How Morgan Sindall plan more effectively using Aphex

The project

The Northumberland Line was once a passenger service, but was cut by the ‘Beeching Axe' in the 1960s. Since then, the line has been operating as a low-traffic, low-speed freight line, with passenger stations either demolished or abandoned.

In 2022, construction started on a new passenger line to support economic growth, regeneration and community development in Northumberland. The team at Morgan Sindall Infrastructure were brought in to build six new stations to support the reintroduction of passenger services.

We spoke with Andrew Huddleston, Planning Manager and Tony Lloyd, Project Manager, both for Morgan Sindall Infrastructure. Andrew leads the planning function on the Northumberland Line Stations project and Tony is the operational Project Manager for the South and Blyth Bebside Stations.

A manual process

Andrew explains that, before using Aphex, the team used spreadsheets for their short-term planning. “We used a Crossrail standard sheet showing previous week and current forecast on one line, where we manually entered dates which coloured cells using formulas. The Northumberland line project initially retained this template due to familiarity and development of a new project team.”

While the team were familiar with this approach, problems inevitably arose. As Andrew says, one of the biggest problems was keeping the sheet consistent with multiple users and maintaining programme discipline and integrity.

“A big problem was people going into the spreadsheet and changing things, not realising how it impacts other people on the project, or not respecting the logic of activities properly. If you added extra rows incorrectly or manually shaded cells, you lost the formulas, and needed to bring in someone who knows how to reinstate the whole sheet.”

Tony agrees that maintaining the spreadsheets manually was an ongoing source of frustration.

“We run very complex infrastructure schemes which are fraught with change - scope changes, access difficulties, date changes, all with commercial and contractual ramifications.


So, it's when something happens that doesn't quite align with the actual programme intent, someone has to go into the spreadsheet and change all of the dates manually, because there were no logic links. As a construction delivery team member, this was always a big frustration.
_{Tony Lloyd, Project Manager}

The benefit of simplicity

Andrew explains that their planning routine is built around a four-week lookahead.

“The engineers build their program collaboratively assisted by the P6 and Sub-Contractor Programmes. Once that’s done, they present it in their weekly progress review meeting where the wider stakeholders are briefed, such as different departmental leads, and review slippage, blockers and short-term milestones.”

The team initially used Excel spreadsheets for this process for ease of adoption and whilst the team established themselves. But because of the frustration and wasted time spent updating multiple spreadsheets manually, the team decided to move to Aphex to provide a more intelligent digital solution.

This has reduced the time spent on manual data entry. It’s also proven easy for team members to pick up — especially when compared to spreadsheets with easily-broken formulas. Feedback from the team has been positive, particularly with ease of updating and the ability to forecast further than the four weeks.

As Andrew explains, “The simplicity of the interface has been great for those that are using it every day. It’s a huge strength.” The team regularly use the function to show previous publications as baselines against the current plan to assess slippage.

One of the benefits of Aphex has been to visualise the plan. The teams can present the plan from Aphex onto a wide screen and view the six-week lookahead.
_{Andrew Huddleston, Planning Manager}

A smooth start


Andrew says that the rollout of Aphex has been a success — and that the training and support offered by the Aphex team was a key part of this.

As Andrew tells us, “It was great that the Aphex team came in and showed us how to get started. And it’s been very easy to ask for help when we need it — either directly with our account manager or using the chat function in Aphex. Every time I used it, somebody came on and helped me straight away with what I was going to do.”

Tony agrees that Aphex has helped ensure that the new way of working was widely adopted across the team.

It’s been a very successful rollout. Aphex onboarding helped get the entire team on board. We’ve also heard praise for the Aphex developers, because they took on board feedback to improve and add features through monthly updates. The resolution of these issues quickly was key to the successful implementation of the software.
_{Tony Lloyd, Project Manager}

Better than Excel

Today, Aphex is widely and regularly used across the Northumberland Line project.

As Tony explains, “The team is using it more than the old Excel template. I see it on screens far more than I ever saw Excel templates.”

Andrew has been experimenting with the Power BI integration with Aphex and making use of this data to report evidence backed performance concerns across the project. “The drop in PPC % has proven to be an early warning of important milestones being delayed in successive lookaheads”.

But they’re not done yet. Andrew is keen to keep exploring ways to get more value from Aphex with features the team aren’t using yet. This includes using the data in Aphex to improve how the team reports internally and to other business unit leaders and clients. “Aphex digitalises our lookahead process which opens opportunities to integrate this data with other systems and reporting processes.”

Would he recommend Aphex for other projects?

Yes, go for it. Aphex allows you to connect your team in one platform that’s easy to use. Running projects on Excel is a manual process, and it doesn't give you the interconnectivity that Aphex does. Aphex also means you’re going to capture better, more robust data.
_{Tony Lloyd, Project Manager}