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About

The current Estates management system (WREN) is approaching the end of its useful life and there is an opportunity to introduce a new, more robust, system.

There are a number of business critical University services that run through the system, including managing our buildings, scheduling and logging essential building maintenance as well as supporting critical health and safety processes, data and security operations.

This project aims to reduce the risk of system failure by replacing WREN with a modern CAFM (Computer Aided Facilities Management) system.

Benefits

• Sustainable support model for a key University solution
• Compliance
• Reduced system complexity
• Reduced risk of disruption to Campus operations on campus
• Opportunity for significant process efficiency through a fit for purpose solution

Strategic Alignment

• Mitigation of Known Risk – technology risk
• Risk and Compliance – health and safety, security, legal (particularly GDPR compliance)
• Operational efficiency

Introducing Concerto

 

This is a brief introduction to Concerto, the University’s new Estates management system.

 

Please watch the or read the description below.

 

 

 

Concerto is a CAFM or computer aided facilities management system. It will help the Estates Directorate to manage all aspects of the estate at the University.

At the centre of the Estates Concerto hub is the Finance Interface, which allows for seamless billing of our estates transactions.

 

Concerto schematic - Finance Interface at the centre

 

Built around the interface are 5 key modules that make up the central hub.

Concerto central hub

• Core Data, where the bedrock of data on the University's estate is stored.
• Projects & Programmes, where we plan and execute our minor, intermediate and major projects.
• Reactive Maintenance, which allows us to manage our short notice daily maintenance tasks.
• Planned Maintenance, for planning and scheduling necessary changes in advance.
• Property Services, where we manage information related to our commercial and residential property assets. 

Around the central hub, are 6 further modules. These modules support and inform the activities that take place in the central hub.

Concerto supporting modules

Those that govern aspects of health and safety throughout the Estates daily lifecycle include:

• Conditions Surveys
• Fire Risk Assessment
• Asbestos Surveys
• Hazardous Materials Surveys
• Permits to Work

Lastly there is the Stock Control module on which our maintenance tasks rely. 

 

UoR Change Plan

Concerto is being delivered over a number of phases. The core functionality, as outlined in the section above, is planned to be delivered in Phase 1 during 2025.

Phase 1 delivery is broken down into three stages, outlined in the diagram below.

• Stage 1 - Build. An intense and significant stage of the project that encompasses: analysing and understanding key business processes, cleaning and uploading of the Estates data and designing and configuring Concerto to meet the needs of the University.
• Stage 2 – Training and Testing. In order for our users to be ready to test the new system and use it for daily Business As Usual (BAU) they will need the necessary training. Training classes, materials and resources, dependent on individual and team requirements will be made available during this stage of the project. Front runners on the project will utilise their acquired systems knowledge to test the freshly configured Concerto system and confirm that it is fit for purpose during User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
• Stage 3 – Cut-over. Once proved in testing and with users upskilled with Concerto knowledge, the system will go-live and take over from WREN.

Stage delivery model for Concerto

Concerto Environments

This section aims to clarify the system environments that have been created to deliver and manage Concerto during the project and into live.

There are 3 system environments, Sandbox, Preview and Live/Production.

Sandbox

This environment provides a safe and isolated space for the project team to experiment with new features and configurations without affecting the other environments.

Key uses include:

• Early-stage testing of new releases and configurations.
• Experimentation and exploratory testing by the project team.
• Setting up user profiles for staff engagement testing.
• Conducting staff user engagement testing.

Preview

This serves as a near-production environment and is used by the project team for validating new features, fixes, and configurations prior to release into the live environment.

Key uses include:

• SSO (single sign-on) testing.
• Verifying newly released features and fixes meet requirements.
• Allowing stakeholders to explore and review the system.

Live/Production

This serves as the final, fully operational environment for the end users to interact with the system to complete BAU (business as usual).

Note: During the project until the first module of Concerto goes into live operational use this environment will be used as the primary test environment for the testers to undertake User Acceptance Testing (UAT).

Key uses:

• Hosting the operational system for real-world use.
• Monitoring performance and user activity.
• Providing support and resolving production issues.

Concerto environments key

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: Wren’s last day of support by Microsoft will be 14^th October.  What will happen if we’ve not been able to move off Wren by that date?

A: Digital Technology Services (DTS) are aware of this drop-dead date and are working to ensure that Concerto will be up and running before October.  However, DTS will consider how best to avoid a cyber-security incident should we need to use Wren beyond 14^th October. 

Q: Will Wren and Concerto need to run in parallel at any point?

A: Yes, there will be a transition period, known as ‘cut-over’, where both Wren and Concerto will be running.  The aim will be to keep this period as short as possible.  A guide will be produced for all staff so that we all know which activities to undertake in which system during the cut-over period.

Q: Will all communication about Concerto for Estates staff be via the website?

A: This website will contain all updates on Concerto and will serve as the main repository for information for Estates staff.  Further information will be provided via Estates newsletters and all staff talks.  As we get closer to implementation, teams will be invited to in-person training sessions to get hands-on with Concerto.  The implementation team are always happy to be invited to team meetings to give updates.  Please invite us along!  You can contact us by emailing concerto@reading.ac.uk

Q: How will we communicate with stakeholders outside Estates?

A: As we get closer to implementation, we will start to engage with key stakeholders outside Estates.  There will be poster campaigns, information on this website and explainer videos for those who need to use Concerto.

Q: When will Concerto be going live?

A: At the moment, we don’t have a fixed date for go live.  There remains some work to do to complete the design phase, and we need to work with Digital Technology Services (DTS) and the Finance Systems Team to ensure that data can flow between our systems seamlessly.  As soon as a confirmed go live date is known, it will be communicated to colleagues in Estates.

Q: We’ve been talking about Concerto for a long time.  Why is implementation taking so long?

A: As Concerto will cover all areas of Estates, a huge amount of information gathering (analysis) has had to take place to ensure that we know about all processes that need to be available in Concerto.  This work has taken some time, but the knowledge that we have gained has now been translated into workflows (design) which are being built (configured) within Concerto.  Some of the processes and workflows are now in a state where system testing can take place to determine whether everything has been configured as required.  Each module will go through this process, and system testing will take place one module at a time.  Once all modules have been configured, we will be able to move onto training and testing, and then to go live.  This process is outlined in the stage delivery model on this website.