Kane Group

Mo Shana’a: We’re next going to have Kasia from Kane Group share her perspective on how she’s been using the platform for information planning and tracking. I know many of you here are using us for information delivery planning. But when I saw this implementation, it was actually the very first time that I saw a task team like the supply chain using it and using it in many ways as an internal task management system, which is exactly what TIDPs and so on and so forth are intended to be.

And that’s one of the main reasons why we really wanted them on, and we really wanted Kasia to show and share her lessons learned. So thank you so much for joining us.

Kasia: Thank you so much, Mo. I hope you see my presentation there.

Mo Shana’a: Yeah. So I see you. I think the presentation is loading, so let’s just give it one second. No. You may need to unshare and reshare again, I think.

Kasia: Share again?

Mo Shana’a: Nope. One second. Okay.

Kasia: Do you want me to try to share again?

Mo Shana’a: Yes, please.

Kasia: Okay. I remember we had the same issue previously.

Mo Shana’a: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Kasia: Okay. Let’s try it again.

Mo Shana’a: Hopefully third time is the charm.

No, I still can’t see anything. Okay. One second.

Yeah, we’re on.

Kasia: Oh, happy days. That’s lovely. Third time.

Mo Shana’a: Thank you so much. Looking forward to it.

Kasia: Thank you. Brilliant. So first of all, I would like to thank the whole Morta team for the invitation. It’s a pleasure to take part in Community Day.

Then I would like to say a few words about Kane. So what is Kane? Kane is an MEP Building Services Contractor. We are employing in the region of 250 staff with offices in Northern Ireland, London, Birmingham, Glasgow, and the Republic of Ireland. Kane specialise in design and development and delivering building services solutions across the UK and Ireland.

And now just a few words about myself. So I’m Design Office Manager, working in Kane about six years now. I spent four years in document control and then I was brought over to design, where I’m now about two years. And since then, I started working on Morta.

So, first of all, I would like to start with why we moved to Morta from Excel. So the company growth meant more manual work and more mistakes. Additionally to that, the data was spread across multiple trackers and multiple folders. And of course we needed to do all the data updates manually as well. And we were disconnected from the client data.

On the other side, when we started working on Morta, all the manual entry was automated. We reduced all the errors and mistakes as well. We also now have one smart connected system that is all refreshed daily, and with the API integration, we can connect with the client data.

So I wanted just to share how we worked before we joined Morta. So this is a screenshot of how it looked. What we can see here is the list of drawings, list of the numbers. We can see a list of the statuses, revisions. And all the project tracker as well with all the revisions and all the statuses. That was manual input, manually coloured, manual date input, everything was manually done.

And also on the very bottom of the screen here, we have internal issue only, site only, and withdrawn tabs. So if there was anything that we needed to move to withdrawn, we needed to just manually copy everything and put it into the withdrawn tab.

Also the issues that we had were with duplication. So sometimes it was happening, we had a duplicated drawing number, we had a duplicated description, and if anything was wrong about this table, then we had the wrong calculation. And the wrong calculation we had, then we had the wrong reports. And there’s nothing worse than going through each revision, status or date and looking for that missing slash somewhere.

So now I just created a graph of how Morta operates at Kane. So up to now this was managed just by one person. And I just want to start from us. So we are working on Viewpoint, and then Viewpoint is connected with Morta. Morta then is connected with client systems such as Conject, Asite, Viewpoint, and others.

All of that, once we connect with ours and theirs, we can combine into one big tracker. Then we move everything to Power BI. So all the data from Morta was linked to Power BI and we’ve created our reports. So we’ve created a few project summary reports that the design team, procurement, precon and others could look at. And also we’ve created client progress reports that are shared weekly to the clients as well.

At the moment, Morta runs on 11 projects. And there’s definitely room for more. But I want to come back just to Morta itself now, and just say that the plan was just to create an IRS, so an Internal Release Schedule, and that was just the idea to do that.

Once we created the big IRS, then I thought we might need more views of the IRS. So we created a TIDP view, we created workload by person, overdue items, statuses view, revisions view. We created withdrawn items for items that are not required anymore. We’ve also created internal site team views as well, and the drop line programme.

After all of this, we thought why not to do more. So we created a Model Tracker. We also created the RFI tracker. Then in process we are with the BCA compliance tracker and also with the procurement tracker. And all of this is used at the moment by about 60 users. Some of them are just viewers, some of them are just contributors.

So just a quick summary of what Morta can track for us at the moment. So definitely design drawings, technical submittals, revisions, statuses, internal and external ones as well. Contract dates, team workload, RFIs, models. And third party information.

What we plan to track with Morta is the as-built drawings. We also plan to track O&M drawings, and also in process is the BCA compliance too.

So now I would like to just show you how this looks like in real life. So I’ll go back on Morta. So this is how it looks, our typical project. First of all, if someone looks into the project, they can see a quick help sheet, it’s just a breakdown of each of the folders, what they can find in them.

Then we have a document called summary. So this is where people can access the project report. I’ll show a snip of the project report later on, but we’re also thinking about moving to the dashboards because we think it’s a very good idea and then the license to Power BI will not be needed anymore.

Then we have our TIDP. So TIDP is our short version of the IRS. What we can see here is just a list of drawings and descriptions, and also we can see when we meant to issue the drawing. When was it issued, the comparison of the revisions and also the statuses, and all of that the client can access.

So what is good about Morta is that we can give the login to the client, the external system, and they can log in themselves and see fresh information every day. Or you can export that to Excel and send them over.

And then we have the IRS.

So I’m going to just expand that here. So on IRS, it’s the main table that we begin from. We can see here the list of the drawings, the list of the descriptions. We can see when we meant to issue the drawing, when we actually issued. Also we split the drawings by a person who is responsible for the drawing.

We have a document type column. We have comments that we are updating on fortnightly meetings. And also from this stage up to the very end, everything else is automated. So there is no manual input needed.

So first of all, we have the first issue date, and this is the date whenever the drawing hits the external system. And we get that date from there. Then we have the key issue time. So that’s the indicators.

Then we have the comparison of both revisions, so we can see our revision in here and also we can see the external revision too. And then we are sure that whenever we said we issued the drawing, we actually issued, and it is on the external system.

We also do the same with the statuses. So we can see that the status was taken over from the external. So for example, if on the external system someone updates the status, then we can see the next day or straight away that this was updated. And we can take that over on our drawings as well.

So there are a few columns with the dates as well, such as latest revision upload date, so whenever the last revision was uploaded, the time whenever we are acquiring the status from the client. We have a column with the number of days it’s with the client. And some information about how long it’s with the client as well. And if it’s overdue or if it’s just issued.

Here we have our revision tracker. So basically what we can see here is a split of each revision. So we can see when the P01 was issued, when the P02, P03, et cetera. And also we can see all the statuses. So we can see all the statuses when they were issued, what was happening with them.

So we can see when it was rejected, when it was status A, B, and when it was with the client. So all of that our IRS has given us.

So then we decided to split this into individual views, just to make life easier. So first of all, we’ve created a workload by person. So I can see from here who is responsible for which drawings, and I can also see which ones need to be issued, which ones are approved, what the comments are against them. All of that I can see on the workload by person here.

Then we have overdue items as well. So instead of going into our big IRS, we can basically go just into the overdue items and see just the overdue items that we have on the project.

Then we split this by the preliminary status A, B, C. So we can only see all the preliminary items that received status A, B, or C, and that we have to get action on.

Then we have construction status C, so all the items that are on the construction stage are required to be revised ASAP.

Then we have all our information that are on the preliminary stage and at some stage, they will have to be revised as well to construction.

Then we have a programme drop line view, which is just a view of the IRS that makes life easier for our pre-construction team. So they can see straight away what they’re looking for.

And then we have a few tabs like internal issue only, site only, and withdrawn. So what is brilliant about this? All the movements between those tables are automated as well. So for example, if any of the drawings in the main table is not required anymore, we just basically type in the document type as withdrawn, and that automatically will go to the withdrawn tab.

So no one needs to copy and paste that into another tab as we did in Excel.

Then we have our PTS trackers, technical submittals. We split that by mechanical and electrical because it’s easier for us. So it’s basically the same as an IRS, but we are tracking the technical submittals and we also track the dates whenever it should be issued.

We also track the comments against them, and also we have an indication why the PTS was not issued. For example, we have a quick dropdown here where we can indicate if it’s with procurement, supply chain or design. We also compare the internal and external revisions and also the statuses, internal and external as well.

And when we go here, we also can track the order information. So our procurement guys have a place to put in all the order information, such as order number, warranties, order status, et cetera.

And on the very end there’s some information about the technical submittal, when was the last revision uploaded and the time with client.

So then we have our RFI tracker. So our RFI Tracker is basically showing us if our RFIs, which means request for information, are open or closed and resolved.

Then we have our models. So this is information about whether there was any model from the architect or structural models or any other ones, if they were updated, it will show us on here. And that means we have to update our side. So the design will run on the very latest revision.

And then the very last one, we have the design information. So what design information shows us is all the subcontractors’ folders. We can see just the names, descriptions, but what is the most important in here is that we can see the external revision. So whenever, for example, the external guys will update the revision, then our document control will know straight away that they have to update us on our side, which means we are going to run again with the latest revision.

Okay? So that will be all about design information. Just want to quickly jump back on my presentation.

So, as I said, I will show a snapshot of Power BI and how we work. So this is a report for one of our projects. What we can see here is just a breakdown of all our statuses. It’s a breakdown of work sets for our drawings and all the information such as how many we need to issue, how many are still to be issued, how many are construction approved, how many statuses we received.

And also information like what is overdue on our side, what is overdue on the client side, and who we need to chase for stuff. We also have information such as how many drawings we have to issue, how many we propose to be issued, and some information about technical submittals, models and RFIs.

But going forward, we are planning to go more into the dashboards inside Morta and try as much as possible to replace Power BI in the future.

And then what I would like to do is just highlight the impact of Morta at Kane. So first, automation. Data input is mostly automated now. We have real time updates that happen every night and we can prevent duplication.

Also the next one, we have efficiency. I asked the other week our document control guys how much time Morta saved them, and what they said was two days a week. And whenever I did a quick calculation, that means 256 hours a month saved using Morta, and it’s just from four document controllers.

Then we have reports generated instantly so we don’t have to create reports ourselves now in Excel and also all the refreshes in the reports are now automated as well.

Then finally, confidence. We now have always the current information on Morta, so I know that our design team can use and be sure and can rely on Morta with the accurate information. And what that means is it adds strong collaboration as well.

And on the very end, I would like to thank Mo and the whole Morta team again, and especially Ali who keeps me on track and tolerates my crazy ideas.

Thank you so much.

Mo Shana’a: It’s an absolute pleasure. Honestly, I think just the amount, the number of things you’ve built. I know you’re the main builder basically within Kane. You’re dealing with all of this and I think everyone who’s watching would know how impressive that is.

So I’m really, really glad that we’re supporting you. I’m really, really glad that you shared your story with us today. So thank you so much for doing this and thanks for trusting us.

Kasia: Lovely. Thanks a lot again.

Mo Shana’a: Thank you so much. Have a really good one.

Kasia: You too.