Social Housing Contractor United House Places £170,000 Order for Workspace

Nottingham, United Kingdom, May 21, 2009 --(PR.com)-- United House, one of the leading social housing contractors in the UK, has purchased Workspace to manage all the electronic file content processed by the business. United House was founded in 1964 and has since enjoyed sustained growth. The Company is a key influence in the development of social housing in London and the South East with divisions covering construction, development and investment. The construction arm of the business includes new build, refurbishment and regeneration; the investment division is a stakeholder in several UK Housing PFI schemes. Workspace was developed by Union Square Software to provide contractors and professional services organisations with a better way of accessing corporate and project based information. Workspace offers a single access point to all project correspondence that can be accessed from any location.

United House recognised a need to manage all of its electronic content better. This had been driven by the requirement for a quicker method of locating information throughout the Company, particularly across departments and projects. Kain Busfield, IT Manager comments “We have always had procedures for file and directory structures but as we have grown and diversified these have been more difficult to monitor and, as a result, a lack of uniformity between projects and departments has developed. With the rapid growth at United House in recent years the whole structure has become harder to navigate and manage.”

They required a system that enforced a standard set of structures that would work in tandem with the company’s procedural policies and in a way that didn’t create too much additional overhead for the individual using it.

Having carried out a comprehensive review of the marketplace Busfield was won over by the calibre of the Union Square consultants and project management team. “It was clear that Union Square had an excellent understanding of our industry sector and of our requirements”. Busfield was also impressed by the Union Square user community and the constantly evolving nature of Workspace. “Union Square continue to carefully develop Workspace to meet the needs of their clients. This is what we expect from a supplier and we are confident Union Square will continue to work closely with their customer base.”

United House are embarking on a far reaching implementation. Phase one will see Workspace, internally rebranded OpenSpace, rolled out to all new build projects and the departments and external consultants that interface with the new build process. This will allow their regular partners the same quick and reliable access to information as internal staff. Phase one will also see the roll out of the drawing register, distribution and version control system. Phase two will address document management for occupied refurbishment projects.

United House expect to see significant savings from Workspace, both in direct cost savings and in efficiency gains. “Workspace will speed up access to information and will alleviate the problems associated with duplication of electronic documents – particularly email. We also expect direct cost savings where Workspace will replace current systems, for example our existing CRM tool could eventually be replaced by Workspace,” continues Busfield. United house will commence the roll out of Workspace within the next couple of months and expect to have the first phase live within 6 months.

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