Robertson Group streamlines governance and information management with SharePoint and Bridgeall

Summary

Robertson is one of the largest independently owned construction, infrastructure and support services companies in the United Kingdom. Covering the entire built environment lifecycle, Robertson comprises 22 businesses throughout the UK, and employs over 3,000 people. Robertson operates in construction civil engineering, property development, facilities management, timber engineering, and more.

Challenge

Embarking on a Group wide review of its systems and governance, Robertson was looking to develop a Microsoft SharePoint system by which its governing documents would be managed.  Further, its construction business was keen to maximize SharePoint’s functionality in the management of its project information.

Strategy

Robertson reached out to Bridgeall to develop a solution to meet its general governance and project specific needs. Bridgeall made use of Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint Online and used the Content Type Hub to create a solution that would provide a secure governance management system with direct links to its project information management solution.

Results

The developments simplified the approval of governance documents through the development of an approvals workflow which relied on the identification of responsible and accountable owners. These owners were identified when the document was created in SharePoint, and when a major version was published it was sent to the accountable owner for review and approval using SharePoint workflow. Once approved by the accountable owner, it was then made available to each of the existing project sites.

As forms were approved and shared via SharePoint before being distributed to the project sites, users could be confident that they were making use of the latest form template. The use of metadata, term sets, and content types all contributed to the management system being easy to use for end users, allowing them to find the single source of truth and the owners who were accountable for it.

This SharePoint solution allows Robertson Construction Group to focus on each project with the full knowledge that any forms they require are the latest authorized version. In addition, content owners can create and update all governing documents with the full knowledge that they will only be available company-wide once the accountable owner has approved their content.