planner}

Significant time savings

The switch to Aphex has dramatically reduced the time spent on administrative tasks.

"It used to take me 4-5 hours a week to update the six-week lookahead. Now it's less than an hour. You used to manually go through and get all your activities from P6, go through, link them all, update them all. Now with the imports and things like that, it's cut it down quite significantly,” Sally explains.

The impact extends beyond just the planning team. Construction managers and site teams now have better visibility of upcoming work, making it easier to plan for materials and resources.

One-stop shop

Looking ahead, Sally sees opportunities to expand their use of Aphex, particularly around resource planning as the project progresses.

But even with their current usage, the benefits are clear: better collaboration, significant time savings, and a more capable planning team.

Could Sally and the team go back to the old way? Sally is adamant. "I couldn't imagine going back. It was very difficult before. I definitely recommend Aphex for other projects.”

As Sally explains, Aphex is now a single source of truth for the site delivery team.

“Aphex serves as our one-stop shop that the team can tap into every day and have a live view of the plan.”
_{Sally Sanders, Senior Planner}