Causeway Leaders Newsletter

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8 8 In this issue: 8 Meeting business challenges 8 Showcase events 8 Boost for e-Invoicing 8 Teaming up with the Royal Institution 8 Gearing up for Dashboards LEADERS www.causeway.com ISSUE 10 Causeway are proud supporters of:

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Transcript of Causeway Leaders Newsletter

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In this issue:

8 Meeting business challenges

8 Showcase events

8 Boost for e-Invoicing

8 Teaming up with the Royal Institution

8 Gearing up for Dashboards

LEADERSwww.causeway.com

I S S U E 1 0

Causeway are proud supporters of:

Phil Brown, Chief Executive Officer

Business challenges, Causeway solutionsWith an unparalleled breadth of solutions encompassing the Design, Build, Operate and Maintain phases of built assets, Causeway is ideally positioned to help its customers meet their business challenges. The following are just some examples of how Causeway solutions can add value at all levels.

Tapping in to historical estimate dataWith a growing volume of repeat business Merson Group realised that its existing spreadsheet-based estimating system did not allow it to take full advantage of historical data from previous projects. In deciding to implement a proprietary estimating system the company consulted a number of other users of estimating software and found

that Causeway Estimating was the most frequently recommended. The company is now very easily able to use completed tenders as templates for new projects, saving considerable time on the production of new tenders and enabling a faster turnaround.

Managing space and FM processesWhen it realised its CAFM system was not fully meeting its needs, Commercial Bank of Qatar initiated a competitive tender exercise to evaluate the available options.

As a result, it has now implemented a range of Causeway FM Facts modules, including Helpdesk, Asset Management and Property Manager, as well as the FM Locator space and move management package. Commercial Bank’s Mohammed Nour explained: “With 30 branches and over 1200 staff across Qatar, with many staff working across several branches, our space and move management requirements are quite complex. The Causeway FM Facts suite stood out for its ability to address these requirements as well as our everyday FM processes.”

Harnessing BIM data in civil engineering designFaced with a project where the ability to work with BIM data was a requirement, consulting and engineering company Grontmij found that its existing civil engineering design package did not provide the required BIM compatibility. The solution proved to be the Line and Sign modules

in Causeway’s Professional Design Suite (PDS). Line and Sign enable markings & sitings to be incorporated into BIM models and their intelligence to be exported to BIM collaboration tools.

Welcome Welcome to issue 10 of Leaders, bringing you some of the latest news from Causeway. With our unparalleled knowledge and breadth of solutions, encompassing the entire built asset life-cycle, we are uniquely positioned to bring solutions to the market that add real value to our customers’ businesses. Not just solutions for what they are doing today but also to help equip them to meet the challenges of the future. BIM and Integrated Projects are very clear, and imminent, examples of this. You can read about how we have helped particular customers address challenges within their businesses on these two pages and throughout this issue. Beyond our responsibilities to customers there is also a wider responsibility that we also take very seriously. We believe passionately that the UK should be a leader, rather than a follower, in the digital technology age. That means we need to engender an air of excitement about technology in those young people who will deliver the technological solutions of tomorrow. To that end, we have teamed up with the Royal Institution to fund a programme of Computer Science Masterclasses that will be delivered in schools across the UK over the next five years (see page 6). There are many more interesting articles in this issue of Leaders so I hope you will take a few minutes to look through, and get in touch if you would like to find out more about how Causeway can support your business.

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Integrating estimating and financial disciplines With a view to integrating its estimating and financial disciplines, international construction contractor KPS has introduced Causeway Project Accounting (CPA), having already been using Causeway Estimating since 2013. “We evaluated a number of options and recognised that CPA offered the best solution for our requirements,” recalled Chris Watson, CEO of KPS. “In addition to this we had the added confidence of already dealing with Causeway and knowing they would provide excellent service and support”.

Keeping track of mobile workforces DownerMouchel, a leading Australian provider of integrated asset management and maintenance services for infrastructure, has recently introduced Causeway Telematics to the range of Causeway solutions that support its business. The Telematics vehicle tracking solution will help to increase the efficiency of the company’s mobile workforce, improve driver behaviour and reduce fuel consumption and associated carbon emissions. DownerMouchel’s sister company, EM Highways, has also deployed the Telematics solution in the UK.

Re-scaling PDF drawings – fast! Ardmore Group, a long-standing user of Causeway Estimating, found that it was receiving a growing number of PDF drawings that needed to be re-scaled, which proved to be a laborious process with its existing manual take-off processes. The company therefore decided to introduce Causeway’s CAD Measure automated measurement solution to save time and boost productivity. A further benefit is the ability to export take-off information directly into Estimating.

Bringing it all together One of the key characteristics of Causeway solutions is their ability to share data and create an end-two-end process that enhances efficiency and productivity. EM Highways, for instance, has been introducing greater integration between Tradex, MyRegister, CPA and Enterprise Content Management (ECM). For example, as suppliers are accredited through MyRegister their information is used to automatically create a Tradex account. Also, when a supplier submits an invoice through Tradex it is validated against purchase order details and, if matched, information is automatically transferred to both CPA and ECM. In this way, manual matching of the majority of invoices is eliminated, thereby saving time and reducing costs.

Meeting the housebuilding surge With the recent upsurge in house building, many developers and consultants are turning to the Site Developer module in Causeway’s Professional Design Suite (PDS). Site Developer is particularly suitable for house builders as it includes key packages such as Alignment Design, Drainage Design and Volumetrics and is ideal for all sizes of project. Companies that have recently deployed Site Developer for this purpose include construction consultants Stirling Maynard of Peterborough, RG Parkins and Partners in Kendal and Plandescil in Attleborough.

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Ashghal, the Public Works Authority of Qatar, is responsible for the planning, design, procurement, construction, delivery and asset management of all infrastructure projects and public buildings in Qatar.

With projects valued at over QR 100 billion, the organisation clearly needed a powerful and comprehensive cost and programme management solution. That solution proved to be Causeway CATO, which will enable Ashghal’s internal consultants to create, monitor and track the comprehensive internal rates database based on information supplied by consultants and contractors. Abdulsamd Al-makei, Manager of Engineering Business Support at Ashghal commented: “We operate a powerful model of strategic outsourcing and partnership with world leading establishments and the Causeway solution was chosen after thorough assessment of the products and a rigorous tender process.”

Powerful cost and programme management

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Time well spent It was great to see so many people finding time in their busy schedules to join us at the major Showcase events we held in May; their very positive feedback clearly indicates that it was time well spent. These were great opportunities for delegates to learn more about key industry issues, such as BIM, as well as the latest developments and innovations from Causeway.

Both events, held at Wembley Stadium and Old Trafford, were opened by keynote speakers from EC Harris, who discussed the commercial and contractual aspects of BIM and the role of technology in supporting effective interoperability in a BIM environment. There were also presentations covering collaborative working with Causeway’s innovative social business platform LiveStax, as well as the impending launch of new Dashboards across our product range. In addition, there was considerable interest in the latest developments with BIM Manager, a new Causeway solution that makes BIM the focal point for project information. Following the formal presentations a number of focused breakout sessions gave delegates an opportunity to explore specific solutions in greater depth. These included Estimating & Commercial Management, Cost & Programme Management, CAFM and Service & Maintenance Providers, Supply Chain Management and Highways & Infrastructure Maintenance.

The success of the events is best summed up by some of the comments we received:

“ “ A really useful day and a great opportunity to see new developments.

I particularly wanted to find out more about BIM and how it might impact our company; today has been very informative.

A refreshing seminar that was very different to other seminars that I have attended.

I was particularly interested in the Dashboards and can see great potential for these in our business.

Professional presentations that were easy to listen to and delivered really useful information without jargon.

It has been a very informative day and I can see how both BIM Manager and Dashboards have the potential to deliver significant benefits for our organisation as a whole.

8e-Invoicing in actionNorth Midland Construction Plc (NMC) has recently joined the Tradex community and we are now working closely with them on a range of customised features that will meet their precise requirements. “There were obvious benefits to reducing the volume of paper invoices and improving our invoice tracking so we talked to a number of companies that were already using e-Trading systems,” recalled Gavin Clegg, NMC’s Group Executive Director for ICT & Improvements. “We identified that the Hub Alliance was the standard we wanted to work with and, following a great deal of due diligence, chose Tradex from the Hub Alliance member companies. Causeway stood out for attention to detail and responsiveness - and the support they provided, even before the order was placed. This was clearly going to be a relationship that would add value to the process, and to our business. We also found that around 75% of our suppliers were already using Tradex,” he added. Other recent additions to the Tradex community include Amey, Hewden, Rockwood Pigments (UK), Charter Housing Association, Richard Irving, ESH Group, Yearsley Logistics and Lee Brothers Bilston – and many others.

Heightened interest for e-Invoicing

As organisations continue to look for ways to reduce their overheads while working smarter and more productively, the benefits of electronic trading (or e-Invoicing as it is widely known) are proving very attractive. Our own Tradex e-Trading community continues to grow at a fast pace and there are now strong indications that the principles of e-Invoicing will be adopted more widely across the public sector. Heightened interest in the public sector follows the publication of a report entitled ‘Electronic Invoicing - The Next Steps Towards Digital Government’.

This concludes that e-Invoicing has the potential to save the public purse at least £2 billion per annum. Francis Maude MP, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, is fully supportive of the report’s objectives and commented: “We are on the case. This makes a huge load of sense. We are going to press ahead.” Causeway has played a key role in promoting the concept of e-Invoicing at government level and was instrumental in the creation of the Interoperability Charter published by the Business Application Software Developers Association (BASDA). This Charter is referenced in the Government’s Information Economy Strategy paper and an amended version will soon be used to support greater interoperability across the public sector. Another positive outcome of the report is a move to encourage greater inclusion of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the public procurement process. We anticipate that many such companies will take advantage of Tradex Active, which facilitates the adoption of e-Trading by smaller organisations. Click here to read the datasheet

“ “ Causeway stood out for attention to detail and responsiveness

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Electronic Invoicing The next steps towards digital government

“ Electronic invoicing could save the public sector and its suppliers a minimum of £2 billion per annum by streamlining UK government administrative processes at a stroke. By enabling government to use its immense purchasing power, eInvoicing could open up new markets throughout the country and help drive innovation and economic growth.” Stephen McPartland MP

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Investing in the future As a technology company Causeway is clearly very dependent on the availability of IT skills. In fact, we believe that the health of the UK economy is closely linked to the success of medium-sized technology companies such as our own. So earlier this year we decided to take proactive measures to help ensure those skills will continue to be available to all technology companies in the future.

To that end we have teamed up with the Royal Institution (Ri), providing a £500,000 endowment, as well as technical support, to launch a programme of Computer Science Masterclasses for young people. As a result, by 2019 more than 10,000 of the country’s brightest young people aged nine to 18 and their teachers will benefit from new extra-curricular Computer Science Masterclasses running in more than 70 locations UK-wide, starting in September 2014.

To deliver this initiative the Royal institution will appoint an expert computer scientist as the Causeway Computer Science Associate to lead the programme. Chris Rofe, Ri CEO, commented: “We are delighted that the generous support of Causeway Technologies Limited will help us open the eyes of so many more young people to the excitement, beauty and value of computer science.

“All Ri Masterclasses are led by dedicated volunteers who are experts from industry or academia. With the help of these positive role models, our aim is to highlight the huge range of fascinating and worthwhile careers computer science can lead to, and to inspire the students to explore the subject and its applications further at school, in further education and, later on, in the workplace.”

Dr Diane Crann, Ri Masterclass Programme Manager, added: “Despite its growing importance to our society, there are still many misconceptions about what computer science is. Computer science is not simply a case of learning how to code or being more aware of how the hardware of a computer is put together; it involves learning highly transferable logic and mathematically based skills, understanding complex algorithms and their applications, and data manipulation and representation.

“We view computer science as having the potential, if it is delivered in an inspiring and engaging way, to encourage young people to be more creative, practical, innovative and hands-on in their approach to problem-solving.”

Virgin Strive ChallengeCauseway Technologies is proud to be supporting the Virgin STRIVE Challenge, helping to raise £750k for Big Change - Holly and Sam Branson’s charity to inspire and encourage young people to be the best they can be. Sam and a whole host of friends, sports stars and celebrities (including his father Richard Branson) are undertaking an epic journey and they are using Causeway Telematics and Causeway LiveStax to help boost their impact.

Causeway LiveStax is providing the official Social Wall for the event. LiveStax is a versatile tool for displaying data from multiple sources including Telematics, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram – enabling users to access all STRIVE information in a single browser window.

“ “ We are delighted that the generous support of Causeway Technologies Limited will help us open the eyes of so many more young people

To keep up with the team’s progress simply visit Live Tracking and see how Causeway Telematics is providing live feeds for every participant. Information includes a Google Street View of their exact location, as they push through the pain every day.

STRIVE Challenge is running until 4th September. Join in the fun by Tweeting with @CausewayStrive and @StriveChallenge, sharing content, and supporting this great cause.

GPS Tracking & Google Street View using Causeway Telematics

Giving back

Causeway Technologies and The Causeway Foundation support many worthy causes, with a strong emphasis on helping disadvantaged young people to realise their full potential. These causes include the Dallaglio Cycle Slam, Rugby Legends, The Yorke Dance Project, trampolinist Laura Gallagher, the ‘IMPS’ educational charity, SportFest (see right) and the Infant Jesus Health Centre in Bangalore.

8Managing the interface

Leaders talks to Senior Principal (UX/UI) Saaib Zafar about his role in Causeway’s design department and his current work on the development of Dashboards.

Leaders: What is your current role within Causeway and how long have you been with the company?

Saaib: I am based at Leamington Spa and lead the design team at Causeway. My team is primarily responsible for the overall User Interface (UI), determining the look and feel of the software and the UX (User Experience), how it behaves to ensure it provides each user with a positive experience. I have been with Causeway for two years and prior to that was an Information Architect & Interaction Designer with Oracle, working in both the USA and India.

Leaders: What projects are you working on at the moment and which of these do you find particularly exciting?

Saaib: We are currently working on a number of interesting projects and one of the most exciting for me is the Dashboards

programme, because this is a key interface for the users. I have always had a fascination with dashboards as they remind me of the old-fashioned noticeboards where you could pin up a whole range of different types of information and view them in one place.

Dashboards also provide a point of access to information from different sources, though clearly in a much more sophisticated and dynamic way. Also, of course, Dashboards enable you to drill down for more detailed information, which is something you can’t do with the noticeboard.

Leaders: What is your team’s role in the development of Dashboards?

Saaib: Our role is to ensure that the Dashboards are intuitive, user-friendly and provide the functionality that our customers need in the easiest possible way. Crucially, we always need to bear in mind that each customer will have different requirements, so the ability to personalise the interface is also important.

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With over 2000 people in attendance Causeway were delighted to support SportFest 2014. A unique event designed to offer children and families the opportunity to sample top flight coaching in a variety of sports, we had an amazing weekend with some legends of the sporting world. Whilst the kids tried their hands at rugby, cricket, football, netball, hockey, rowing, rock climbing and even dodgeball, the mums & dads had the opportunity to mingle with such greats as Stuart Lancaster, Martin Johnson, John Barnes, Pat Cash, Andrew Strauss, Matthew Hoggard, Austin Healey and Will Greenwood! Causeway were on hand to offer our customers some well-earned refreshments, a show stopping spectacle in a stunt plane display by the 3 times National Aerobatic Champion. We also proudly sponsored the show piece ‘Causeway Legends Twenty20’ Cricket match.

Leaders: How will these Dashboards be used?

Saaib: The principal role of the Dashboard is to provide an overview of key information, flag up areas that require attention and enable fast access to more detailed data. Causeway Dashboards will work with individual applications – or they can be used to view information from a range of Causeway applications in one location. Leaders: What are the main challenges you face in the development of Dashboards?

Saaib: In terms of the UX and UI a key challenge is to maintain a consistent behaviour and look and feel for all applications on all platforms and devices. These applications may be accessed on laptop or desktop PCs, using large or small screens - as well as tablets and smartphones - running on Windows, iOS or Android platforms. Each of these may have different display characteristics so we need to design each application to ensure it has a consistent appearance in all of these scenarios.

Leaders: So what does the future hold for the design team?

Saaib: The great thing about working at Causeway is that there are always new developments in the pipeline, so we will always have plenty to do. As well as the new products that are being developed, we have to keep up to speed with the frequent upgrades of the various platforms and ensure the designs continue to support a positive user experience. In parallel, we are continually seeking feedback from customers of current generations of products so that we can feed their views into the next generations.

Causeway Technologies LtdComino House, Furlong Road, Bourne End, Buckinghamshire SL8 5AQ

t: +441628 552000 f: +441628 552001 e: [email protected]

Causeway Middle East 1202 Tower B, Business Central Towers, Dubai Internet City, Dubai UAE

t: +971 4 434 2119 e: [email protected]

Causeway India128/9, Maruthi Sapphire, HAL Airport Road, Murugesh Palya, Bangalore, 560017

t: +91 80414726179 e: [email protected]

For more information on theCauseway Dashboard solution contact

[email protected]