By Allan Tan | Jan 17, 2011
Established in the 1950s, Gammon Construction Limited (Gammon) built a solid reputation as a leading construction and engineering services group. With an annual turnover of US$1 billion and more than 3,500 employees overseeing complex projects in Hong Kong, Mainland China and Southeast Asia, the company has one of the strongest construction teams in the region. Notable projects in Hong Kong for the company include the Tsing Ma Bridge foundations, the Hennessy Centre, the MTR West Island Line and the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Western Corridor.
Asked about the role that Information Communications Technology (ICT) within Gammon, Horace Chu, Head of Information Management Services, Gammon Construction Limited, stresses the important role ICT plays a critical role in ensuring the company meets its commitment to the client, employees and shareholders of the company.
The construction business is both labor and time-sensitive. Most projects involve multiple parties, from materials suppliers, to contractors that perform specific functions like electricians, surveyors, carpenters, plumbers, architects, engineers, etc. With so many people involved in any one project, making sure that the right information is conveyed at the right time (all the time) is critical to ensuring a project is completed on time and on budget. In this regard, ICT plays a central role towards meeting these goals.
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"A lot of people don't realize how mission-critical IT is in the construction industry. Everything we do has to be agile. Projects often start on short notice and, once a tender has been awarded, we need to get up and running as quickly as possible. IT-enabled communication and collaboration is vital to accomplishing this. However, the remoteness of many project sites is a challenge. Many such environments don't even have telephone lines and the communications infrastructure required needs to be installed rapidly. The faster we start, the lower the risk," said Chu.
Within Gammon, day-to-day communication often comes by way of e-mail. E-mail forms the basis of most communications on project sites and between site workers and headquarters. However, managing an e-mail server onsite has disadvantages.
Job sites are prone to accidents with lots of people, equipment and materials moving about. In addition, the availability of power and communication networks is hampered by the nature of the business.
"Due to the rough environment of construction sites, hardware deterioration is a problem. Managing hardware infrastructure on a project site is difficult and costly,' Chu notes.
Most construction projects are completed in multiple phases with activities varying in complexity and degree of chaos at the site. This presents another challenge for IT, both operationally as well as managing IT costs.
"On construction projects, the demand for IT capacity can vary significantly during different phases. Our challenge is to provide IT services while minimizing the amount of IT assets we own," said Chu.
Hong Kong regulatory compliance stipulates that email correspondence needs to be maintained for seven years. At Gammon this entails dedicating resources and effort to archive email documents. According to Chu, "It is quite possible though that we may never really need to retrieve the email. The matter is further complicated by mailbox limitations. To save mailbox space, some site workers will save emails to their personal PCs, which can lead to compliance risks."
Gammon deploys Microsoft Exchange Servers at job sites. Each server will be deployed at the site for the duration of the project. As most projects span multiple years, and not all projects start and end at the same time. This forces Gammon to potentially incur additional cost deploying new servers where none is available for re-use. In addition, Gammon would also need to buy CAL license as well as client licenses.
The arrival of cloud computing services or a Software as a Service model made for a very compelling argument for Gammon. The company undertook a review of available options in the market looking at compatibility, scalability, ease of deployment and costs as factors to form part of the consideration.
In 2010, Gammon deployed its first Microsoft Exchange Online for 120 employees at a Gammon Joint Venture project.
"We considered several vendors for an online e-mail service. Eventually, we opted for Microsoft because Exchange Online could be easily integrated with our Active Directory, allowing us the flexibility to run a hybrid solution in the future if we wanted to. Equally important to our decision was the reputation for professionalism and quality that comes with the Microsoft brand. We couldn't afford to risk such a critical project on a vendor that did not have the experience to ensure the levels of performance we require," said Chu.
Microsoft Online Services are business-class communication and collaboration solutions delivered as a subscription service and hosted by Microsoft. With these offerings, customers can cost-effectively access the most up-to-date technologies and immediately benefit from streamlined communications, simplified management, and business-class reliability and security features. For IT staffers, Microsoft Online Services are backed by strong service level agreements and help reduce the burden of performing routine IT management, freeing up time to focus on core business initiatives.
Chu cites cost reduction, increased productivity and reliability, and improved compliance as compelling arguments for choosing Exchange Online.
Reduced costs – Exchange Online has enabled Gammon Construction to enjoy a lower total cost of ownership. The Microsoft solution means we can reduce the IT costs of a three-year construction project by about HK$100,000 – a 30% savings. The company has also seen a 10% reduction in the IT team's administrative workload. Managing users and troubleshooting is very easy with Exchange Online. Most actions and issues can be handled directly by a business analyst and do not require the expertise of an IT professional.
One of the most attractive features of Exchange Online for Gammon Construction is its flexibility. "The solution gives us the flexibility we need for joint-venture projects. We can respond to the peaks-and-valley nature of these projects by increasing or decreasing the number of e-mail accounts accordingly and we don't need to worry about the cost of asset underutilization. This, and the ability to deploy quickly with minimal capital investment, has helped reduce our operation costs by about 25%," said Chu.
Increased productivity – Within 6 months of deploying Exchange Online, Gammon Construction was already noting a 5% increase in productivity. It is now possible to very quickly add and update users from various projects and sites. Larger mailboxes and quick setup has increased staff productivity and speed of execution.
"The familiar interface also means that there have been no user uptake challenges. The service and performance is similar to the on-premise Exchange Server. In fact, the best testament to its performance is that most of our employees are not even aware that they are using an online service," Chu adds.
High standard of reliability – An important factor in Gammon Construction's decision to deploy Exchange Online was Microsoft's global network of data centers. One reason that we might hesitate when deploying a cloud solution is the question of performance when the infrastructure is hosted remotely by a vendor. The fact that Microsoft has data centers in Asia was a strong attraction. To date, the company has been highly satisfied with the reliability of the solution. Reliability is critical for us. Anything below 99.9% is unacceptable.
"Exchange Online has met our standards in that respect. Put it this way, the solution comes with 24/7 online and telephone support from Microsoft. However, I don't know anything about this service because Exchange Online has been so reliable we have not had to ask for troubleshooting support," reports Chu.
Improved compliance – With each user now allotted 25GB of mailbox space, Gammon Construction can easily and cost-effectively ensure the archival of e-mail correspondence for future reference. 100% uptime, larger mailboxes, rapid setup and a high level of flexibility means that Exchange Online can meet Gammon's demand for optimum IT services with minimum asset investment.
"With the positive experience gained so far, we will be considering the possibility of extending Exchange Online to other projects and we will also explore Microsoft Online Services solutions for document management and sharing workflows," said Chu.
"Businesses have unique needs and challenges at different times of their development and cloud solutions can help address them in one way or another," said David Hooper, information worker business group lead, Microsoft Hong Kong. "By taking advantage of the cloud, they can offer their employees real-time access and collaboration to certain applications, thus increasing their overall productivity and efficiency and focusing on more mission critical applications and business developments."
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