RPCuk 2020 – What a year that was!

It’s been a year unavoidably overshadowed by the pandemic, but we are extremely proud of the tenacity and resilience shown by everyone at RPCuk in how they have adapted to working in an entirely new world. We have much to celebrate from 2020, despite the challenges it threw at us all: we’ve continued to trade and train all over the UK and beyond, even if that meant doing so from our own kitchen tables; we’ve been proud to sponsor and present at Project Controls Expo and to sponsor again the prestigious APM Awards, even though neither could be done in person this year; and we’ve continued to innovate with industry-leading Oracle Primavera solution sets and our unique Rapid Application Development approach. Here are some of the highlights from 2020 at RPCuk.

Development and Innovation

Our Rapid Application Development approach (RAD) developed last year has continued to bring tangible benefits to clients when designing and implementing a complex Project Controls solution. This agile and efficient design and build process enables successful implementations to be completed in the shortest possible time and in incremental stages that allow clients to be up and running quickly with minimal risk and expedited ROI. 

We’re continuing to innovate. Building on the Oracle Primavera Unifier template launched in 2019, we now have a family of Unifier-based Solution Sets in use and in development to accelerate deployment of Oracle Primavera tools and software. These solution sets are designed for the deployment of previously complex project controls solutions in a number of common business areas and are pre-built to a level that is 80–90% ready, with the remainder of the functionality to be tailored to the specific needs of each client and project. Not only does this make it faster to progress from project start to ‘go live’, it also helps potential clients to visualise how Unifier can meet their needs and we were excited to be able to share our progress in this project offering through a presentation slot at this year’s Project Controls Expo.

We were delighted again to be Platinum sponsors at this year’s PCE in November and, much as we were looking forward to it being hosted at Wembley Stadium, it was exciting to be part of such a bold and innovative event, as it simultaneously went both global and virtual this year, with 1500 delegates over 4 days in a virtual exhibition hall with access to exhibitor booths and an exhausting array of speakers, including RPC Chairman Pete Gable, and our newest member of the team, Chris Woodbridge. 

In January, RPCuk transitioned to the new Oracle Partner programme, accredited for Oracle Cloud Sell and Oracle License and Hardware tracks. Keith and Tina were at Oracle OpenWorld Europe in February to join with the industry in understanding more about the latest in data transformation and technology. And we took a close look at what’s new in the latest release of Unifier. 

We’ve been running our Applied Primavera Workshops to overwhelmingly positive feedback for the past eighteen months, and Oracle have been impressed with the success of our innovative approach to Oracle Primavera P6 training. In February, RPCuk and Oracle University signed an agreement granting OU a licence to sell and deliver the Oracle Primavera P6 Workshops developed by us. It’s a real honour for our development work to be recognised and adopted by Oracle in this way and everyone involved should be very proud.

Successes and Solutions 

Travel might have been limited this year, but – working with clients from one end of the country to the other – we’ve continued to support ongoing projects and launch new projects, with a range of Oracle Primavera P6 and Unifier implementations and upgrades successfully completed and major milestones met. 

We finish the year with the launch of a major new project in the Aerospace and Defence sector to utilise our Earned Value Management and Cost Management Solution Sets in broadening a client’s capabilities in their existing project/portfolio management and control system.   

Another milestone to close the year with is the migration of our RPCXtra hosted customers from IBM Cloud to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. In March, we took the decision to offer free Oracle Primavera P6 hosting until the end of the year in order to help our clients to support home working. 

Chris Callaghan and the technical team have been working hard to ensure a seamless transition to OCI for our existing cloud hosting customers and our recent COVID intake ready for when the switch launches to new customers in January. The new platform offers enhanced security, the ability to offer Web Service integration and more sophisticated reporting through BI publisher, and the option of an on-premise local database cache when using the P6 Professional application interface – a great benefit when on-site network connectivity can be weak or intermittent. Individual users will see better performance speeds, greater control, wider web browser access and a reduction in timeouts and it should prove to be an extremely positive change. Well done, Chris, and everyone involved.

We’re proud, too, to have been recognised once again as an approved UK Government G-Cloud supplier for the hosting and provision of Primavera cloud services based upon the latest G-Cloud 12 Framework.

As well as celebrating our own successes, RPC is proud to have been Headline Sponsor again this year for the APM Awards. Needless to say, it was a different sort of event this year, with black tie attire swapped for slippers and the usual three-course dinner replaced by (an equally delicious) fish and chip supper. Pete’s chips prompted our most liked and retweeted social post of the year! Being held online also meant that we all got to see our very own Chairman Pete Gable ON THE TV!! as he announced the winners of The Innovation in Projects Award: Arup, and Overall Project of the Year Award: the Counter Unmanned Aerial System at Heathrow. Congratulations to all the winners and nominees for their successes. If you missed Pete on the big screen, you can still watch the virtual ceremony here. 

Training: Home and Away

We’ve run 100 courses and trained just over 400 delegates this year, but for the first time ever, half of them have been trained virtually via our new remote training model. Before international travel stopped, Simon delivered training in Oman and Germany and Pete was in Denmark with their leading Oil and Gas company, but by the end of March we had launched our Remote Training option and delivered our first remote course successfully for a company in Scotland.

Throughout the summer we ran a series of remote courses, including one delivered by our trainer, Dave Stephens, from his home in South Africa! And we launched a series of Training Webinars, covering popular topics. 

In July, with the offices deep cleaned, painted, and fully COVID-secure, we were delighted to declare RPC Towers open for business once more, with delegates back in our Leeds classroom. In August, we were even able to hold our first post-lockdown training on-site with a customer in Plymouth. It was good to be back. 

What we’ve learned through developing our remote training option is that it’s also a real advantage to know that we can offer a variety of training solutions with a delivery method to suit all requirements – a fantastic result of everyone on the team thinking outside the box and finding solutions to problems that first seemed unsurmountable.

The RPC team

We’re a tight-knit family at RPC and it’s been a challenge to have staff on furlough for several months and to be unable to be together in the office. The fusball table is gathering dust and the kettle thinks it’s been abandoned. We were sorry not to be able to give Sales Director Mark Horne the send-off he deserved when he retired in April, but we hope he’ll be able to enjoy all that spare time as soon as we can all get back out and about. 

It was great to be able to bring our furloughed team members back off the bench as we got into the summer and we were soon back up to full strength and firing on all cylinders – and with our first all-electric vehicle in the car park, courtesy of James, proving that we’re not just about cutting edge technology and innovation in our work lives, but outside of work, too. 

John Shoemaker still needed a wingman in sales, though, and we’re absolutely delighted that Chris Woodbridge has joined us from December as Business Development Executive. Chris comes to us from Oracle’s CEGBU, so many of the team already know him well and he is also already a familiar and well-respected name within the industry. We threw him in at the deep end with a presenting slot at PCE on his first day, but, despite that baptism of fire, he’s still with us and looking forward to what 2021 brings.  

We wave goodbye, at the end of December, to Kristy, who – after training hundreds of planners in her four and a half years at RPC – is leaving us to go back to being one herself! “It’s been an absolute joy working at RPC and hard to say goodbye to all the amazing people. I have gained so much knowledge and experience during my time here and really look forward to being able to apply that in my new role,” she says. We’ll miss her and we all wish her well.

Outside of work, the whole team joins in congratulating Pete and Candy on celebrating 40 years of marriage in October. Here’s how it started, and how it’s going...

Coming up in 2021...

We’re looking forward to an exciting year ahead. We’ll be back as Sponsors at Project Controls Expo 2021, which is planned as another virtual event in addition to the live event at Wembley, and as Headline Sponsors once again at the APM Awards, plus we’re looking forward to another busy year of helping clients to deliver their projects successfully by providing all the ingredients needed to create the ideal platform for managing the complete project lifecycle, from scoping requirements to training the end users.   

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