Case study
Four systems, one trusted picture
Scaling delivery safely takes control — revenue and margin for a contractor, AMP8 outputs and ODIs for a water company. We built that control for a Tier-1 UK design-and-build contractor by weaving four project-controls systems — 130 live P6 projects, more than 6,000 open jobs — into one governed Microsoft Fabric estate: a reporting suite of trusted numbers for board or regulator.
The challenge
The client’s executive set out to grow turnover to 2030 while holding margin — and growth multiplies project count, complexity and risk faster than back-office capacity can follow. Analytics had to protect margin. Project controls sat in four platforms that did not talk to each other: P6 for schedule, a long-serving work recording system for cost and revenue, and spreadsheets for risk and resourcing. Reconciliation was manual, monthly reporting ran on manual assembly, and forecasts were least reliable exactly where the board needed them most. The transformation also had to land across a live portfolio — reporting to the water company could not stutter while the estate changed underneath it.
Our approach
We began with discovery — every result given a named owner and a baseline drawn from the client’s own data — then joined the four platforms into Microsoft Fabric one governed domain at a time: schedule, then cost and revenue, then risk and resourcing, each wave going live behind reconciliation gates. Legacy reports were retired only after their replacements had reconciled to source and parallel-run a full monthly cycle, so the board was never without a trusted number.
Capability transferred as we built, through an embedded developer residency: the client’s team now runs the Fabric estate day to day, and our role has stepped down to third-line support. Every phase was a fixed price against defined outputs, with continuation earned at each gate.
"It has been quite a change in people’s day-to-day, but it has gone well. The project has enabled people to understand that change isn’t as scary as we think" — Transformation Lead, Tier One Contractor Client
Outcomes
- One reconciled model across schedule, cost, risk and resourcing — manual reporting assembly eliminated
- More than 35 legacy reports consolidated or replaced
- Over 50 hours of report preparation released each month, plus two director-days returned
- A £1.17 million benefits case at a 3:1 benefit–cost ratio, confirmed by joint review
- More than 500 licensed users
- In train: a 3 per cent margin improvement worth £1.5 million a year
"I’ve never felt more in control of the business, it’s the best mapping tool I have ever seen and it’s making a huge difference. It’s not a nice to have, or bells and whistles, it’s part of the fabric, it’s our BAU, it’s how we run the business" — Performance Director, Tier One Contractor Client
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