The Challenge
Quinn London is a leading UK-based main contractor, delivering a wide range of projects from Major Works to heritage and high-end residential projects. As the business continues to scale, so does the importance of strategic visibility across projects. Relying on disconnected and manual processes made the consolidation of data and accurate planning a challenge.
Ben Sanford, Commercial Manager at Quinn London, was committed to standardising processes and improving visibility. "We recognised an opportunity to modernise our approach. For example, understanding project status involved project managers pulling together data from various spreadsheets and individual tools, and then emailing them in a report, which would then have to be pulled together into one report at HQ. We thought there had to be a better way."
The Solution
Ben Sanford, Commercial Manager at Quinn London, described the process of adopting Procore, "We started by trialling Procore on one or two jobs, and quickly realised that continuing to use the old ways and processes made no sense at all. A couple of other isolated tools we were using at the time weren’t working for us, and the Central London team led the way for the rest of the company to adopt Procore’s single platform. Old server-based systems were replaced and the directors were quickly won over, realising that Procore was the better solution."
Procore has enabled Quinn London to achieve visibility into project data to improve insights and forecast with greater precision. This in turn puts Quinn London on the front foot in their client relationships, as they consistently achieve faster closeouts with less reliance on disconnected tools.
“Our ability to work collaboratively on the Procore platform has allowed for streamlined sharing of submittals, RFIs and drawings all while reducing response times and delays.”
Ben Sanford
Commercial Manager
The Story
Quinn London has expanded and grown its operations in recent years, particularly in Central London. The scale of this growth, nature of the projects and the current construction market have made it increasingly clear that traditional processes no longer provide the optimal way of working.
The Central London division’s critical work with the healthcare sector, public bodies, schools and notable high-street projects lent an urgency to the business’s need to truly modernise systems and processes. Moving onto Procore’s single digital platform was key to maximising success on current and future projects.
Ben Sanford, Commercial Manager at Quinn London, described the process of adopting Procore, "We started by trialling Procore on one or two jobs, but quickly realised that still using the old ways of working made no sense at all. A couple of other isolated tools we were using at the time weren’t working for us and the Central London team led the way for the rest of the company to onboard onto the single platform. Old on-premise systems were replaced and the directors were quickly won over, realising that Procore was the better solution."
Procore’s platform centralises all of Quinn London’s document management, RFIs, health and safety checks, meeting minutes, site pictures and project data. This helps to save time through improved record-keeping, and accelerates request response time significantly. Day-to-day processes have been streamlined, Procore’s drawings tool providing one of the biggest benefits.
Jack Butchart, Central London Division Manager explains that "While sharing documents and project drawings used to be a lengthy process that could take several days, doing the same task in the Procore platform is much quicker, making it easier to track changes to details, as well as log relevant information."
Integrated, on-demand reporting
While working on the High Street Kensington project, Quinn London was able to manage its scale through Procore. As Ben details, "Due to the design and build nature of the job, clear communication between the architecture and on-site teams is paramount. Our ability to work collaboratively on the Procore platform has allowed for streamlined sharing of submittals, RFIs and drawings, all while reducing response times and delays."
The Procore platform has also enabled accurate tracking of past activity, which allows contractors and other site staff to know whom they should speak to for both ongoing and post-project work. Further to this, accessing and analysing project data allows relevant project teams to understand the root cause of any problems. Leveraging the collected project data provides previously unavailable insights that can increase efficiencies and productivity as the project moves forward. have
Quinn London’s goal is to transition project reporting across the business to fully automated dashboards. As the business continues to standardise on Procore, Quinn London aims to analyse business cycles, save employees even more time with processes such as linking diaries and weather reports—and to provide better insights in the project planning phase.
Building a safety culture through one platform
Collaborators outside of the organisation, such as subcontractors and clients, are also able to make use of Procore’s capabilities across Quinn London projects. Subcontractors access the platform’s single source of truth, and site managers access information as and when they need it.
With health and safety requirements changing rapidly, this synchronous availability of information has helped across the Central London division’s decision-making where on-site staff make decisions on travel to and from specific projects. The controlled transparency of the platform also allows clients to assess project progress in real-time, and meet valuations through on-demand accessibility of project photos. Cloud-based, remote visibility into the project also reduces the number of site visits which would otherwise cause difficulties during COVID-19 restrictions.
Acting as a single source of truth for projects and defining workflow processes such as RFIs and health and safety checks, Procore provides access to all of Quinn London’s important information in one place. This allows their customers to log on at any time, from any location, with a real-time view of project status.
For Jack, this is hugely beneficial: "Our clients love using the tools. Thanks to Procore, having access to photos on demand allows our clients to feel connected to their project without having to travel to the site. It also helps us at Quinn London provide a better overall customer experience. This has meant we’ve worked as efficiently and safely as possible during COVID restrictions. With the easy upload feature, customers have a much better idea of the progress being made than they would have with manual tools."
