Interserve is one of the world’s foremost support services and construction companies. Powerproject is one of a suite of tools it uses for project planning. On a recent project to deliver seven schools simultaneously across Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Berkshire, it explored what the companion app, Site Progress Mobile, could do to improve the collection, management and integration of progress updates, and discovered significant benefits in terms of time.
In 2015 Interserve signed a joint venture deal to build seven new schools for students in Hertfordshire, Luton and Reading. The £135m project now delivers 8,900 student places, of which 900 were newly-created through the new build Priority Schools Building Programme.

About Interserve
Interserve are a successful, growing, international business: a leader in innovative and sustainable outcomes for their clients. They offer construction, equipment services, facilities management and frontline public services. Interserve are headquartered in the UK and FTSE listed.
Managing a multi-site build is always a significant challenge, requiring the tightest of project management both individually, and in terms of oversight and co-ordination between projects. Interserve uses Powerproject planning software for that purpose on many of its projects.
Multi-site activities multiply at fitout stage
As the project approached the fitout stage, it was clear that the number of activities would increase exponentially, and that tracking project progress in the critical final phase would become challenging. With seven schools, of broadly similar configuration, size and shape, with fitout sometimes happening on multiple storeys or in separate classroom blocks, it was evident that tracking progress accurately through each location was imperative.
“Site Progress Mobile has made the data collection and collation associated with progress monitoring much more straightforward. The fact you can attach a photo directly to a relevant task or bar line and add comments to it, is brilliant. It’s easy and simple to use, and it makes life easier.”
With a vast number of activities to manage across seven geographically separate sites, Interserve decided to use the Site Progress Mobile app, a companion tool for Powerproject programmes that is specifically designed to help track progress on the move and out on site.
Peter Farmer, one of the Senior Planning Engineers at Interserve Construction’s Strategic Projects division, explained that: “Before Site progress Mobile, capturing progress updates was time consuming. By the time you had walked the site, gone top to bottom of the building, input the data into the programme, assessed progress achieved, and spoken to the construction team, it would take the best part of a day. Following that, we still had to format progress reports to be issued. With Site Progress Mobile, it took us between a third, to a half, of the original time.”
What is Site Progress Mobile?
Site Progress Mobile for Powerproject is a downloadable app which enables mobile users to record the progress of tasks and repetitive events from a remote location against their work as scheduled in a Powerproject project plan. Each user sees only the relevant tasks and progress check lists for which they have responsibility.
Site Progress Mobile enables you to:
- Record project progress quickly and easily via mobile devices or web browser
- Control which user updates which task list
- Improve data accuracy by removing the need for re-keying of updates
- Update progress at any time, from any location – without having to open Powerproject
- No signal needed to record progress – only when submitting updates

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