INEIGHT CASE STUDY
MAJOR TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE AUTHORITY (MTIA)
DELIVERING THE RIGHT DATA TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE AT THE RIGHT TIME
On the question of data, MTIA pursues a less-is-more policy. While recognising that the industry is capturing, storing and analysing more and more data, it is keen to flip the picture. “I’m a big fan of keeping it simple: decide on the outcome you want and set up your processes and technology to deliver it. Otherwise, you may just end up with information overload,” he says.
Similarly, while real-time reporting is beginning to appear in the civil infrastructure industry, MTIA feels that it can create more problems than it solves. “Rapid, real-time reporting often results in people having access to information at a time that may not be appropriate, leading to a disconnect between management perceptions and what’s happening on the ground. It’s crucial to get through the month first, reflect, and only then tell the story behind your data. I believe there would be more value in thinking about how we present the data. We’re generating huge numbers of dashboards, but it’s not always clear that these are genuinely informative or helpful to decisionmakers.”
STANDARDISING PROCESSES AND TECHNOLOGIES
When working with internal departments and external contractors, NELP writes specific requirements into contracts but does not mandate the use of any particular technology to complete the work. However, the organisation does require suppliers to work through its preferred collaboration platform — InEight Document — when submitting tenders and providing updates during the project delivery phases.
“Naturally, our internal and external partners will use different solutions than us to run their businesses — and that’s to be expected,” says the director. “But when they communicate with us, we ask them to do so in InEight Document. We do this because our legislative requirements mean we need to adhere to rigorous approaches in how we structure work and break down the time and costs.”
Through standardised communication on a single technology platform, NELP and the other MTIA project offices can collaborate more efficiently and benchmark their work more easily.
“If you don’t standardise either process or technology, you can end up comparing apples and oranges,” says the director. “Once you standardise, you improve the quality and control of data. That opens up the possibility of accurate benchmarking, which is something that government really looks for in terms of informing future business cases and decisions.”