LORNE STEWART PLC are one of the UK's leading independent building services companies with an annual turnover of over £200m.
The group offers a range of specialist skills harnessed through their Mechanical & Electrical Engineering, Facilities Services and off-site Modular Design & Construction business. They provide building service solutions throughout the construction and operational phases of any building asset.
“We spent a considerable amount of time reviewing various packages and are delighted that we selected Glasscubes. One of the biggest benefits is that this is not a faceless company in the cloud, the Glasscubes team are there to help and answer your queries straight away, by phone or email. It’s the best that we tried by far!”
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PETER BASTIN Technical Director, Lorne Stewart |
The Challenge
Lorne Stewart’s internal document management system was a basic file repository, with no search facility, just a list of files and folders. Employees had to use a manual index to find the form or policy they wanted, it was slow and time consuming. It was also impossible to ensure that all parties were working with the same version of a file, as staff often opted to work from copies saved on their own PC's.
There was no easy way of sharing large drawings and specifications electronically. For security reasons, they had to rely on their IT Department for help, who would upload the required files/folders to Dropbox and then add them to an internal FTP site to share. The only other method of sharing large files and folders was to burn them to CD, or print out hard copies, and post them.
“We wanted a facility that allowed us to collaborate with each other. We have multiple offices/sites and wanted a way to share best practice, technical bulletins and problem awareness but disseminating information was difficult.”
The Solution
Glasscubes was originally implemented by Lorne Stewart in 2014, since then several areas have been identified where it saves both time and money. Today it’s used by 450 employees across the group and assists with:
- Tender management
- Project document management and control
- Corporate policy and form management
- File sharing
- Collaboration of best practice
- Information sharing, problems/solutions/technical bulletins
Glasscubes is used to communicate and share best practise, good pricing/service and installation/design problems. Its document version control has saved time and prevented errors, which is the common consequence of installation teams and sub-contractors working from different versions of information.
Glasscubes is used by all engineers to collaborate within appropriate discipline groups, which is invaluable. If an engineer has a question, they now have access to a knowledge base of hundreds of other engineers in the company. On most occasions, someone will have already experienced the same after undertaking a similar installation and a solution to the query can be answered quickly and efficiently.
Health & Safety documents, certificates and company information is centrally managed and controlled by a single administrator, rather than a person per office, saving both time and money. When document changes occur, acceptance notifications are sent to the relevant staff to ensure compliance. Glasscubes ensures that the right information reaches the right members of staff in an environment that is fully auditable.
