Primavera Unifier is now the university’s central repository for all CAPEX and OPEX spending throughout the construction-operation lifecycle. All campus capital spend (from inception to commissioning) and every facility (under construction and completed) is tracked in Unifier. Preventive and corrective work orders and all facility assets are tracked in Unifier’s Facilities and Asset Management (FAM) module.

“This 14-month project involved close coordination with multiple cross-functional partners within the university, and complex bidirectional integrations with Unifier,” said Jyotsna Bharadwaj, Gaea’s university project manager. “This implementation is the first and largest Unifier FAM solution with an active user base. Our process here will be used as a model for future implementations at higher-education institutions.”

The post Leading University in West Virginia Modernizes Systems for Effective Cost Control and Facility Management appeared first on Gaea.

Arlington County is located across the Potomac river from Washington, D.C. Arlington Public Schools (APS) is the thirteenth-largest of Virginia’s 132 school divisions and has a total FY19 budget of more than $637M. APS includes 33 schools covering a population of 26 square miles and 225,200 people. Projected pre-K-12 enrollment for 2019 is 28,020.

The Challenge

The APS design and construction department wanted to replace their legacy project management information system (PMIS), Primavera Contract Management (PCM), with Primavera Unifier. Oracle officially ended support for PCM in October 2016. APS wanted the new system to serve as a unified, single-source-of-truth project management information system with a single-point-of-entry data repository. The new PMIS needed to handle project management activities related to project controls (including submittals, RFIs, meeting minutes, action items), project financials (budgets, commitments, payments), and document management.

PCM lacked the ability to host large project files, forcing APS to use additional software to manage most project documentation. Skysite, for example, was used to manage submittals, and caused effort duplication because the submittal workflow was managed in PCM while the actual submittal file was in Skysite.

The Solution

APS hired Gaea for the end-to-end Primavera Unifier implementation, including Unifier Project Controls and Cost Controls, and migration of PCM data and reports into Unifier. Gaea led the project, including discovery, definition of 36 business processes, configuration, and numerous out-of-the-box (OOTB) reports. The entire project spanned eight months from start to finish, including three months of data migration.

Gaea and APS staff managed the project. Gaea developed scripts to extract more than 87 gigabytes of data from PCM and Skysite and migrated the data. 71,000 records from 20 projects (10 active, 10 completed) were migrated from PCM to Unifier. Most of the legacy system financial information was imported into Unifier through .csv templates Gaea provided to APS.

The APS core team and project managers did extensive validation and back checks on the migrated data. Once data validation was completed, APS gave Gaea the go-ahead to migrate to the newly implemented system. Gaea trained APS staff with role-based training for CMAs, AEs, CMRs, and GCs along with a train-the-trainer approach for the APS core team.

The new APS project information management system is used to manage more than $200M in development, renovation, and expansion projects for its schools and technology centers. Ten projects are currently active. Congratulations to everyone at APS and Gaea whose hard work and dedication was instrumental in the making the Arlington Public Schools Unifier implementation project a huge success!

The post Arlington Public Schools Project Management Information System is Live! appeared first on Gaea.

Established in 1834, Milwaukee County is the most populous county in Wisconsin and the 45th most populous in the United States, with approximately 951,000 residents as of 2016.

The Milwaukee County Architecture Engineering and Environmental Services section (AE&ES) manages an average of 250 to 300 capital projects and launches 50 to 80 new projects each year, a total fiscal responsibility of $300M to $400M for the entire portfolio. Major project categories include highways, mass transit, airports, and environmental.

The Challenge

Since 1996, AE&ES used Oracle Primavera Contract Management (PCM) on-premise to manage its capital projects. PCM reached its official end of life in October 2016. County wanted to replace the existing PCM solution with Oracle Primavera Unifier to improve the AE&ES capital project management process, to centralize and standardize management of capital portfolio projects, and to provide improved reporting capabilities on a cloud-based, supported, stable platform.

The Solution

Milwaukee County hired Gaea for the end-to-end Primavera Unifier implementation, including requirements definition, design, configuration, testing, installation, and training. Gaea led the project, including discovery work, definition of 45 business processes, and configuration work, and County provided project management and subject-matter expertise to support the process.

Gaea and County staff collaboratively managed the project. Gaea led the business requirements analysis and documentation process with County in a supporting role. Gaea trained County staff with a train-the-trainer approach.

“Milwaukee County greatly appreciated Gaea’s expertise and confidence implementing Primavera Unifier and migrating County from PCM to Unifier. Gaea’s methodology assessed County business processes and used a multi-stage, iterative approach that leveraged their knowledge and understanding of how businesses operate, what was working, and what needed improvement.”

“Gaea worked collaboratively with County to ensure that the Unifier solution is holistic, adoptable, scalable, and sustainable. County immediately realized value from Gaea’s experience around best practices, functional and technical knowledge of Primavera Unifier, and gained further business value by using Gaea as the sole implementation consulting firm.” – Greg High, Milwaukee County, Director AE&ES

Congratulations to everyone at County and Gaea whose hard work and dedication was instrumental in making the Milwaukee County project a huge success!

The post Milwaukee County Project Management Information System Goes Live! appeared first on Gaea.

The Gaea and RWDC combined team selected the Oracle Primavera suite for a comprehensive project controls solution. After evaluating a comprehensive qualitative and quantitative set of metrics which aligned with RWDC strategic goals, Gaea and RWDC collaborated to present a strong business case for implementing an enterprise-grade, scalable project controls solution.

A very big thank you for all the support from Oracle Primavera and Gaea’s impressive pre-sales staff! The Gaea implementation team is raring to make RWDC another client successfully using Oracle Primavera!

 

 

The post Gaea chosen by RagingWire to implement Oracle Primavera Cloud appeared first on Gaea.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Gaea Global Technologies, a leader in systems integration and business process improvement, today announced that it has received a Strategic Contribution award from Oracle’s Construction and Engineering Global Business Unit.

Gaea, an Oracle Platinum Partner, was recognized by Oracle Construction and Engineering for significant and strategic contributions to the global business unit’s success in North America and Latin America. The award also recognized Gaea as a key development partner contributing to the successful release of Oracle’s Primavera Unifier Facilities and Real Estate Management.

Gaea acted as an extension to Oracle’s development team, providing subject matter expertise and technical resources to help Oracle deliver its Primavera Unifier Facilities and Real Estate Management solution. The robust facilities and real estate management solution enables management of an entire real estate portfolio while empowering users to adapt to changing rules and compliance requirements and optimize strategic decision-making.

“For more than ten years, the Oracle and Gaea alliance has delivered successful solutions for Oracle customers,” said Mike Sicilia, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Construction and Engineering. “This is the latest example of our joint commitment to making IT more responsive, agile and valuable to project-driven and capital-intensive industries.”

“It is an honor to receive this award recognizing Gaea’s deep domain expertise and excellence in delivering leading edge Oracle solutions to the marketplace,” said Sury Balasubramanian, Gaea’s Co-Founder. “We strongly believe that Gaea’s strategic alliance with Oracle will continue to produce high return on investment on Oracle’s products to our customers. The award also is a testimonial to our strength in delivering successful implementations and the ability to be trusted advisors to our enterprise customers who will continue to successfully adopt the latest Oracle’s Construction and Engineering solutions.”

For more information about Gaea’s award, visit http://gaeaglobal.com/oracle-award-2017.

About Gaea

Gaea Global Technologies, Inc. (Gaea) is an award-winning Oracle Platinum Partner and Oracle development partner, specializing in supply chain management and project portfolio management solutions. Our business process and information technology experts provide innovative and cost-effective solutions that improve operations of some of the largest and most complex firms in the world. Gaea’s high-value services and omni-channel capabilities deliver managed risks, actionable insights, agility, scalability and profitability. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Gaea has offices in Chennai and Bangalore India, to support its global clientele. Learn more about Gaea at gaeaglobal.com.

About Oracle

Oracle offers a comprehensive and fully integrated stack of Cloud applications and platform services. For more information about Oracle, visit www.oracle.com.

About Oracle Construction and Engineering

Oracle Construction and Engineering helps companies reimagine their businesses. With best-in-class project management solutions, organizations can proactively manage projects, gain complete visibility, improve collaboration, and manage change. Our cloud-based solutions for global project planning and execution can help improve strategy execution, operations, and financial performance. For more information, please visit www.oracle.com/construction-and-engineering.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

About Oracle’s Primavera Unifier Facilities and Real Estate Management

Oracle’s Primavera Unifier Facilities and Real Estate Management is a cloud-based as well as on-premise powerful and easy to use solution for managing properties and facilities. It provides automation and flexibility to handle customer-specific facilities management needs, including service requests, preventive and corrective maintenance, inventory, inspections, facility condition assessments, and space management. Like other Primavera Unifier solutions for capital projects, Primavera Unifier Facilities and Real Estate Management provides task reminders, notifications, document management and visualization, messaging, and actionable reporting.

Contact:
Gaea Global Technologies, Inc.
sales@gaeaglobal.com
844 987 4232

The post Gaea Global Technologies Wins Strategic Contribution Award from Oracle appeared first on Gaea.

Collaborate is the annual Oracle user group conference. This year, Gaea was the only Oracle partner recognized by the Oracle Construction and Engineering Global Business Unit (CEGBU) for our significant and strategic contribution to Oracle successes in North America and Latin America!

Gaea was also recognized for being a key Oracle development partner. Gaea was the only Oracle partner to contribute to a successful release of Oracle Primavera Unifier Facilities and Real Estate Management (FREM).

“For more than ten years, the Oracle and Gaea alliance has delivered successful solutions for Oracle customers. This solution is the latest example of our joint commitment to making IT more responsive, agile, and valuable to project-driven and capital-intensive industries.”
– Mike Sicilia, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Construction and Engineering

Gaea team members Vaibhav, Gokul, and Santosh were on hand at Collaborate17 to receive the award from Mark Webster, Executive Vice President, Oracle Construction and Engineering Global Business Unit.

Gaea would like to thank Oracle, our clients, and our partners around the globe. And a big thank you to the entire Gaea team for your continued effort toward achieving success!

The post Gaea Recognized by Oracle Construction and Engineering Global Business Unit (CEGBU) appeared first on Gaea.

About LBCC

LBCC is a community college founded in 1927, with two campuses in Long Beach, California. LBCC currently has almost 25,000 students enrolled across 820 courses and 3,148 class sections. The two campuses cover 142.1 acres and employ more than 1,600 full-time and part-time staff and faculty.

The Challenge

During our assessment, we reviewed LBCC’s existing project management information system (PMIS), and met with the LBCC construction and program management team of approximately 20 people. LBCC’S PMIS was made up of several disconnected systems, including Oracle Primavera Contract Management (PCM) for project controls, PeopleSoft (ERP), Primavera P6 for scheduling. Other peripheral systems included email, Word, Excel, and hard copies of documents.

Our analysis revealed the lack of an integrated, end-to-end solution. The results? Low visibility, data-entry errors, data silos, redundant information, inconsistent coding, inconsistent storage, and duplication of work. In addition, a serious bottleneck was created by multiple users submitting data to a single system administrator for entry.

During discovery, the construction management (CM) team stated that the current system is operating at approximately 20% efficiency when compared to a fully-integrated, coded, and connected system with effective data entry and workflow processes. If a perfect system score is 100%, the goal of the LBCC CM team was to improve their PMIS to at least 65% through available means. The general consensus of comments related to challenge areas was the need to improve standardization of business processes (BPs) and system access. Improvement of these key fundamentals was required for timely data gathering, to support key performance indicators (KPIs) across management levels, and to increase and add business efficiency.

The Solution

Our recommendations covered several areas. One, a revision of current LBCC systems and processes in order to maximize productivity and reduce errors. Two, a potential new project management system and related processes that would enhance the ability of LBCC to manage projects and overcome current system limitations. And three, integrations and processes designed to provide end-to-end system support for program and project management.

LBCC could upgrade from PCM 13.0 to 14.xx under their Oracle maintenance plan, or to select another system. Our post-assessment report included additional recommendations for LBCC. By migrating from PCM to Unifier, LBCC would have a future-proof project management solution (PCM support ended in April 2016). LBCC would also have additional functionality that would prove to be very valuable in many areas as they moved forward.

Further performance increases were also recommended, including several integrations:

• integration with PeopleSoft (cost control)
• integration between PeopleSoft and the cost management system (document control), and
• integrating contract and financial management (cost control).

The fully-integrated system recommended by Gaea gives LBCC total visibility, maximum efficiency, and reduces manual processes and errors by a significant margin.

U.S. Communities for the Best Project Management Information System Pricing

In order to secure the best pricing for LBCC and to streamline the contract process, we leveraged our partnership with DLT Solutions and U.S. Communities. Another win/win solution for another higher learning institution!

The post Project Management Information System Review: LBCC appeared first on Gaea.

What’s new in Unifier 16.1 Overview

• FREM enhancements
• Primavera Unifier mobile app for iOS
• Project Controls enhancements
• Primavera Analytics enhancements
• AutoVue 3D support
• Usability enhancements

FREM Enhancements Overview

Space Manager Enhancements

Query-Based Tabs on Space Records

Unifier 16.1 extends support for query-based tabs (QBTs) functionality — currently seen in line item and cost business processes — to Space Manager records. The enhancement enables the creation of QBTs to view, summarize, and report on occupants, equipment, assets, and work orders in a space.

The implementation requires the placement of a space picker on the source business process upper form to link the space record to the business process. A maximum of 8 QBTs are allowed in uDesigner.

Summary elements (Average, Count, Total, Maximum and Minimum) can be placed on the detail form of the space type. Note: Item Logs node is not available for space QBTs.

After a space type with QBTs is deployed from uDesigner, the functionality is available in User mode on the space record of that type. In User mode, use Create, Copy, and Find features in the tab. The enhancement supports custom prints, custom reports, and UDRs (summary elements information).

To access this feature:
In uDesigner, navigate to a space type in Space Manager. Click Query Items to access Query Tabs and Summary Elements.

In User Mode, navigate to Space Manager in a project. Open any space record to display the QBTs, if designed.

Space and Level QBTs on Business Process Records

In Unifier 16.1, line item and cost business processes now support query-based tabs for level and space objects from Space Manager. For example, the Employees business process can have Floors and Spaces QBTs to show their physical location. Similarly, Lease business process can display tabs for a list of floors and spaces to manage their leases.
The method for defining space and level query tabs is the same as for business process query tabs. Labels and names of dialogs have changed to cater to this enhancement. For example, the dialog is now named Select Business Process/Attribute. The label in the Reference BP field is now Reference BP/Attribute.

Space and level QBTs support the definition of summary elements of all type — Average, Count, Total, Maximum and Minimum. They can then be placed in the upper form of parent business processes.

After space and level QBTs are defined, they are automatically available in Item Logs where they can be renamed and have queries defined to filter display of their records at runtime.

Unlike business process QBTs, you cannot create new space or level records within QBTs in User mode. You can copy or edit records displayed in the tabs. In company-level business processes, space/level QBTs have only the Find functionality. New and Copy are not available.

HTML Print, and Custom Print are available to print space and level QBTs. Custom reports and UDRs can be used to report on summary element values.

To access this feature:
In uDesigner, navigate to a line item/cost type business process in Business Processes. Click Query Items to access Query Tabs and Summary Elements. Use Item Logs to rename and define queries in the space/level QBTs.

In User Mode, navigate to a business process log in a project or company workspace, which has the space/level QBTs defined. Open any record to view and use the QBTs and summary elements.

Space Manager Levels UI Changes

In Unifier 16.1, the landing page of a level record has been enhanced. When you open a level record from the levels log, the level details page opens. The first column displays an icon to indicate if a level drawing file has been uploaded. The landing page in earlier Unifier versions displayed the level drawing on the upper section and a mini-log below, which displayed its related spaces. The level drawing did not display optimal quality.

Click Spaces on the details toolbar to view the related spaces of the level record.

Click View on Drawing to open the associated level drawing file. This uses a supported version of DWF viewer / Autodesk Design Review that allows you to view polylines for a space in the space grid. View the drawing file from the Attachments window using AutoVue to comment or mark up. Both are existing functionality.

Note that Spaces and View on Drawing functions are also available on the Levels log toolbar to view related spaces and drawings for a selected level record in the log.

Also note that options that were available in the mini-log and relevant to the drawing file — Bulk Edit, Fill by, and Text by — have been removed.

To view this feature:
In User mode, navigate to the Levels log in Space Manager in a project. View the enhanced log. Also, open any level record to view the details page and its functions.

Preventive Maintenance Enhancements

Pushing changes from PM Book Templates

Push changes from a PM Book template to all or selected PM Books that were created using this template. For example, push changes in frequency of maintenance documented in PM Books or additional maintenance items from PM Book Templates.

Typically, an asset business process (BP) auto-creates a PM Book after picking a PM Book Template. The asset is generated from an Asset Template. In previous versions of Unifier, when changes were made to the PM Book Template (or Asset Template), there was no way to push these changes to the PM Books generated from the PM Book Template (or via the asset BP). Customers had to manually update the records, which potentially led to errors.

Unifier Administration Mode

A new node, Business Process Updates, has been introduced in the Administration Mode Navigator of Company Workspace and shells. This is where updates from PM Book Template can be made to the PM Book records.

The toolbar options of the log allow you to create new update requests from PM Book Template records, cancel a request, or open an existing request.

New set of Administration Mode Access permissions has been introduced for the Business Process Updates Log.

Updates from PM Book Template:

• Impact PM Books generated from that template
• Can be real time or scheduled updates
• Modify all or selected PM Books — use the option to exclude PM Book records from updates.
• Select upper form fields
• Select rows from tabs
• Select fields from tabs
• Add new rows in tabs (Time based tabs only)
• Note: In order to update line items of PM Books, they must reference line items of PM Book Templates.

This capability is not available in project templates.

uDesigner

A new data element, uuu_no_upd (Prevent Business Process Updates?) can be placed in the upper forms of Asset, PM Book and PM Book template. If auto-creation has been defined from an Asset source — a PM Book template to a destination PM Book, then this field value is copied over at runtime.

To access this feature:
Company level PM Book Templates and PM Books: Navigate to Company Workspace tab, Administration Mode. Then, Name.

Project level PM Book Templates and PM Books: Navigate to the project tab, Administration Mode. Then, in the Navigator, select Business Process Updates under Setup.

The post What’s New in the FREM Module of Unifier 16.1? appeared first on Gaea.

We do it all.

I honestly do not think there is a partner out there who has the depth of skills we have in these products, much less combined with implementation skills to boot! Gaea has the largest Primavera consultant pool in the world. We are 125+ people scattered around the globe doing some tremendously cool things in this ecosystem.

We are not a single-dimensional, “hey, I do Unifier for a living…” organization. We take pride in stitching systems together and making them work together. People often tend to think of us as an integration company or just a bunch of techies who can tie systems together without understanding construction or complex project cost control.

Surprise!

You will be pleasantly surprised at the depth of knowledge at Gaea in all facets of enterprise project and portfolio management, its adjacency to other enterprise systems, and the overall understanding of how to make them work from a technology, domain, and implementation perspective.

Organizations in this ecosystem typically specialize in one or maybe two tools in an enterprise project management suite.

Gaea is different. Over the years, we have slowly and steadily built our talent pool to encompass the entire gamut of tools in the Primavera toolkit and I am very proud of that. Some examples:

Project Analytics.
Click logo for solution review.

P6, Unifier, BI.
Click logo for case study.

P6, Contract Management.
Click logo for solution review.

The post A Deservedly Hubristic View of Gaea’s Primavera Capabilities appeared first on Gaea.