Smarter Planning, Safer Projects: The Track Record Approach
- Jul 27
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 6
Hugh McMichael, Sales Lead at Track Record, bringing deep industry insight and a collaborative approach to helping clients navigate complex infrastructure programmes through smarter data, safer practices, and integrated digital solutions.
Delivering nationally significant infrastructure projects is complex—from securing Development Consent Orders (DCOs) to managing diverse stakeholders and maintaining safety across widespread teams. These programmes demand consistency, clarity, and seamless collaboration.
Track Record is a cloud-based solution designed to meet these demands. More than just software, it serves as the digital backbone for programme delivery, built around two critical pillars: transparent stakeholder engagement and proactive safety management. By centralising and structuring key data, Track Record enables teams to plan, operate, and report with confidence across the entire project lifecycle.
A Single Source of Truth for Stakeholder Engagement
In complex planning environments, such as DCO and Environmental Assessment projects, capturing engagement activities isn’t just good practice—it’s a regulatory necessity. From landowner interactions to survey records, these activities must be documented with rigour, often under public scrutiny and the threat of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
Track Record ensures that all engagement data is structured, consistent, and fully auditable. We empower teams to document everything—from early conversations to detailed consultation notes—and ensure that it remains accessible throughout the project lifecycle. This means that, even years after an event, project teams can demonstrate clear, compliant engagement histories.
Raising the Bar for Site Safety
Major infrastructure schemes also demand a robust approach to safety management—spanning CDM (Construction Design and Management), CSM (Common Safety Method), and broader operational practices.
Our platform ensures that safety information is visible before any team sets foot on-site and can be updated as work progresses. This real-time feedback loop enhances accountability, ensures procedural compliance, and supports the safer design and delivery of infrastructure.
Enabling Collaboration at Scale
At the heart of our approach is collaboration. Every project has unique needs, and we configure our platform to reflect each client’s operating model. By centralising stakeholder, safety, survey, and design data into one platform, we eliminate the confusion caused by disconnected systems or outdated files. Everyone—from designers to community engagement specialists—is working from a single, verified version of the truth.
This unified approach not only reduces errors but also simplifies end-of-project handover. When all your data lives in one well-structured place, reporting, audit trails, and long-term knowledge transfer become seamless.
Real-World Impact: The Southampton to London Pipeline
A powerful example of Track Record in action is the Southampton to London pipeline, a high-profile DCO project where we enabled greater efficiency in land and stakeholder management. With multiple delivery partners, including Jacobs, involved, our platform ensured all parties were working from consistent datasets—helping maintain compliance, streamline communications, and support decision-making.
The result? Improved coordination, reduced risk, and award-winning recognition within Jacobs for delivery excellence.
The Challenges of Modern Programme Management
Today’s programme managers face a unique set of challenges: dispersed teams, incompatible software tools, and ever-growing demands for transparent reporting. Track Record addresses all of these with:
Web-based access for real-time collaboration across geographies
Cross-platform compatibility to reduce software silos and licensing costs
Power BI dashboards to surface live insights into risk, safety, stakeholder activity, and spend
By giving decision-makers access to current, accurate data in the format they need, we help programmes stay on track—no matter how complex.
A Platform That Integrates, Not Replaces
Finally, innovation at Track Record is about integration, not disruption. Our platform connects seamlessly with geospatial tools, document management systems like ProjectWise and SharePoint, and client-defined data schemas. Whether you’re pulling stakeholder data into a map or feeding safety metrics into Power BI, our technology works with your existing ecosystem—not against it.
Summary
Track Record doesn’t just support infrastructure programmes—we help make them possible. Through structured data, aligned systems, and clear visibility, we give teams the confidence and clarity to deliver responsibly, safely, and at scale.
Hugh McMichael
Hugh is the Sales Lead at Track Record, with over a decade of experience supporting some of the UK's largest and most complex infrastructure programmes. Having spent more than 10 years at Jacobs, he specialises in helping organisations identify and implement the data and digital platforms required to drive programme success.
