Project Name and Value:
Coffs Harbour Bypass • $2.2 billion.
Project Background:
One of the last remaining cities on the M1 Pacific Highway to be bypassed, between Brisbane and Sydney, is Coffs Harbour. The city has been a major bottleneck for motor vehicles and logistics trucks for years causing unnecessary delays and congestion. The New South Wales Government appointed the Coffs Harbour Bypass Team, a joint venture between Spain’s Ferrovial and Malaysia’s Gamuda, to construct a 14km bypass with three tunnels, three exchanges, and a new bus terminal.
The bypass will boost the regional economy and improve connectivity, road transport efficiency, and safety for local and interstate motorists. Once complete, the Coffs Harbour bypass will save motorists more than 12 minutes in travel time, bypass up to 12 sets of traffic lights and remove approximately 12,000 vehicles a day from the centre of town, making Coffs Harbour an even better place to live, work and visit. The project has three key focuses: innovation, efficiency, and value for money.
Needs Expressed:
- A digital platform with a focus on quality assurance and document management to digitally connect the contractor, client, and subcontractors together communicate in real-time.
- A platform that is customisable to the project and government’s unique needs and contractual terminologies, including the ability to create custom forms, templates, metadata, and workflows.
- A workflow module that could accommodate complex workflows, including the ability to skip steps that are not always required and the possibility to keep records internal until a milestone step had been reached.
- The ability to work seamlessly from desktop devices in the office to mobile phones and tablets on-site, with the possibility to work offline.
- The possibility to create custom, real-time reports within the platform to proactively mitigate delays and project hold ups.
- A service provider who has an innovative roadmap that can help the project realise its three key focuses: innovation, efficiency, and value for money.
- A rapid start-up response with a high level of support, given the project had lost six months due to the implementation of an existing market solution that was not fit for the project’s needs.
Benefits Realised:
- 50% more efficient compared to similar solutions on the market.
- Go-Live within just 23 business days, 17 business days faster than the quoted implementation schedule.
- Full on-site implementation, including configuration, reviews, and end-user training.
- Mobile solution in the field with online and offline capabilities that automatically synchronises.
- Elimination of up to 3 hours per week from each engineer’s computer screen time due to the efficiency of the system.
- Additional efficiencies realised with integration to the concrete supplier’s docketing system.
Situation:
The joint venturers, Gamuda and Ferrovial, boast a long and successful track record in the global construction industry, and both companies have previously used nominated construction management systems on their projects, Autodesk Construction Cloud and Procore.
In the early stages of the Coffs Harbour Bypass project, the team decided to use one of these previously nominated solutions. However, during the implementation, the project team realised it was not flexible or adaptable enough for the project, which required complex workflows to be configured, forms to be re-named, and metadata to be customised after it had been utilised. As a result, the project terminated the nominated solution.
Having lost valuable months from the project’s programme, the team needed to find a new construction management platform for their quality assurance and document management needs quickly. The project expressed a clear need to choose a service provider who could provide a rapid start up with in-person, hands-on training.
The project turned to two possible solutions: Glaass Pro and a current market solution that specialises in document control and quality assurance which is used in Australia and abroad. The quality assurance and document control teams were provided two sandbox environments from both Glaass and the current market solution to create real-world use cases in order to compare the two solutions and outline the statistical efficiency differences. The results of these tests were provided to Glaass by the project team and are published in the below table.
| Current Market Solution (seconds) | Glaass Pro (seconds) | Efficiency of Glaass Pro compared to Current Market Solution | |
| Raise & Complete a Lot | 255 | 105 | 41% |
| Raise a Nonconformance Report | 120 | 60 | 50% |
| Raise a Request For Information | 55 | 33 | 60% |
| Raise a Test Request | 85 | 33 | 39% |
| Average Gain | 48% |
In addition to identifying a nearly 50% efficiency gain over the current market solution, the project team, during their review of both systems, realised the following additional benefits of Glaass Pro compared to the current market solution:
- Ongoing System Management & Control – Completely customisable with full JV control of the system, including creation and modification of forms, workflows, and metadata.
- Reporting – Automated, multilevel, fully customisable, live dashboard reporting. Ability to integrate with Power BI as required.
- Usability & Mobile Interface – Industry leading mobile interface. All functionality available offline. Developed as a mobile interface, rather than adopting a website to function on a mobile. Web interface developed to mimic the mobile interface which is intuitive and easy to follow with all aspects looking and feeling the same.
- Inspection and Test Plan Checklist Upload – ITP upload (and in turn creation of checklists) is included in the cost. Zero effort or cost on the part of the JV for all project ITPs (currently in excess of 100 ITPs).
- QMS Set Up – Guaranteed 60 day set up program, with the project live in 40 days. Only 12-man hours required for the complete system setup.
- Training – Training for all staff is face to face and included in the above 60 days for all staff currently employed. This includes the training of identified administrators and super users.
- Ongoing Support – 3 Months of 1 day a week face-to-face support, backed up by 24-hour online support and a direct line to the Glaass CEO.
- Document Traceability – Links can be attached to individual steps in a process for improved traceability. Document timeline for every form and workflow gives certainty in actions and outcomes. Gives full traceability and allows visibility of who has actioned (or not actioned) and when with automatic read receipts.
Solution:
Given both the efficiency and functional benefits of Glaass Pro compared to other market leading providers, the project team chose Glaass Pro to be the QMS on the project, selecting our quality, documents, drawings, workflow, and BIM modules. Within the quality module, the project needed Inspection and Test Plans, Lots, Control Points, Test and Survey Requests, Requests for Information, Nonconformity Reports, Audit Reports, Defect Reports, and Calibration Records. Within the document and drawing modules are the project document control requests as well as the project’s issued for construction documents and drawings. The BIM module was also selected to pin the Lots and other related processes to the 3D models.
Implementation:
The Glaass Pro implementation schedule specified 40 business days to go-live; however, the solution was live in just 23 business days, saving the project 17 business days, which had the system up fully operational before the start of construction.
During the implementation of the system, the project team suggested a feature in Glaass Pro which would allow the metadata to be copied to another template when linking the cases together. This idea would save the engineers time from having to re-enter the data whilst simultaneously eradicating human error. Glaass were able to develop the function, both on desktop and the iOS and Android app and have it delivered in just 3 weeks.
A heavy focus was given to the on-site training sessions, where Glaass travelled to the project several times to train general users, as well as super-users, who could act as project administrators going forward.
Solution in Action:
Glaass Pro is used by over 400 personnel on the project daily to upload Inspection and Test Plans, create Lots, issue Hold Points and Witness Points to the client and Independent Verifier for release.
The feedback from both the site and office teams has been overwhelmingly positive with users claiming hours are being shaved off their time in front of a computer.
In addition to this, the project team have continued to breathe the project’s key focuses of innovation, efficiency, and value for money. They have achieved even greater efficiencies by integrating Glaass Pro to Hanson, their concrete suppliers, docketing system. The integration allows delivery dockets from the concrete trucks to be automatically uploaded to the respective Concrete Order case in Glaass Pro. This integration has increased the efficiency of the engineers, as no physical docket needs to be scanned, named, and uploaded, whilst also reducing human error, as the integration matches the case ID to the delivery ID.
Amy Batt, Quality Lead “One of the best Quality Management Platforms I’ve ever seen” and “The platform provides great traceability and can create any kind of register to find or analyse data. The widgets provide a fantastic graphical representation of project health.”
Bruce Lyne, Quality Assurance and Systems Manager “Best System (and Customer Service) on the Market” and “The team at Glaass worked closely with us to halve the contracted implementation time frame. Their ongoing support, post implementation, is unrivalled in the industry.”
