Customer Stories
Veidekke and AFRY strengthen and streamline Oslo’s government quarter
Veidekke ASA
est. 1936
Oslo, Norway
Norway’s largest construction and civil engineering company
AFRY AB
est. 1895 as Ångpanneförenigen (The Southern Swedish Steam Generator Association)
Stockholm, Sweden
International engineering, design, and advisory company
Hoylu Value
Simplified visualization of a highly complex project
Increased interdisciplinary collaboration and accountability
Facilitated seamless data syncing via Jira integration
Veidekke ASA is a Scandinavian contractor and infrastructure firm specializing in roads, tunnels, bridges, and housing. Founded in Norway in 1936 as a cobblestone cutting and laying business, Veidekke has grown into an organization of over 8,000 people, spread across four business areas; Construction, Civil Engineering and Infrastructure, Asphalt, and Environmental Work. With a strong focus on sustainability, Veidekke strives to deliver performance with meaning.
AFRY AB is an international engineering, design, and advisory company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Formed from a 2019 merger of ÅF and Pöyry, but with roots dating back to 1895, AFRY has offices in 40 countries and employs over 19,000 employees globally. Divided across three sectors; infrastructure, industry, and energy, AFRY’s mission is to accelerate the transition to a sustainable society through its five divisions: Infrastructure, Industrial and Digital Solutions, Process Industries, Energy, and Management Consulting.
Introduction
The government quarter of Oslo is undergoing major reconfiguration to improve the security of the government buildings and Oslo’s city center. The project entails refurbishing and upgrading two tunnels in Oslo’s inner ring road. The road must be lowered by approximately 10 meters and subsequently refurbished and extended. The goal of the project is to reduce the amount of road in close proximity to Oslo’s government buildings. AFRY and Veidekke are both contracted on this major infrastructure project.
Challenge
The reconfiguration of the ring road is highly complex. The project site is in the middle of the city with buildings alongside the length of the two tunnels, as well as on top. The Hammersborgtunnelen is being expanded from 380 to 480 meters, and the Vaterlandtunnelen from 370 to 400 meters. Large parts of the road need to be demolished and rebuilt in a crowded city center.
Familiar with sticky-note based planning from other projects, the team wanted to avoid the time spent transferring sticky note planning into Excel. The team had also used Miro in the past, but had been frustrated by its functionality limitations and were in search of a more purpose-built solution.
Solution
When the team learned about Hoylu, they quickly found solutions to some of the gaps in their workflow and collaboration. The ability to add different types of information to Hoylu’s “smart stickies” was a game changer. “It’s Miro, just better,” says Thomas Hov, project engineer at Veidekke.
“You can put in more information inside. It’s not just a note, but you can add a discipline and you can also have a root cause when something goes wrong or is delayed. So, you get stats on what you can do better. You get more information in one note, that’s the advantage,” explains Marius Drevland, BIM and VDC manager at AFRY.
The team quickly implemented Hoylu as their tool for weekly status meetings. “We have weekly meetings with the leaders of all the different disciplines. They have access to the plan themselves, and they can go in and put in tasks. And then in the meetings, we check out what’s been done for the past week and update the upcoming weeks with new tasks and commit to the tasks that we need beforehand,” says Hov.
Onboarding was straightforward, and within a few weeks the entire team was comfortable using the platform. “It’s fairly simple to use, and we could get plenty of help if we needed to,” says Hov. Simplicity is key when it comes to visualizing such a complex project. “It’s a lot simpler than a big master schedule. It’s more visual,” he adds.
Results:
Communication and collaboration improvements
The team has seen a significant improvement in their project communication, particularly between different disciplines. Communication is facilitated by a question-and-answer matrix within Hoylu where any discipline can ask or respond to a question for another discipline.
“We get people to talk to each other and they communicate better. We get people to address their needs, and say, ‘Hey, we need this to do our job, to do this task.’ And they talk to the other disciplines, and they coordinate their work much better together,” says Hov.
The improvement in communication has fostered a greater sense of accountability. “I think they feel more committed to tasks, and they feel bad if they don’t complete on time. And so they have some pressure on them,” says Hov.
Results:
Streamlined digitalization via integrations
The team has also benefitted from the efficiency of digital planning. “The advantage is if you do the planning first in Hoylu, you have it already digitalized, and you can convert it to other formats if you need. And you can work on it whenever, wherever you are. Today, we often have hybrid meetings where we have people in a meeting room and also in home office or other places in the world,” explains Drevland.
The ability to convert information from Hoylu into other formats is particularly useful, as the team uses Jira in combination with Hoylu. With Hoylu’s Jira integration, the team can import and export milestones and other key information to keep all project-related data up to date across their systems.
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.