Construction is a traditional business usually characterised by heavy machinery and labour, it is not generally viewed as technological or flexible – but mobile is changing that.
Vinci Construction UK is the British arm of the global French-owned business, Vinci SA. The UK arm has an annual turnover of £2bn and employs 9,000 staff through several subsidiaries including Taylor Woodrow, which runs major civil engineering projects such as Crossrail and HS2; Eurovia, which delivers highways and infrastructure schemes; and Vinci Facilities, which provides building and maintenance services to the private and public sector.
It is a complex and geographically diverse business that regularly necessitates the erection of multiple temporary sites and dealing with enormous logistical challenges. Communication is vital, which in the past involved a lot of time, money and effort to install.
However, in 2010, Vinci contracted O2 to transform its communications network, beginning a 10-year journey. Vinci IT director Ben Paddick has been overseeing the transition from the beginning.
“We needed to modernise our communications infrastructure for reasons of efficiency and compliance. We were looking for a partner and we found it in O2,” he says. “As we looked for solutions to improve our networking, our relationship grew from there.”
O2 has devoted a great deal of effort to being a mobile and ICT partner for the construction sector. Its experience in the sector provides it with a unique grasp of the demands and skillsets required.
“We understand the demands of their environment so we’re able to bring a raft of solutions to what is a very traditional industry, enabling them to streamline their business,” says O2 client manager, Fergus Keogh. The initial contract covered mobile and fixed telephony services. It replaced an ad hoc system of corporately owned phones, which required individuals to set up and register company accounts themselves. Confusion and faults resulted in delays, and devices were often misplaced.
“Deployment is now streamlined and automated through our mobile device management platform. It has decreased a huge amount of the time we had to spend on the process internally and improved the end-user experience hugely,” says Paddick. “It means we have true visibility of every device, where it is in the field and whether it’s in operation, which didn’t exist before.”
Today, O2 provides Vinci with more than 5,400 mobile connections for phones and tablets, plus a further 8,400 for its various subsidiaries. Its ICT offering to Vinci has also blossomed. In 2016, it won the tender to supply Vinci’s wireless system using Meraki’s cloud-based platform, allowing it to deploy wifi networking rapidly anywhere contracts demanded. The O2 service wrap delivers, configures and supports operations wherever they’re required.
“We can have hundreds of sites spread around the UK at any one time,” says Paddick. “Some are in greenfields, some are established for a few months, some for years. We are a main contractor but we rely on our supply chain to deliver the works so we need to install comms on site. Some of those projects, like Crossrail, are also joint ventures with other construction companies. Establishing a shared network is easy now because we can simply subdivide it and allocate it to whoever needs access quickly and securely. With network cabling, that used to be a nightmare.”
Vinci has also added further services including Microsoft Office 365’s cloud-based system. O2 oversaw the entire process, guiding Vinci through design, setup, data migration, user onboarding and any necessary training. It means Vinci’s staff can now access data and services from any location. O2 has also helped Vinci modernise its customer portal, adding more management information, dashboards and analytic capabilities.
“It’s enabled us to work much smarter in the field,” says Paddick. “With O2 being a trusted partner we will look to them first when considering future applications. In the future, I see them becoming more integrated into our business setup, particularly as security becomes a greater priority.”
Looking at the partnership from the vendor side, Keogh says: “We’re helping construction companies like Vinci implement flexible connectivity that allows sites to work better together, deploying tools that allow people to work in smarter ways while on the move, and delivering real-time insights on equipment and vehicles to improve efficiency and utilisation.”
That is how to construct business relationships.
Let O2 Business provide you with the technology solutions to help you put people first in your business
.jpg?w=600)
