Bovis Lend Lease is finalist in Construction News Quality in Construction Awards 2008.

Bovis Lend Lease was shortlisted in the 'Excellence in the use of ICT' category of the Construction News Quality in Construction Awards 2008, for its efforts to develop a new web-based business management platform in partnership with BIW Technologies. The project was described as follows:

For several years Bovis has benefited from its own bespoke business management system, Hummingbird (named after the old Bovis logo). But by 2003, following the takeover by Lend Lease a couple of years previously, Hummingbird was showing its age.

With the acquisition came the opportunity to replace Hummingbird with a new and more appropriate IT system. Rather than attempt to develop a new system in-house, BLL embarked upon a process of selecting a specialist external partner to tailor a system to the specific requirements of the business. The idea was to procure its new system on a 'software as a service' basis, removing the reliance on in-house IT provision and getting more cost certainty.

In December 2004, BLL and its chosen IT partner, BIW Technologies, started work on the new system. Crucially, the team recognised that introducing a new business management system also meant changing people's working patterns: there was a cultural change about to take place as well as a technological one.

The development process required exceptionally close liaison between BLL and BIW - both had staff members seconded to the other. In-house, BLL also worked at encouraging people to act as "change agents" to help implement the the new system.

That system, called InTouch, now sits across the whole BLL structure, unifying disparate functions and enabling an unprecedented flow of information. "For the first time, our financial director can interrogate the financial performance of any of our projects," says ICT programme managaer Glyn Jones. "We're seeing the benefits starting to ripple across the supply chain," he adds.

THE JUDGES SAID:

"This was a major investment of strategic importance to the business. I like the crossover with BIW - they've genuinely worked in partnership on this."