Aphex helps everyone in the team to know what they're doing on site. It’s so useful to be able to communicate with everyone about what’s happening on-site, all from a single platform.
The project
The A428 is a major road in central and eastern England that runs between the cities of Coventry and Cambridge. Because parts of the road are single-carriageways, it has historically suffered congestion, especially during rush hour.
To fix this problem, Skanska and design partner Mott MacDonald are delivering a new £679 million dual carriageway on the A428 between the famous Black Cat and Caxton Gibbet roundabouts. The project includes a range of junction improvements, new bridges, and safe crossings and is slated for completion in 2027.
To learn more about how the team collaborates across a geographically large project, we spoke with folks across the Skanska delivery team, including Planner Katie Devine, Planning Manager Mark Dowding, Project Manager Laura Hampshire, and Section Engineers Dili Rag and Rebecca Thomas.
Better communication for everyone
One of the biggest challenges on large projects is making sure everyone is on the same page.
When teams plan with disconnected spreadsheets and project files, this can be difficult to manage. It usually takes a great deal of time to coordinate and communicate with different groups — and time is what busy teams on major projects don’t have.
As Project Manager Laura Hampshire explains, Aphex allows everyone to access information about the project in whatever way works best for them — whether it’s a gantt chart, a resourcing overlay, a map, a board, or a simple list. These views can also be shared as a PDF or printed. “I like Aphex because it gives me all the information I need to manage the short-term works.”
“Aphex helps everyone in the team to know what they're doing on site. It’s used by everyone — the engineers, the site team, planners. It’s so useful to be able to communicate with everyone about what’s happening on-site, all from a single platform.”
Katie Devine, Planner
“The resourcing feature really helps”
One of the most useful features of Aphex for the Skanska team is the resourcing overlay. This allows the team to attach specific labour, materials and plant quantities — and an assigned subcontractor — to each task.
As Katie explains, this allows the Skanska team to make sure they’re always making best use of their labour on site.
“It’s been amazing to use the Resource feature. It's been really helpful with planning on-site. By allocating tasks to specific gangs, we’re able to give them consistent work. We always know how many activities they’ve got. We know if they’re overloaded or underloaded. This means they constantly have work flowing and are always kept busy, which is great for the delivery of the project.”
“Resources is a game changer. Every day I have tonnes of earthworks materials, so this helps me assign materials to specific tasks and keep track of what’s coming in each day.”
Dili Rag, Section Engineer
The importance of maps
Another feature used by the Skanska team to communicate the plan is Aphex’s map integrations. Unlike other tools, Aphex allows the team to connect map data directly with the plan, providing a visual representation to drive discussion in collaborative meetings.
The team were able to integrate map layers from their GIS and layer on work areas for specific tasks. Given the size of the A428 project, this allowed the entire project team to see what was planned at any one time — even for work happening miles away.
With Aphex’s automatic clash detection, the map also made it easier to spot clashes in work areas and prevent overlaps.
As Dili explains, “The visual maps help the team sequence our work and manage clashes.”
"The map helps us see where the other works are across the project. It’s really useful to get an overview of any section you’re not particularly familiar with.”
Becky Thomson, Section Engineer
Better meetings
Like all major projects, teams across the A428 project run regular meetings to communicate plans and address issues.
As Katie explains, the project runs a collaborative planning meeting every week, where they go through the next four weeks of work. To help visualise the plan, the team display map and gantt views of Aphex during the meeting.
This makes sure that the entire delivery team is aware of the plan and that project leaders are able to find potential issues or blockers early.
Katie explains that these custom views are a critical feature of Aphex. “The gantt view isn’t for everyone. While some people will always prefer looking at a gantt, other people need to see the map or resourcing overlays to get a better sense of what’s going on.”
“Five out of five”
Mark Dowding is the Planning Manager for the A428 project and has seen first-hand the impact of Aphex on construction delivery.
As he explains, the team has been using Aphex on the A428 for over two years, and has seen definite improvements around how they manage their short-term planning. This has even been confirmed during a recent audit of the Skanska team’s production controls on the A428.
“With the software at the core of how we go to work, we have been able to drive positive behaviours around short-term planning,” Mark says.
“This has now been recognised during a recent production controls audit, where they witnessed how the project uses Aphex. The outcome was a perfect score of five out of five.”
“If it’s not on Aphex, we aren’t doing it”
Today, Aphex is being used throughout the A428 project to collaboratively manage short-range planning, visualise upcoming work, and surface issues or potential blockers.
Aphex has been great for the A428 project. But would the team recommend Aphex for other projects?
Dili Rag says yes. “Aphex has been a great software to use, very straightforward to use.”
Becky agrees, particularly for larger projects. “For a large job, I 100% recommend Aphex. It’s much easier to see what's going on visually, especially when you've got a complicated plan with lots of owners of tasks split into different parts of the project.”
Supervisor Alan Duran is even more succinct. “If it’s not on Aphex, we aren’t doing it.”
And as for the famous Black Cat — how is it handling the disruption? According to the project team, it’s spending the construction period “resting in a secure location” and “will be well cared for by an experienced team of cat-lovers until it can return to a new vantage point.”
We can’t wait to see it back in its natural habitat in 2027!
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