Member Article

Sellafield deal for North Yorkshire tech experts

A well-known North Yorkshire business, with a reputation spanning over 20 years, has secured a major contract to provide the UK’s largest nuclear site with state-of-the-art software.

Stokesley-based Opentree provides document management software for sectors such as steel, manufacturing, rail, oil and gas and energy and is one of the longest established businesses of its kind in the UK.

Opentree has fought off competition from some globally recognised companies in the sector to provide Sellafield in Cumbria with a unique software programme to transform its document management systems which will be delivered in conjunction with another well-known North East company.

Opentree is partnering with Newcastle-based Atlas Cloud and the two businesses have been able to cohesively offer automation of document management processes to BS 1192 and ISO 27001, the highest industry accreditations for the secure delivery of construction projects.

Atlas Cloud delivers and manages virtual IT solutions allowing people to use applications from anywhere on any device. The company specialises in delivering high quality and complex applications in sectors such as architecture, engineering and construction.

Following a rigorous assessment process and having met stringent criteria, Opentree was selected to provide its own electronic document management software (EDMS), ‘Cabinet’, which was developed in-house by experts at Opentree and is used all over the world by the likes of Alstom, Atkins, Balfour Beatty, National Grid LNG Storage, Siemens and Tata Steel.

The software will allow Sellafield to manage its office documents, CAD models and drawings from creation to maintenance of the facility, following important industry standard, BS 1192:2007 (Building Information Modelling- BIM- Level 2). It also automates work in progress and business processes, while keeping a full audit trail allowing managers to easily monitor the progress of individual projects and maintain accurate, auditable records.

Andrew Frank, from Hutton Rudby near Stokesley, took over sole ownership of Opentree in 2014 having been involved with the business since its inception in 1992. Since then, Andrew has built a strong management team and is investing in further development of its software and expansion of the business to build on its growing client base.

Opentree’s software is globally recognised and meets all necessary standards set by the BSI’s (British Standards Institution) Building Information Modelling (BIM) requirements following BS 1192:2007. The author of the standard, Professor Mervyn Richards OBE, has also endorsed Cabinet for its ability to support the required standards.

Speaking about the new project with Sellafield, Andrew said: “The team at Opentree comprises highly-skilled engineers that have carefully developed state-of-the-art software to provide simple solutions for BIM teams and document controllers. Compared to some global competitors, we’re agile and able to be on-hand whenever we’re required.

“This is an incredibly interesting project for our team and one we hope to build on. The current project will include migrating data from older systems into Cabinet and linking to others. We have developed Cabinet so that it is simple to use, highly configurable to meet customers’ requirements and able to automate business processes while providing accurate records with a full audit and revision history for life time records.”

Pete Watson, chief executive officer at Atlas Cloud, said: “Opentree’s Cabinet is a very clever piece of software and has a quality customer base with an international footprint. Using Atlas Cloud is a huge benefit for a site as vast as Sellafield and where data security is of utmost importance as we are one of the most highly accredited in our field to deliver this. Opentree is the ideal partner for our technology as their Cabinet software is secure, reliable and straightforward to use and can integrate with other CAD packages seamlessly in the cloud.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Anna Addison Associates .