Mitchells & Butlers relies on Viewpoint For Projects™ for effective communication and workflow across complex projects.

Mitchells & Butlers Plc (M&B) owns brands including Toby Carvery, Brown’s, and All Bar One, and owns and manages 1,600 bars. Operating a portfolio of this magnitude posed a major problem for its buildings and asset management departments.

It was a complex and time consuming process to manage refits and maintenance, and ensure all branded outlets follow distinct brand guidelines for decor and ambience. The complex supply chain involves a number of organisations and subcontractors occupied in developing and maintaining these outlets. This means that efficient information flows and effective communication is instrumental to delivering consistent quality throughout the portfolio. Adding to the complexity of the process is the pressure to complete work on time. Closed outlets represent lost revenue for M&B; therefore, there is real pressure to avoid delays at all times. Viewpoint For Projects™ ensures management processes are effectively deployed, enabling the M&B team to reduce the risk of delays.

Viewpoint For Projects delivers cost-effective buildings and asset management collaboration software. Using a tailored version of Viewpoint For Projects to formalise information and communication exchange, M&B is able to retain a competitive advantage and reduce the time and costs associated with managing workflows. With so many individual users requiring the latest project information, it was important that all information was available to any member of the team no matter what time or location. It was also important that the solution did not require costly and restrictive investment in hardware or software.

The company, which has recently completed a successful period of readjustment to focus primarily on food-based bars, has enjoyed a 26% rise in profits. To complement this new strategic direction, M&B also updated its IT infrastructure by implementing Viewpoint For Projects.

M&B use a number of modules extensively to administer its asset management process. Communication of refit/rebrand standards are streamlined using Viewpoint For Projects. The relevant information for each venue is bundled together in one package and stored within the system. Using Forms and Workflows ensures the company can create a standard package for all venues by ‘templating’ the packages and customising, as needed, for each venue without wasting time duplicating work.

Packages are then communicated using Notifications, which minimises the time, effort, and cost associated with delivering standards to refit teams and subcontractors. It also ensures everyone has access to the latest information at all times.

The detail made available using Viewpoint For Projects makes the auditing and quality assurance process simple. As the solution facilitates efficient information and communication exchange, as well as custom workflows, the M&B team can see what has been achieved in real-time without resorting to difficult and time-consuming data collection exercises.

Using Viewpoint For Projects means there is only ever ‘one version of the truth’ so the M&B team can be confident that auditing and quality assurance results are both accurate and timely. The Cross Project Searching capability within Viewpoint For Projects is heavily used by the M&B team to keep track of which subcontractor is doing what and where. This allows greater control and ensures refit and maintenance teams are being used efficiently, and so reduces waste, down time, and cost through resourceful planning.

To improve this process further, M&B will also implement the Geoview feature of Viewpoint For Projects. It is an intelligent mapping module that lets users tag and control projects or assets by geographical location. M&B will use this to ‘pin’ venues based nationwide or within close geographical proximity using the ‘zoom’ feature.

The simple ‘click through’ to information tag cloud allows the M&B team to improve the project management process. This means data is made available without the need to search through multiple folders. The interactive map allows users to link a particular location (a GeoTag) to a document container or item, making the system simple to manage. The team will also have use of a dynamic overlay feature that provides access to further information or specific data such as drawings, documents, photos, tasks, and discussions or ‘work packages’ for any specific venue.

GeoView is designed to be dynamic and interactive. The colour-coded system allows different projects or phases within projects to be tagged, enabling users to track a number of different and highly customisable project aspects. The M&B team also uses Viewpoint For Projects to create maintenance instructions; subcontractors are instructed to undertake both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance through their personal areas contained within the Viewpoint For Projects system. The package is created by the management team instructing on exactly what is required and the time scale for completion. The work is monitored using workflows, discussions, and notifications and the system also holds all certificates. Once the work is complete, it is stored within Viewpoint For Projects and remains as a permanent record adding to the comprehensive audit trail.

The M&B team also extensively use the review and mark-up capability in the solution to highlight changes or potential problems before they occur, as well as to request design changes. This allows the team to control the process and communicate resolutions far more efficiently and with lower associated costs than using traditional methods. It also creates an environment where higher quality information can be transmitted using the email drop box feature, sending data such as photographs. This directly reduces the frequency of site inspections whilst maintaining control.

All of these features mean that Viewpoint For Projects facilitates M&B’s asset management programme, saving the company both time and money whilst maintaining the control required to effectively manage its brands. The web-based solution enables collaborative working through the sharing of electronic documents in a secure repository. It also enables process automation and standardisation. Using Viewpoint For Projects, M&B is able to manage multiple projects with one consistent interface, provide all project members with an instant snapshot of the current status of all projects, and promote a consistent format for sharing project files. As soon as a member of the project team uploads a drawing/document/ photograph it is immediately available to all users, ensuring that no one is working from outdated material or is excluded from information they need to know.

M&B was able to roll-out the Viewpoint For Projects solution to thousands of users in a very short space of time as it is designed to be inherently easy to use. A number of features make the interface immediately familiar to construction industry workers, for example, online versions of traditional drawing issue sheets.

The move to Viewpoint For Projects was designed take advantage of a number of recent software additions such as GeoView asset mapping software as discussed earlier. They also take advantage of increased functionality and user friendly interface design woven in to the platform.

The Viewpoint For Projects solution also has many secondary cost benefits. By increasing efficiency there are many time and process-driven savings which can be achieved through streamlining the asset management process. The software saves on IT capital investment, implementation, and management costs.

The SaaS (Software as a Service) design of Viewpoint For Projects, built using a single instance multi-tenant platform, means that there is no need for bulky data servers or a large IT team to manage the software — only need a computer with an internet connection.