Airey & Coles

 

This is an edited transcript of an interview in June 2011 with Kate Talmage, practice manager at Airey and Coles, a private engineering consultancy firm providing structural and municipal engineering design expertise to the public sector and to private clients.

 

 

What was the initiative that led to the implementation of  Noveos software?

(Kate Talmage) “We had become aware that we needed a proper time recording system to replace the cumbersome paper and spreadsheets we were using. Initially, we had commissioned a bespoke solution from a software development company. However, the time and effort in designing and refining the first version became too onerous, and we decided to look to the package software market”.

 

What was your approach to implementing Noveos in the practice?

(KT) “We had heard enough about others’ success with Noveos and seen enough in the demos to go straight into business usage, beginning with the Time Recording module.  We simply mandated electronic time capture for all our engineers from a particular day forward - actually at quite short notice – and we just never looked back”.

 

“Noveos is easy to use, and has clearly been designed by people who know the business of professional practice management”. 

 

What were the first outcomes?

(KT) “We got time back that used to be spent by engineers and staff on laborious processes and which is now put to more value-add activities.  I do sometimes think about all the time we’d have saved if we’d done it years earlier”.

 

“Now I’d - say just go for it!”. 

 

Where would you highlight particular improvements in practice?

(KT)“The ability to see all the information in one place means we keep our projects on track and know early on when action is  needed  - protecting  delivery and margins,  if you like”.

 

While we were initially looking only for a time recording system, we’ve increasingly utilised other features of Noveos, and it now supports all our practice management and financial control. It covers everything we need, and the cost was a small fraction of what we’ve since got back out of the system in terms of productivity and time saved”.

 

How did you approach the up-front exercise of installing the Noveos system and populating it with your operational data?

(KT) “We were prepared to put in whatever effort was required to get started but it actually turned out not to be an issue. We used the Noveos Upload feature to get our history and client data into the system and took it from there”.