Challenge

J.S. Cock delivers important components to offshore and land-based industries internationally. Delivery projects are quite complicated and often exceptionally long, meaning failure can have significant financial consequences. Oversight, control and transparency are extremely important in avoiding delays and the accompanying major costs for their customers.

“If a certificate is forgotten, the installation won’t be finished. And if there are delays in one stage, they lead to other delays further down the line. It is vital to have a good overview and good control to ensure that we can always see what’s going on. The entire process – from customers to our suppliers – must be transparent,” Cock says.

Solution

J.S. Cock uses Projectplace, a web-based service for project collaboration that enables project teams to communicate and share information in one place with project planning, task management, document sharing and online meetings. With Projectplace, J.S. Cock project managers have full insight into deliveries both internally and among subcontractors and customers.

Using Projectplace, all of the communication and documentation relevant to projects is located in one place, simplifying the entire process and making it easy to identify the weakest link when something goes wrong. J.S. Cock provides suppliers with a document delivery timetable in Projectplace which is always visible.

Cock explains, “that way things don’t get forgotten, which can sometimes happen with e-mail.”

The company is rolling out a standardised training programme for suppliers, using Projectplace’s online meeting function, and will provide training in the most important functions of Projectplace for any customers and other business partners who request it.

Results

Projectplace has improved visibility and transparency across the organisation and streamlined J.S. Cock’s project delivery for customers.

“Thanks to Projectplace I always have a general overview of all our projects. What’s more, I manage all my own projects here. Every day I check that everything is on schedule, and can quickly see if there are any problems I have to deal with,” says Cock.

Cock reports that Projectplace has improved the organisation’s efficiency, which translates into better customer service. “Projectplace makes it easy to communicate between departments, making us more efficient internally. Acquiring the tool was therefore very much a way of improving our service to the customer,” he says. “Moreover the customer gains insight into the project’s progress, and we’re finding that this kind of transparency engenders great trust.”

Overview

J.S. Cock is one of Norway’s leading suppliers of valves, instruments and complete process equipment packages for shipping, offshore, petrochemical, food and pharmaceutical industries, treatment works, foundries, hydro power as well as paper and wood products. The company also sells painting systems and spray equipment. The family company is now in the process of being taken over by the fourth generation by Project Manager Tobias Cock. Today there are department offices in Oslo, Arendal, Bergen and Stavanger.

Offshore and land-based industries are both heavily dependent on large numbers of different valves for controlling and regulating pressure in hoses, pipes and tanks. Some are larger than cars, others weigh just half a kilogramme. J.S. Cock supplies most kinds of valves. Some are produced in-house but the majority are sourced from permanent subcontractors in Norway and many other countries worldwide. The company is involved in major construction projects in the maritime industry and the oil and gas sector and delivers both to operators’ subcontractors and directly to operators.

J.S. Cock was founded in 1897 and has built up product-related expertise which creates considerable added value for customers. Personnel at the Norwegian company act to a large extent as consultants to their customers, providing advice that can be crucial to safe, problem-free operation of the processes in which the products are used.

“I find that Projectplace gives very good value for money and because an unlimited number of external users can be linked to a project, the effect only increases with the number of business partners who use it. It’s also very quick to learn once you’ve started using it.”

Tomas Cock