Document Management with Vattenfall Europe Generation AG

Project

The deregulation of northern European energy markets in the 1990s enabled Vattenfall to expand its operations beyond Sweden to become one of Europe’s leading energy providers. Vattenfall’s growth demanded an increase in the number of new power plants being built, requiring the participation of multiple external project partners.

thinkproject was extensively tested during a three-month pilot phase where it was used in Moorburg Power Plant project. thinkproject also supported communication and document management for the commissioning of the Boxberg Power Station and has been established in the construction of a demonstration facility for carbon capture at Jänschwalde Power Station.

Challenges

The nature of the energy sector, particularly nuclear, is a culture of collaboration and challenging. In order to reflect on this and improve the communication between Vattenfall employees and external project partners, the company decided to introduce an online project collaboration platform to its internal IT landscape.

Solutions

Vattenfall decided to implement a central database for both internal and external participants and found that a construction project document management platform was the most appropriate solution. Its additional ability to provide flexible representation and optimisation of the processes and workflows specific to power plant construction led Vattenfall to opt for thinkproject.

Outcome

thinkproject is used by Vattenfall to manage plans and drawings, approval documents, technical documentation, contracts, meeting minutes, emails and faxes with well over 20,000 files stored for Moorburg Power Plant alone.

Over 600 Vattenfall employees and external project partners collaborate via the platform, with roles ranging from project, construction and departmental managers, surveyors and suppliers, foremen from construction companies and safety experts through to coordinators and team assistants. Even security personnel at Moorburg Power Plant are connected to thinkproject, as visitor registration is managed via the platform.

Client

The Swedish state-owned Vattenfall are a large energy provider, servicing Sweden and beyond, including Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. They are responsible for several large-scale plants, including the world’s largest offshore windfarm at Thanet, UK.