Willmott Dixon – Driving Construction Efficiency through Digital Transformation

Company Overview

Willmott Dixon is a privately owned construction and interior fit-out specialist with a legacy stretching back to 1852. Headquartered in Hertfordshire, UK, the company has grown to become one of the largest construction firms in the UK, delivering projects across both the public and private sectors. With a focus on innovation, sustainability, and social value, Willmott Dixon has consistently led the way in adopting digital solutions and modern construction practices.

Still family-run, the business remains committed to its founding values while embracing the opportunities offered by new technologies and data-driven decision-making. The company employs thousands of people across the UK and has an annual turnover exceeding £1 billion.

The Challenge

Despite delivering award-winning projects across various sectors, Willmott Dixon identified a recurring challenge: the inconsistency of project planning and execution. One key metric, Planned Percentage Complete (PPC), was averaging around 40%. This figure highlights significant issues related to meeting weekly project targets, coordinating trades, and managing workflows efficiently.

This low PPC score indicated missed milestones, unplanned activities, and inefficient handovers between subcontractors. The impact of these issues was felt in delays, budget pressures, wasted materials, and reactive working, ultimately affecting client satisfaction and project margins.

The leadership team recognised that to scale effectively and meet its growth and sustainability goals, it needed a more cohesive, collaborative, and transparent approach to project planning and communication.

The Solution

To address these challenges, Willmott Dixon implemented Nialli, a digital planning and collaboration platform purpose-built for the construction industry. The decision to adopt Nialli was rooted in the need for a solution that could provide clarity, visibility, and real-time coordination across every stage of a project.

Nialli transforms traditional planning methods—often managed through paper notes, whiteboards, or siloed spreadsheets—into a fully digital, interactive experience. It brings together teams from different disciplines, including internal site managers, subcontractors, project planners, and supply chain partners, onto one shared platform.

The platform facilitates Last Planner System (LPS)-style workflows, where users can plan tasks collaboratively, flag constraints, and adjust dependencies in real-time. The digital Post-it Notes and intuitive drag-and-drop functionality mirror traditional planning sessions, but enhance them with smart insights, historical tracking, and visual clarity.

Importantly, Nialli also captures and analyses PPC data at a granular level, enabling teams to understand the reasons behind missed tasks and take corrective actions proactively. This feedback loop helped change behaviours and fostered a culture of accountability and collaboration across teams.

For Willmott Dixon, rolling out Nialli was more than just a technology upgrade—it was a change in mindset. It empowered teams to be more transparent, plan more effectively, and work more predictably, while also creating a consistent approach to planning across multiple sites.

Benefits

The impact of adopting Nialli was both immediate and measurable. Within weeks of implementation, Willmott Dixon saw its PPC scores rise from an average of 40% to over 70%. This improvement reflected a fundamental shift in how projects were planned and executed.

With better visibility into task sequences, dependencies, and potential clashes, site teams were able to anticipate issues before they arose, reducing the need for reactive work and last-minute changes. This improved level of foresight led to a smoother workflow, tighter control of resources, and better utilisation of labour.

Another major benefit was the improvement in communication. By using Nialli, project stakeholders—from on-site operatives to head office managers- had access to the same real-time information. Subcontractors could see when their work was scheduled and better prepare their teams and materials, reducing downtime and increasing productivity.

Moreover, the platform created a shared sense of ownership. When issues did arise, the data provided by Nialli made it easier to have objective conversations about the cause and resolution, shifting the culture from one of blame to one of problem-solving.

Willmott Dixon also recognised the broader organisational benefits. With consistent processes and a unified platform across multiple sites, the company could scale best practices, benchmark performance, and train new team members more effectively. Nialli became a central part of the company’s drive for operational excellence and innovation.

The Future

With the successful adoption of Nialli already yielding strong results, Willmott Dixon is now looking to expand the platform’s use across its entire portfolio of projects. The future focus is not only on maintaining high PPC scores but also on enhancing other performance indicators such as safety, sustainability, and social value.

Plans are in motion to integrate Nialli more deeply into the company’s digital ecosystem. This includes exploring predictive analytics capabilities that can identify patterns and forecast project risks before they materialise. By combining planning data with AI-driven insights, Willmott Dixon aims to take proactive decision-making to the next level.

The platform will also support the company’s sustainability agenda. Improved planning leads to fewer wasted materials, better logistics planning, and lower carbon emissions—all key goals in Willmott Dixon’s “Now or Never” sustainability strategy. As the industry continues to evolve, tools like Nialli will be instrumental in aligning construction delivery with environmental targets.

Furthermore, by freeing up time and resources through more efficient planning, the company will have greater capacity to focus on social value initiatives. These include community engagement programmes, trainee development challenges, and creating inclusive pathways into construction careers.

Conclusion

Willmott Dixon’s partnership with Nialli and Ascentae exemplifies how digital transformation can drive tangible results in the construction industry. By addressing planning inefficiencies and embedding a collaborative, transparent culture, the company has significantly improved project predictability, productivity, and performance.

As it looks to the future, Willmott Dixon is poised to continue leading the sector, not just through the buildings it delivers, but through the way it embraces innovation to create smarter, more sustainable, and more inclusive outcomes for everyone involved.