Mahindra Susten is a portfolio company of Mahindra Partners, the private equity division of the USD 16.5 Billion Mahindra & Mahindra Group. Mahindra Susten is the leader in Utility Solar EPC in India and offers a range of diversified services within the Cleantech space.

Mahindra Susten is among the largest Solar EPC contractors in India, with over 500 MW of projects (till 2015). Mahindra Susten’s services span across – Utility Solar EPC, Distributed Solar and Build Solutions.

The engineering team of Mahindra Susten had previously been using a cloud based document management system for online sharing of engineering documents and drawings with teams in engineering office and on various sites across India. However the team faced several operational challenges with this document management software, before approaching Premat Solutions.

Document Management Challenges

• Susten’s existing document management software used a PDF editor which was heavy on bandwidth and could not be accessed from construction sites in remote parts of India with limited internet connectivity.
• The multilayered folder based structure for document storage in the existing software made it very cumbersome to use in fast paced utility solar EPC projects.
• Susten’s existing software was purely web based with no possibility to access on mobile devices.
• Susten’s existing software mainly served as a document vault and repository of comments. It was not directly connected with the engineering review and approval process. Hence a lot of manual effort was spent in data entry into the software in the form of deliverable list and then manually capturing the progress data into different reports.

Solution – WorkPack

‘WorkPack’ which is document management system designed and developed for engineering & construction projects was a ready solution to all the aforementioned challenges, meeting following requirements of the Mahindra Susten Team.

• A very light web based software suitable to be accessed from the remotely located solar power plant sites
• A user friendly software and interface which is easy to adopt
• Accessible from mobile devices and tablets
• Integration with the core engineering process
• Automated progress tracking, extensive progress reports on dashboard
• Electronically tracked document review and approval
• Customized workflows to suit Susten’s internal work practices
• Standardization of documents and drawings for different project types
• Standardized progress reports

“Workpack is a system which is tuned to the work practices of engineering projects. The workpack team has spent a good amount of time with engineering team for understanding the need of the team. And the system was customized as per our requirement which makes us use the system in efficient way.”

-Jayesh Dhole, Dy Manager Engineering

Consulting and Sales team at Premat spent a good amount of time with Susten’s engineering team and analyzed how following features of WorkPack could readily answer all of Susten’s concerns with document management.

Online commenting & mark-up

At the heart of WorkPack is a very light proprietary PDF editor which enables easy commenting and red-line mark up even for users with very low bandwidth.

Commment Reolution & Approval

All comments and mark-ups made by reviewers are electronically tracked till complete resolution. All the activity is tracked in Activity logs which help engineers with quality audits.

Progress Tracking

Document review, comment resolution and approval – are tracked electronically and this information is transformed into automated and insightful progress reports.

Flexible Document Workflows

Default workflows in WorkPack can be easily customized to fit internal procedures of a company.

Results

WorkPack was customized and successfully rolled out in a few weeks resulting in following improvements for Mahindra Susten.

• Site teams have faster and reliable access to engineering documents and drawings
• Wider adoption resulting from a user friendly structure
• Significantly reduced manual efforts due to automated workflows and progress tracking
• Increased visibility into the review and approval of documents has helped with audits