Background
Colas, a leading UK infrastructure contractor, delivers a wide range of highway maintenance and asset management services for local authorities. The organization has a long relationship with Siemens Confirm platform, using it to organize and run its operational activity across the Portsmouth and Cheshire West & Chester contracts. As the need for faster reporting, greater commercial visibility and real-time operational insight increased, Colas began exploring more efficient ways of accessing and analyzing Confirm data.
Traditional methods, such as exporting reports directly from Confirm or manually writing SQL queries were becoming too time consuming and inconsistent for the volume and pace of contract work. These challenges prompted Colas to join Siemens Data Share pilot, led internally by Sophie Washburn (Data Systems Analyst) and Jithin Shajijames (Graduate Data Analyst). Their goal was to modernize data processes, reduce manual effort and give the business a more reliable, centralized view of operational and commercial performance.
Strategic Leadership: Data & Systems Team
The transition to Data Share was driven by the expertise and enthusiasm of Sophie and Jithin. Their strong understanding of data structures, reporting needs and operational workflows made them the ideal leads for implementing Snowflake based reporting within Colas. They worked closely with Siemens development team to shape new views, refine datasets and ensure Power BI connected seamlessly to Confirm data.
Sophie explained how dramatically Data Share simplified their work: “It’s much easier now. We can connect to the databases in Power BI and within minutes start pulling through the tables we need. Data Share has made everything faster for us.”
Power BI was already used within Colas, but with their leadership helped to accelerate progress to ensure dashboards are more accessible and consistent across multiple levels of the organization.
Challenges Before Data Share
Before adopting Data Share, building accurate reports required extensive manual work. Analysts had to write complex Oracle SQL queries, identify table relationships, locate the correct fields and join information from multiple sources.
Sophie described the difficulty:
“Reports could take days to create, finding the right SQL, matching tables, checking joins… it was a lot of rooting around to find the right code.”
One example was the “old jobs report,” which included nearly the entire contract history. Running it took almost 40 minutes, and was too large to save as one file, analysts often had to repeat the process from scratch, sometimes spending nearly a full day extracting and validating the data.
Inconsistencies between user generated exports also created risk. Different staff might run similar reports but receive slightly different results due to missing fields, incomplete filters or partial data. This made it difficult to maintain a single, agreed upon dataset across commercial and operational teams.
Transforming Data Access with Data Share
Data Share replaced manual SQL and repetitive exports with a modern, cloud-based approach. Through Snowflake, Confirm data is delivered to Colas in a series of curated, ready to use views that can be connected directly into Power BI. Instead of writing queries manually, analysts now select the tables they need and build dashboards within minutes.
Sophie explained the improvement:
"What once took nearly all day now takes minutes. Running the same dataset through Snowflake and Power BI is quick and reliable.”
One enhancement that proved particularly valuable was the introduction of a Job Attribute List View. Previously, new job attributes would not appear in dashboards until they had been used on a live job. This created the risk of missing data options. Working with Siemens, Colas helped shape a view that lists all attributes, whether they exist on current jobs or not - ensuring dashboards remain complete and accurate at all times.
Financial and Commercial Transformation
The most significant impact of Data Share has been in financial and commercial reporting. Using Snowflake and Power BI, Jithin developed a new, comprehensive Financial WIP Dashboard for the Cheshire West & Chester contract, which includes over 180,000 job entries and provides instant financial visibility.
This dashboard has become a core reporting tool across Colas. It is reviewed daily to provide oversight on performance, validate values and track payments, and maintain consistent reporting across contracts.
Head of Preconstruction, Andrew Nicholson described its importance:
"The dashboard created through Snowflake data and Power BI has saved me significant time and effort to find and analyze data that I previously had to obtain and extract from several sources. It provides a one-stop solution to interrogate data at a very detailed level, so I can invest my time discussing the intelligence generated by the data with our employees and clients.”
Operational Visibility and Daily Impact
Beyond finance, Data Share is now central to operational visibility. Power BI dashboards are displayed on screens across depots, giving teams real-time updates on job progress, scheduling and gang activity. These screens previously required Confirm licences and manual exports, but Data Share has removed those limitations and improved data consistency.
Sophie noted how essential this has become:
"Data Share offers our teams quicker access and greater visibility of the day’s completed work. This is particularly critical in our OCRs, where this insight helps teams prioritize work, improve co-ordination and make sure our daily operations remain transparent and efficient. Data Share also helps us with our KPI reporting, keeping us on track or able to quickly identify any issues as they arise.”
Building a Data Driven Culture
Introducing Data Share has enabled Colas to continually implement a more proactive, data driven approach to contract management, where they can easily monitor:
- Quote progression
- Job lifecycle accuracy
- Learning indicators and emerging patterns
- Collaboration with client systems
- Future opportunities to integrate spatial data
Sophie explained:
"This is just one of the tools helping us build a more accurate picture of contract delivery. Now we’ve introduced the first datasets, I can see further opportunities to link with more data sources in future.”
The combination of Snowflake and Power BI is supporting smarter planning, more accurate forecasting and greater operational transparency.
Conclusion
Colas' adoption of Siemens Data Share has transformed the way the organization accesses, analyses and uses operational and financial data. Data Share has enabled the team to replace manual, inconsistent reporting processes with fast, reliable and unified data flows that support both daily operations and long-term strategic decision making.
With opportunities to expand into predictive analytics, GIS integration and enhanced reporting, Colas is well positioned to continue building on this approach to further strengthen its data driven approach to delivering highway maintenance services.