CC Sep-Oct 2023

CASE study
overnight guests
weren't disturbed,
Claridge's hosted several
high-profile events during
construction, including the
Harper's Bazaar Women of the Year
Awards and the hotel's annual Christmas
tree launch. To minimise disruption, frontof-house
staff devised a traffic light
scheme highlighting times of caution and
complete silence. "When we were
working directly below the existing
building, the noise would reverberate up
through the hotel, but we were able to
sequence work in Asta Powerproject to
ensure we met noise schedules."
While initially, staff would block out whole
days for important events, this impacted
the progress of extension works. To avoid
delays, the front-of-house team worked
with McGee to determine times when
work could continue (for example, during
drinks receptions with a lot of background
noise) versus critical silent points (such as
wedding speeches).
Asta Powerproject's detailed timelines
meant Michelle and her team could work
tasks around hotel activities to continue
as effectively as possible while minimising
the inconvenience to paying guests.
A FIVE-STAR FINISH, DELIVERED
AHEAD OF SCHEDULE
With significant structural risks, out-ofthe-box
techniques and the restrictions of
a live hotel to contend with, a lot could
have gone wrong with the construction of
Claridge's Hotel mega basement. But
meticulous planning and execution
through Asta
Powerproject ensured that McGee
delivered the five-storey extension on
time and to an exceptionally high
standard. In fact, McGee delivered the
agreed programme six months early, so
Claridge's Hotel could expand the brief to
add further elements.
This incredibly ambitious project quickly
captured the construction industry's
attention, with the judges of the 2018
Fleming Award stating that, "it really did
stand out in terms of rigour, technical
complexity and innovation that ran
through the project from start to finish". It
was also highly commended at the
Ground Engineering Award in 2019, with
one judge remarking that "the project was
undertaken within extraordinary
operational constraints and with
exceptional human endeavour."
Most importantly, the new mega
basement has been very well received by
Claridge's Hotel customers, who continue
to leave five-star reviews.
MAKING CONFIDENT CUSTOMER
PROMISES
Before embarking on the Claridge's Hotel
project, Michelle described herself as a
"nervous" Asta Powerproject user, but her
confidence and expertise have grown
since then. She has just completed an
800-line programme for a new
engineering project, and the
development of her Asta Powerproject
skills (and her colleagues' skills) have
helped shape the way McGee plans and
executes construction work.
"Rather than creating an initial high-level
programme and trying to figure out how
long a project will take, we can now look
at how long each task takes, and Asta
Powerproject will give us the overall
length of the programme. It's made us
more confident in our promises to our
clients." Moreover, Michelle sees the
value programme management software
can bring to site operations - particularly
in cities, where lack of space makes
logistics challenging.
"Project management software isn't used
enough at site level. We're not waiting for
a planner who doesn't know the ins and
outs of a project to do a weekly site visit.
Because we have Asta Powerproject, we
can share data and discuss the effect of
doing one thing versus another in realtime.
I think that's invaluable."
The power behind successful projects:
book a free demo to experience Asta
Powerproject.
12
September/October 2023