Real-Time Digital PMO at Scale: Movar + SymTerra at Severn Trent
Large infrastructure programmes need more than reports after the fact.
They need live data from the site — not two weeks later.
That’s what we delivered, with Movar and Severn Trent.
A groundbreaking digital PMO solution
Severn Trent Water, a leading water and waste management company in the UK, manages a vast portfolio of critical infrastructure projects. With increasing complexity and stringent regulatory requirements, they sought innovative solutions to streamline project controls, enhance efficiency, and improve decision-making.
In partnership with Movar and SymTerra, Severn Trent embarked on a transformation journey to implement a cutting-edge Digital PMO, winning recognition for groundbreaking project controls innovation.
The Challenge: Delivery in the Dark
Movar and SymTerra initially joined forces as part of the award winning Digital PMO transformation at Severn Trent Water. With STW managing a capital programme exceeding £6.6 billion under AMP8, the need for seamless coordination between field teams and head office operations was paramount.
With a vast array of critical infrastructure projects in motion, Severn Trent Water faced several key challenges including:
Disjointed Communication: Field teams and office-based project managers struggled with inconsistent and disconnected communication, leading to misaligned priorities and delayed decisions.
Inefficient Reporting: Legacy spreadsheet-based systems made project reporting time-consuming and prone to errors, hindering real-time insights.
Resource Allocation: Difficulty in accurately tracking progress and forecasting needs resulted in suboptimal resource allocation and escalated costs.
Scaling Operations: The growing number of projects required a scalable system to maintain governance and control without disproportionately increasing overheads.
The Solution: PMO Meets Site Reality
What STW, Movar and SymTerra did
Together, we designed and delivered a solution that revolutionised how project data is captured, shared, and acted upon. At the heart of the transformation was SymTerra's platform, which empowered site teams to provide live updates from the ground, feeding directly into a digital project controls system developed and managed by Movar. This eliminated communication silos, increased transparency, and dramatically accelerated response times to emerging issues.
Our system connected project plans from Primavera P6 with real-time updates from SymTerra, survey data, and site reports (along with other data sources from cost, risk, health and safety, etc.) all consolidated into a live reporting suite using the Microsoft Power Platform. For the first time, stakeholders at every level, from field engineers to senior leadership, could make faster, more informed decisions with full project visibility aided by Artificial Intelligence.
Together, we:
✅ Enabled live progress tracking from site crews
✅ Captured photographic evidence, commercial notes, H&S info and more — as it happened
✅ Gave project teams, PMO leads and asset owners a single source of truth
✅ Mapped data with GIS pins and what3words for location clarity
✅ Pulled it all into dashboards that made sense, without more admin
Read more about the partnership →
Driving Innovation and Efficiency
This collaboration was about more than just technology. It was a shared commitment to innovation, operational excellence, and empowering people with the tools and training to succeed.
Key capabilities delivered through the partnership include:
Real-Time Site Integration: Direct, live updates from site teams ensure issues are flagged and escalated faster than ever before.
Centralised Insight: All project data is brought together in one view, making it easier to identify risks, track milestones, and evaluate performance.
Automated Reporting: Manual reporting tasks were replaced with automated processes, significantly reducing effort and improving data integrity.
GIS-Powered Dashboards: Key project metrics are now visualised using interactive maps, complete with RAG indicators and embedded site updates.
The Impact - Collaboration That Delivers Results
In just six months, the system handled:
Over 2,000 live updates
More than 17,000 site images and videos
800+ location tags using what3words
32 subcontractors onboarded
The success of this partnership is focused on collaboration, not just between Movar and SymTerra, but across the entire project team. Engineers, planners, analysts, and field specialists worked hand-in-hand to design, test, and scale the solution. Training and stakeholder engagement were core to adoption, ensuring the tools and processes delivered measurable outcomes:
Productivity Gains: Manual data tasks have been replaced by intelligent automation, freeing up time for strategic work.
Improved Decision-Making: AI-generated narratives provide instant clarity, helping teams respond to challenges proactively.
Cost Savings: With fewer delays, improved resource planning, and enhanced schedule adherence, Severn Trent has projected cost savings of up to 20%.
Cultural Shift: The Digital PMO introduced a lasting change in how projects are managed, driven by transparency, agility, and accountability.
🎉 It also won the Global Project Controls Innovation of the Year!
Conor Mullan - Senior Programme Manager - Severn Trent Water
STW have found Symterra to be a really useful tool in bringing updates from site into the office, enabling updates and information to be shared quickly and easily. A particular success of its use has been within the CSO teams where 100s of surveys across a wide range of geographical sites were undertaken by our supply chain and fed in quick results to enable our teams to develop designs and provide solutions.”
Why It Worked
What we did:
Real-time site capture
PMO strategy alignment
Live dashboards
Trusted site input
Why it mattered:
No delays. No chasing. Just clarity.
Teams didn’t need to change process — the tool fit it.
Not a ‘nice-to-have’ — a single source of truth.
Used by people with boots on the ground, not just behind desks.
