David Narro make their New Year's resolution

David Narro Associates is an Edinburgh and Glasgow based structural and civil engineering practice with projects ranging from house builds to the Royal Museum. With 25 employees and a 25 year history they have reached the stage where an investment in document management is required in order for the office to run efficiently.

With more and more practice communication being conducted by email, and with an increased volume of project documents, the challenge of storing, retrieving and controlling information was becoming unmanageable. Managing Director, David Narro explains: “We realised we need a tighter control on our email and document management. As our project work grows so does the documentation, and managing this well is really important to our business.”

David, and other key decision makers from across Business Development, Administration and IT, spent some time speaking to other practices and looking at the solutions on the market. After attending a Union Square Seminar in Edinburgh and being introduced to Workspace mini he saw the benefits this would bring to the business. “I liked the fact that it could be scaled to our exact requirements” Mr Narro explains. “We also chose to buy the Project Accounting product and integrate timesheets, resource scheduling and project financials centrally, with our project and document database.”

Workspace mini is a leading knowledge management software for small to medium businesses in the construction industry supply chain. It stores project information in one central repository against projects, organisations and contacts. With the addition of Project Accounting, David Narro Associates will use this central database to manage all speculative, order book and project work and track job costing and project profitability.

The organisation is at the first stage of implementation, and looking to go live early in the New Year. All staff have been kept informed about the new system and a working group has been set up to keep the project on track. The concept received a positive response across the business, with everyone welcoming, and excited about, the change.