Property and management

At Atrium Software Ltd we have been successfully implementing software solutions into the public and private sector for some twenty years. During this time, we have seen many changes in the demands placed upon our users, notably the increasing pressure on Property Asset Managers to provide better value for money and efficiencies within their property portfolio to enable services to be delivered to a continuously improving standard. At the core of these demands is always the requirement to be better informed about the existing portfolio so that decisions regarding future requirements can be supported by robust data.

As the market has changed, Atrium has continued to adapt and develop its Atrium Property application to ensure it remains a market leader. We have recently completed an exciting eighteen month product roadmap development programme which has resulted in us having a fully web-enabled integrated system capable of meeting the challenges of today’s corporate property asset managers.

Strengthened by partnerships with facilities management companies such as Mouchel and Patech, with whom we are working closely as we enter this exciting growth phase, the on-going development of Atrium Property has enabled the company to go from strength to strength. We have seen growth in both the public and private sectors, with our clients realising the cost benefits gained from operating a single system that fulfils all their requirements – as the two case studies opposite attest.

Atrium develops, sells, implements and supports its own applications, all of which are fully web based, making them easy to access and use, as well as cost-effective to deploy and support. Atrium’s flagship product, Atrium Property, includes powerful new features such as web portals, GIS & CAD integration, mobile working, data entry wizards, workflow, quick alerts and interfaces seamlessly to third-party systems. The main Business Areas and integrated modules of Atrium Property are:

When London Continental Stations and Property (LCSP) selected Atrium Property, they knew they were not only procuring some first class property asset management software, but also that they had employed an Atrium project team who could complete a business-critical implementation to LCSP’s exacting timescale.

LCSP (a subsidiary of London & Continental Railways, the company responsible for the design, construction and operation of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link) relies on Atrium Property as part of the infrastructure needed to manage the newly refurbished St Pancras station and their other properties, including Stratford station serving the 2012 Olympic site. The speed of development at St Pancras and the need for the system to be live when the station opened, meant Atrium and LCSP had just six weeks from contract signature to go live.

Despite this tight deadline, Atrium Property went live right on schedule and to budget, and now plays an important role in helping LCSP meet its regulatory and business objectives. The system is fully supported, both in terms of infrastructure (Atrium is responsible for hosting this web-based software) and operationally (using Atrium’s help desk services).

To meet LCSP’s wide-ranging requirements, Atrium deployed the Portfolio Inventory module which stores, maintains and reports on the physical structure of the entire property and asset portfolio. With this core module, Atrium then added the work delivery modules – orders, contracts and projects – to enable LCSP to log and track reactive and planned work against any building or asset. The contractor module followed, enabling external contractors to remotely accept/decline work, log completion and submit requests for payment. Then came the request portal, enabling LCSP’s external users to log on-line requests, and the request management module, enabling LCSP to manage these requests. (This was essential functionality for LCSP as it means users within the control room can log requests out of hours, and these requests can then be managed the following day with work orders created where necessary.)

The implementation was completed with the set-up of reports and portal perspectives, providing LCSP with comprehensive, up-to-date and easily accessible management information.

The whole implementation – which included project management and business consultancy, data collection and migration, software deployment and configuration, user testing and training – was split into two phases: Phase one (April-June 2007) involved the implementation of the property structure and the orders module; and Phase two (July-October 2007) focused on the implementation of the contracts and projects modules, the contractor interface, request portal, request management and portal perspectives.

When Durham University undertook a technology strategy review, focusing on improving efficiency within the University by centralising their numerous ad-hoc, departmental systems, they naturally turned to Atrium Software.
Durham is a world class university with over 15,000 students and an annual turnover of £160m. Their computer facilities are managed by Unisys, and it is with Unisys that Atrium has been contracted for some ten years.

The Estates and Buildings Department at Durham University were using Atrium Property as a helpdesk system to log reactive work orders relating to their property portfolio, but alongside this, they also maintained an access database to hold additional data about each property.

Unisys asked Atrium to provide a centralised solution which would combine the functionality of the Access database with the new Atrium Property database to ensure that all data could be stored and reported on from a single system. Atrium’s solution enabled Durham University to customise the physical structure of their property portfolio, configure flexi-fields to hold specialised property data and create reactive and planned work requests against buildings, rooms and assets using Atrium Property’s orders, contracts and projects modules.

Atrium’s consultancy team used the company’s standard project management methodology which utilises tools and techniques based on PRINCE2 to ensure implementation projects run to objective, timescale and budget. The key stages were: establish working relationships, analyse requirements, planning, delivery and post implementation review.

Durham University and Unisys set the go live deadline at 1 August 2007 – for business reasons it was imperative that the solution was up and running by that date – and so a project plan was put in place to ensure this schedule would be met … which of course it was.