Customer Stories
Sweco keeps the East Link project on track with Hoylu
est. 1889 as Theorell Installationskonsult AB, later acquired by Sweco Stockholm, Sweden
Europe’s leading engineering and architecture consultancy
Hoylu Value
Reduced meeting time by 15 hours per week
Lessened administrative burden of plan maintenance
Strengthened and streamlined safety procedures
The Sweco Group is Europe’s leading engineering and architecture consultancy. Operating across eight business areas in 15 European countries, the firm employs 22,000 architects and engineers to deliver some of the built environment’s most complex projects. With a strong focus on sustainable design and digitalization, Sweco addresses three segments: Buildings and Urban Areas; Water, Energy, and Industry; and Transportation Infrastructure.
Introduction
The Nyköping Travel Center (Resecentrum) project is part of the Swedish Transport Administration’s (Trafikverket) ambitious “East Link” (Ostlänken) double-track railway project. The East Link project entails 160 kilometers of double-track rail between Järna and Linköping, including tunnels, bridges, and new stations. With the goal of offering greater train connectivity and expanding the labor market via convenient and sustainable travel, the project began in 2024 and is slated for completion in 2035. The Nyköping Travel Center will offer passengers an accessible travel hub that enables the fast and safe transfer between train, bus, automobile, and bicycle transport.
Challenge
The scale and duration of the East Link project necessitated precise and dynamic planning. The team had been using Excel for their field planning, but found it labor-intensive and time-consuming to keep it updated in response to changes from the contractor.
“We were looking at how to find a way to plan our work out in the field, and we couldn’t really find a good system,” explains Henrik Karlsson, coordinating builder controller for the Nyköping Travel Center. Karlsson’s role is to ensure on behalf of his client, the Swedish Transport Administration, that everything has been constructed according to plan and adheres to regulations.
Solution
Sweco’s regional director, Krister Ledberg, heard about Hoylu and set up a demo. “Directly when we saw the product, we knew this is what we were looking for,” says Karlsson. Impressed with the platform’s ease of use and versatility, the team opted to forego any onboarding and jumped in to learn by doing.
“I think we did it not the usual way, because we got Hoylu, we got access to it, and then we said we don’t want any introduction at all. We want to try it out ourselves, to see how it works, just play around to find our way,” explains Karlsson.
Their approach worked, and within weeks the entire team had adopted the platform seamlessly into their workflow without investing significant time in training. “We haven’t spent a lot of time training people. After thirty minutes, one hour, everybody can do it. We’ve got people from mid-twenties to mid-sixties, and everybody is getting on to it,” says Karlsson.
“It’s easy to learn, and I think that showed when we were playing around. Without introduction, we got the hang of it,” he adds.
Results
The team’s biggest gains since adopting Hoylu have been in time savings and efficiency. Karlsson estimates that it saves his team 15 hours per week of meeting time between field updates and stakeholder briefings. “We save a lot of time by using it. Otherwise, if we were using Excel, we would have to—every stage of the way—we would have to be updated from the guy out in the field,” he says.
Communication with their client, the project’s owner, is also better facilitated through Hoylu. “Trafikverket can go in anytime they want to and have a look at the schedule. The planning is there, and if they want to go in and have a look at it, they can do it. That’s one of the biggest benefits.”
In addition to time savings, the team has identified an innovative safety application for Hoylu. Calling their system “In field or in office”, they use Hoylu to track which personnel are on site at any given time. “That means that we have full control if there’s an accident outside on the construction site, we can go in Hoylu and see if we have any personnel out. We don’t have to call thirty people to see if they’re okay. We can see who’s out there. That’s something extra that we’ve built into the system so that we make sure that everybody comes home,” explains Karlsson.
About Hoylu
Our platform offers you and your team the power of unified planning with an intuitive solution that combines feature-rich whiteboarding, planning, and task management. Plan, engage, and visualize your projects with best-in-class usability and integrations. Bring your best ideas together with your best data across disparate teams and solutions for unified, unlimited, unbeatable construction project planning.