When the second phase of Länsimetro started the negative attention due to the delays and budget overrun of the first phase presented a huge burden. The organisation took the feedback seriously and reformed its way to operate. A big room model was adopted alongside Situation Room, a unique concept in Finland. Within the Situation Room every worker from the big room gets to follow the advancements and forecasts of the project out of continuously updated touch screens.
Piwoot has the honour of being the developer and supplier of the electric platform of the Situation Room.
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most visible sections of the Situation Room are report views shown in the screens.
The Situation Room has been part of Länsimetro big room since winter 2018. Ten big touch screens fill the walls of the room and each of them represents fresh knowledge about the status of the vast project.
Länsimetro has seven main projects going on. Each of these projects is roughly worth 50 million euros plus all the smaller projects on the top of that. The second phase of Länsimetro comprises 38 contractors and suppliers from mining contractors to complete system suppliers. Each participating organisation provides Länsimetro with data about the proceedings. The data is refined and visualized into the Situation Room touch screens.
In order to understand the meaning of the Situation Room, one must understand the idea of the implementation and the changes made to the original idea of the project.
Every participant in the project agrees to co-operation and common goals. Additionally, a bonus system is based on common success and commonly shared responsibility.
An integral part of the project is the big room concept which means that different participants work within the same room and in tight co-operation. The Länsimetro big room model was so great a success that Projektiyhdistys Ry (Project Management Association Finland) awarded the concept with Project Achievement of the Year 2018.
“Fitting in the different sub-projects with the complication and length of the test phase hit us already in the first phase. We knew that we had to fix these in the second phase. The solutions were the big room concept and the situational leadership model. The Situation Room acts as a tool for leading the projects and its different sub-parts, although it could be also described as the nervous core of the big room and the whole undertaking,” explains Communications Manager Satu Linkola from Länsimetro Oy.
The idea of the Situation Room was born of a need to lead the undertaking wholly using data. Right from the start Timo Heiskanen, Head of Länsimetro Command Center, has been designing and implementing the Situation Room. Mr. Heiskanen previously combined Excel reports sent by the contractors to a single master report, printed relevant find
The added value of this first version of the Situation Room was quickly noted amongst people working in the big room. Piwoot stepped in to develop the Situation Room concept further with Mr. Heiskanen and to create a digital platform to deliver and enable automation behind the Situation Room.
“The greatest value of the Situation Room lies within its ability to bring the entire data of the undertaking to one place, enabling data-based decision making for everyone as a group and as individuals. A digital platform is needed to make this possible since the data is very shattered. A single data analytics tool is not enough but a solution is needed to gather, clean, visualize, interpret and share the data. Piwoot brought us this whole process”, mentions Heiskanen and continues: “We must utilise modern tools and leadership with data thinking, facts and the computer’s ability to remove manual labour from the process.”
The digital platform provided by Piwoot offers a technical realisation of Mr. Heiskanen’s vision. The platform is a comprehensive solution which offers automation of all the data refining and cleaning phases. These phases were originally done manually. Additionally, the data is fed directly into the platform by the contractors and suppliers themselves.
Ultimately this all leads to the Situation Room, the most ‘sexy’ part of Piwoot. Piwoot can provide you with this whole concept, or parts of it, based on your needs.
“Our solution is based on the concept of leading with data. In the background lies the understanding of nature and the meaning of the data. We have remarkable experts in our team developing the solution and I am very proud of the whole team,” explains one of the founders at Piwoot Oy, Stefan Sundell, and continues:
“Länsimetro is an exceptionally large undertaking and being part of it has grown our understanding and knowledge vastly. It has been great being a part of this story, seeing the acknowledgements given to the project and knowing we have been part of the success.”
