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Product category: Building and Site Management
News Release from: Autodesk | Subject: Buzzsaw online project
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial Team on 18 May 2005

Autodesk Buzzsaw manage projects for
Somerfield

Autodesk Buzzsaw to control and manage 300 new projects a year for the Somerfield Group

The Somerfield Group, the UK's biggest neighbourhood retailer, has chosen Autodesk's Buzzsaw online project collaboration service to help manage and control an ambitious rolling programme of 300 new refurbishment and development projects a year The property department selected Buzzsaw after rigorous market research on more than ten project management solutions, "because it was easy to use, competitively priced and the speed of up- and down-loading documents just blew us out of the water," according to assistant systems manager, Corry Hartman

Among the predicted benefits is a 50% reduction in printing and photocopying costs.

Added to this will be significant savings on travel and, importantly, through the elimination of planning and construction errors attributable to outdated information.

The Somerfield Group, which incorporates the Somerfield and Kwik Save supermarket business units, is currently re-modelling its 1300 stores nationwide to more customer-focused formats As a result, the team begins between five and seven projects per week and because of the amount of concurrent work, Hartman says there may be up to 750 project partners accessing Somerfield's Buzzsaw site.

Currently drawings are printed and sent to project partners either by courier or email.

"This method can be high risk because drawings might not have been received".

"There is no way of tracking who has looked at what - and unless you are copied on an email, you can be unaware that changes have been made," he adds.

Buzzsaw holds all the most recent project documentation online including design drawings so that all authorised team members have instant access at any time.

This real-time monitoring can be carried out via online dashboards with both executive and project-level access, activity logs and automatic notifications.

"With new projects starting all the time - and a possible four revisions per project - we can have around 28 drawings per week circulating between a typical 70 people per project, if you include those who just need to view it".

"You can see the potential for error," says Hartman".

""With Buzzsaw, we can be sure that everybody is looking at the same version, so it will cut out any confusion." He adds that with so many people logging onto Buzzsaw, one of Somerfield's main criteria was that the new system had to be easy to use".

""We select people for their knowledge of the job, not for their IT skills - but if you can use Microsoft Outlook or Windows Explorer you can use Buzzsaw." The sale to Somerfield was made by Autodesk Systems Centre, Excitech".

""Somerfield's property department runs a complex operation, but Buzzsaw will help it meet expansion plans without any extra resources".

"By improving communications and even speeding up projects it will help the team deliver its targets as cost-effectively and efficiently as possible," says Steve Rouse, Excitech corporate account manager. Request a free brochure from Autodesk ...

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