Approach
Understanding the client’s needs
A growth in passenger traffic and cargo through Dublin has necessitated an airport expansion plan with a budget in excess of 2 billion Euros, making it Ireland’s largest capital investment programme.
Not only is this a major and complex construction and engineering project, including apron refurbishment, new roads and carparks, new airfield apron, buildings, baggage management and more than 140 construction projects across the site due for completion by 2024, but the need for strict cost controls and auditability were essential in meeting the necessary regulatory requirements.
At the outset of the project, Dublin Airport Programme Controls were working primarily in Excel, using manual processes and disjointed systems that were sufficient for working at much lower levels of CapEx programmes, but could not be effectively scaled up for the far greater complexities of this major airport expansion project.
Evolution of the brief
RPC employed their collaborative Rapid Application Development approach to fully scope out the requirements and shape a Cost Management solution using Oracle’s Primavera Unifier.
As the Cost Management package was rolled out, the client realised that there was far greater potential within Unifier, which could be utilised in other areas of their work and to solve other problems that they faced within the business. Cost is just one element of the programme controls department and needs to be managed alongside schedule and risk, with contracts management feeding into all areas of that process.
RPC was able to support the integration of Primavera P6, which had been in use for scheduling for some time already, into the Unifier environment, enabling cost performance data to be linked with schedule performance data using RPC’s Earned Value Management solution.
