Serving the Teesside Business Community | 25
WE’RE THINKING
BIG
Words: Joanne Barrett
SIX-FIGURE INVESTMENT
WILL HELP PROPEL APPLIED
TO THE NEXT LEVEL
It might sound like something
you’d keep under lock and key in
a high security defence arsenal
but for one Tees firm, it is proving
to be the tool that will cement
their growth.
A
pplied Integration have invested
a six-figure sum into their
software infrastructure with the
implementation of project management tool
Polarion.
Put very simply, the Siemens-developed
system manages all of the activities
involved in designing, implementing and
deploying complex engineering projects.
For Stokesley-based Applied Integration, it
represents one of their biggest investments
as a company to date.
Providing cutting edge engineering
solutions to the petrochemicals, oil, gas
and defence sectors is what they specialise
in - and application lifecycle management
software Polarion, they hope, will keep
them ahead of the game.
The goal is to help break down the walls
between all of the threads of a project
from business and engineering to quality
assurance so that each team has as much
information and insight into what the others
are doing at any given time.
At the end of the day it is Applied’s
clients who will benefit, as the company
can continue to deliver its quality products,
faster and with improved business
efficiency.
“The investment in Polarion ALM
software will allow Applied Integration
improved requirements to capture accuracy,
improve project efficiency, right first time,”
said one of the firm’s four directors, Garry
Lofthouse.
“An overall improvement of the software
development was deemed fundamental
to support the company growth and
ambition, and propel us to the next level in
automation and control.
“We are fully committed to delivering
solutions in accordance with our project
lifecycle and quality management
procedures, which are backed by
Applied director Garry Lofthouse with Siemens’ Mark Harrison-Gauchwin, Tom Wallington
and Andrew Craig.
ISO9001/14001 accredited certification.”
The company evaluated several market-
leading ALM solutions over a period of 12
months and settled on the Siemens product
because, says Garry, in their opinion it was
simply the best.
Polarion allows users to track and trace
decisions at every point in an engineering
project and check testing to ensure systems
are delivered exactly to a customer’s
required specification and are compliant to
any given industry standard.
The beauty for Applied Integration, says
Garry, is that it will help to streamline the
project process for all of its engineers and
managers from beginning to end. Features
such as automatic requirement will drive
the engineering team to understand how
they will meet a specific requirement,
which in turn removes the potential for
ambiguity when requirements are not
defined correctly.
Applied Integration’s mid-term vision is
to integrate Polarion with their in-house
developed automated testing and test-case
generation tool (called ReqCap) to ensure
they have a very powerful toolset covering
all project aspects from initialisation through
to automated code testing.
Siemens’ Tom Wallington explains:
“Polarion is what we call an application
lifecycle management tool, or ALM for
short.
“In a nutshell, it is a tool for managing
complex engineering projects that run
across a number of departments, with
a number of different people who are all
working towards the same end goal – the
final product.
“It can take, test and record against
any or all of project requirements which
sometimes encompass hundreds,
thousands, if not millions of strands. It
means someone like Garry can monitor
exactly where the project is at any one
time.”
Polarion is right at the forefront of ALM
software, he says, and there has been a lot
of investment into it from Siemens.
The Stokesley business ran a trial
project with Polarion last year and it was
encouragingly successful, reveals Garry.
“Engineers often do what we call
‘story telling’ but this system delivers
requirements so there is no ambiguity.
“This is probably the biggest investment
we have made at Applied Integration, if not
the biggest we have done as a business.
“Going forward, it means we can take on
a lot more complex and larger projects.”