Meller Construction Consultants To Adopt Workspace Mini

Online, September 29, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Construction consultants Meller have purchased Workspace mini from Union Square Software. The Derby based practice will be implementing the solution to increase visibility, enforce standardisation and drive efficiency. Meller have been live with the system since the 1st September 2010.

Information management problems started to arise in a few key areas, explains Managing Director Graham Cartledge: "Our filing systems are organised and well structured, the practice has ISO 9001 accreditation; however effective filing and retrieval relies on individuals remembering to follow procedures. The process for filing documents and particularly emails has traditionally been time consuming, which has means documents are more likely to remain on personal PCs and emails in Outlook rather than the central network drives." Like most construction consultancies people are out of the office a lot which means that they tend to do all their filing in batches; at the end of week or when they have some time available. "This was causing a particular problem with email as tracking both the date of the document and the date it was filed was proving problematic and revealing issues with the QA system. This could make tracking the history and current status of a project difficult."

Workspace mini is an affordable out of the box practice management solution provided by specialist construction software suppliers, Union Square Software. Graham reviewed a number of systems and found Workspace to be the best product for the small companies: "Workspace mini addresses our needs and as it is pre configured it removes much of the 'thinking time' required of bespoke systems. Nothing else on the market is comparable." The system will provide Meller with a central place to manage everything associated with a project from cradle to grave. This includes contact records, organisation lists, documents, drawings and images all in one easy to use interface.

Workspace mini provides employees with a simple way of completing standard practice processes and through this enforce quality procedures. Graham and Director, Colin Cox could see the benefits of the integrated nature of Workspace mini, Graham comments: "Even within a practice with 11 people you have a limited view of what people are doing. You only spot errors when doing a specific check, investigating a non conformance or looking for something. Workspace mini will provide much better visibility of what everyone in the business is doing so everyone is up to date with project details and Directors have better visibility of activities."

Business Development activities will also be managed through Workspace, "The Workspace mini campaign tool offers powerful functionality for managing marketing activities. The features within Workspace mini for Business Development will be an improvement on what we had in ACT, the system is more intuitive and offers a wider range of features."

Graham expects the practice to see significant benefits including better control, standardisation and efficiency throughout the business.