Autodesk Collaborative Project Management Software

24 June 2008, 5:11pm

A joint venture between three of Britain's biggest developers, which accounts for one third of all homes developed in Britain, has selected Autodesk Buzzsaw to act as an information sharing platform. The Ironstone Developer Group (IDG) consortium of Barratt Homes, George Wimpey and Persimmon is developing England's largest sustainable urban
extension, Lawley Village, which will consist of 3,300 homes as well as offices, leisure and retail facilities as part of a village centre.

Although the consortium settled on Autodesk Buzzsaw as its solution of choice, project management software was not the initial requirement. Guy Scott, the project director for the IDG explains, "Initially all we were
looking for was a common platform to share information between the three developers, as each developer had their own filing system which made storing and exchanging information laborious."

After assessing the available solutions, Buzzsaw seemed the appropriate choice. "We settled on Buzzsaw as it is a recognised tool within the UK Homebuilding Industry and it delivers all the functionality we were looking for, as well as the project management features. Also, each of the developers had positive past experience of using the software in other developments throughout the UK," explains Mr Scott.

In addition to its industry leading credentials, Buzzsaw also offered an additional benefit, "As the UK's largest sustainable development, the green savings offered were an additional consideration for us," explains Mr Scott. "Using Buzzsaw drastically reduces the number of hard copies of documents on site. This not only cuts down on the amount of paper used, but on the storage space needed to file these documents in the future."

Buzzsaw has now been in place on the Lawley Village development for two months and the advantages are becoming visible. "The main benefit so far has been information transfer and availability. Rather than having to request copies of documents from other people's filing systems they are now often available at your fingertips," adds Mr Scott.

Following this initial success, the consortium is already looking to extend its use of the solution. "We hope to extend our use of Buzzsaw to include the project management aspect of the software as we now have the facility to do so and hope that the benefits we have seen so far can be extended to other areas of the business to continue to drive efficiency," adds Mr Scott.

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