Amec overhauls IT in standards drive

Management company reports improvement in helpdesk service

International project management and services group Amec has completed a multimillion-pound IT overhaul across its UK operations.

The programme, known as Fast Forward, includes new local and wide area networks, migration to Microsoft Exchange 2003, an outsourced data centre, and business alignment work.

The refresh follows a consolidation of Amec’s various IT departments into one organisation, says Amec information systems delivery manager Paul Gurr.

‘After the departments came together, there had to be a consolidation, rationalisation and centralisation of systems to help deliver the services our customers expect of us,’ he said.

Amec also worked with IT services provider Plan-net to develop processes based on service management best practices recommended by the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

‘We wanted a framework that we could measure ourselves by, and ITIL is a globally renowned industry standard,’ said Gurr.

Applying the standards framework involved educating the entire company, says Gurr. ‘We probably had no more than a couple of people in our IT organisation who had heard of ITIL, let alone the rest of the company, so raising awareness of it has been a massive exercise,’ he said.

Gurr admits that the implementation has not been without its problems, but says the investment is already paying off.

‘Our biggest problem is making staff understand why we are doing this,’ he said.

‘We still need to get people over the thought that this is not just bureaucracy gone mad. But if you look at the benefits that have come out of it, our helpdesk has improved the first-level fix rate from about 20 per cent to about 65 per cent in the past year.

‘Also, seven out of 10 calls to the support centre are now being fixed without referring to higher technical functions. These are both massive wins for us.’