Getting it in on time

Software produced by a new University of Southampton spin-out is poised to help save billions of pounds in overdue, over-budget aerospace projects.

Acsian plans to revolutionise the management of large and complex projects, in all industry sectors, with a new generation of project management software, Plexus Manager.

Formed by University of Southampton professor Jim Scanlan and a colleague from Rolls-Royce, Acsian will help major companies achieve successful large-scale projects that deliver on time and to budget.

The company has been established with £400K of seed corn funding from IP2IPO, the early stage technology transfer specialists, and the Sulis Fund, a seed fund owned by the Universities of Southampton, Bath and Bristol.

'As an illustration of the problem; of the UK's top 25 weapons programmes, 23 have missed, or are forecast to miss their in-service date. In all, they are £2.8billion over budget,' said Professor Scanlan.

'Plexus Manager is designed to be flexible to allow for the inevitable changes that are made within active projects. The project manager then has a much better feel for the likely impact of changes and problems encountered during the project and can make appropriate decisions to effect best use of time and resources.'