Here’s How a Golden Thread of Information Connects Multiple Stakeholders on a High-profile Hospital Build

Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust (the Trust) is focused on improving lives in its community through care, teaching, education, innovation and research. At more than 7,000 employees strong, the Trust is responsible for the healthcare of an estimated 530,000 people from across North-West Birmingham and numerous towns within Sandwell in the United Kingdom.

The Trust is making major investments to improve the level and quality of healthcare offered, and one of those improvements is the construction of the state-of-the-art Midland Metropolitan University Hospital. Once construction is complete, this facility will be the largest acute healthcare facility within the Trust.

Carillion, a well-known and highly regarded construction and project management firm, was chosen to build Midland Metropolitan University Hospital before its collapse in 2018.

In the wake of Carillion’s insolvency, the Trust was left scrambling to find a new construction firm and keep the project moving forward as planned. In addition to the challenge of finding a new contractor to take over the project, the Trust needed to preserve the existing project data information flow and maintain it moving forward with the new contractor. Carillion had relied on Viewpoint for Projects (VFP) as the hospital construction cloud-based project management software solution.

The Viewpoint team offered to work with the Trust for successful completion of this significant project, transferring the VFP cloud data to the new contractor. As a next step, the Trust chose Balfour Beatty to take over construction management of this high-profile build.

VFP Offers Stability and Efficiency for Hospital Construction

VFP is an award-winning, cloud-based document management solution which enables customers to share, control and collaborate on project documents with dispersed project teams. The solution provides a single platform for all project documents, drawings, photos and file types; and workflows ensure the right information is shared by the right people at the right time.

Project stakeholders see one real-time single version of the truth and can view documents regardless of the software program in which they were created. Documents are also available for offline access so users can still work when no internet connectivity exists, and VFP does not require a native app.

As they took over this massive project, Balfour Beatty relied on VFP for:

• Streamlining documentation

• Reducing errors

• Mitigating risks

• Avoiding duplication of efforts

“With Viewpoint for Projects, users have access to the information they need at the right time, to make quick, informed decisions,” said Nohmam Awan, Balfour Beatty Digital Construction Lead. “People are saving time by using this system so they can access information fairly quickly. Compared to the traditional process of working [without such a program], saves us about a week on each package submission.”

Successful Workflows with Cloud-based Collaboration

Balfour Beatty collaborates across all disciplines, thanks to VFP.

“We use Viewpoint for Projects through full design stage, to collaborate across all disciplines – structural, civil, mechanical, electrical – all trades and other project stakeholders,” notes Hayden Jones, Balfour Beatty design technical lead for Midland Metropolitan University Hospital. “It’s allowed us to introduce workflows within it so we can assess, review, approve, accept, and submit to stakeholders so they can review and accept.”

The Midland Metropolitan University Hospital project is on track for completion in 2024. VFP’s golden thread of data will allow the Trust to hang on to valuable building data for warranty and additional maintenance work for the lifetime of this facility.

“Once we get to the end of this process, we will have full records, from day one to day of handover to [the hospital] and there is an auditable trail, so if there are any queries, we can clearly go back and see how we got to that point in time so there can be no dissatisfaction with records,” said Peter Pugh, Balfour Beatty, Lead Quality Manager.

Richard Molloy, Trust Construction Director for Midland Metropolitan University Hospital is grateful for the pivotal role VFP played in this project. “How they’ve [Viewpoint] understood those problems, and then solved them straight away, and given us a seamless approach, so that we’ve got a collaborative environment, is fantastic,” he said. “It’s been a great success and I’m thankful to VFP for helping us deliver this project.”