It sounds simple enough. But for organisations managing large, complex construction or infrastructure projects, this mindset can lead to costly risks.
If you work in IT, project controls, or information management, and you're considering moving from tools like Primavera P6 or MS Project to Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC), this article will help you understand what’s really involved in a successful migration. Spoiler alert: it's not just about data exports and imports.
At first glance, migrating to a new project controls tool might appear to be a straightforward IT project. The reality? It’s a strategic transformation.
You're not just switching software. You are most likely also redesigning how your organisation plans, monitors, and reports on critical projects. It often also is a moment which organisations want to seize the opportunity to clean data and remove legacy structures. A poorly planned migration can thus influence or disrupt ongoing operations, affect reporting accuracy, and lead to loss of valuable data. Most importantly, it can reduce confidence in your project controls.
A successful migration requires more than technical know-how. It requires a partner who understands the operational heartbeat of your project organisations: how your planners think, how your data flows, and what continuity means for your project controls. They bring experience in aligning data, tools, processes, and people.
What you gain by working with a dedicated migration partner:
Gasunie transitioned from multiple tools, like Microsoft Project Online, to OPC through a phased migration strategy. This allowed each planner and department to retain control and visibility. Custom training and active involvement of key users ensured long-term adoption and process continuity. Migrating Microsoft Project Online required special custom scripts to ensure all data was transformed and loaded in OPC in a timely fashion.
Strukton needed to migrate their on-going projects from Primavera P6 to OPC. Ensuring that all codes, schedules and baselines were migrated to the correct structures required specialistic skills. The repercussions of moving data could cause libraries to be placed in incorrect places, causing possible security and manageability issues. A structured migration plan helped in timely moving the data over to the new system. Primaned also supported in archiving the Primavera P6 project data.
With two decades of legacy data, Antea’s migration was more than a technical task. Together with Primaned, they identified which data to keep, which to archive, and how to align their planning processes with the new toolset. This approach set the foundation for a stronger and more future-ready controls environment.
Antea needed to protect their existing Primavera P6 data. Using a proprietary tool developed by Primaned, they were able to extract and archive key planning data in an accessible, structured way. No other implementation partner could offer the same solution.
A project controls migration is not a lift-and-shift operation. It requires technical, organisational, and strategic alignment. Without this, you risk broken reports, inconsistent planning data, and poor adoption by your teams.
If you're serious about modernising and unifying your project controls tools, the best place to start is with a Quickstart. This initial phase helps map the gap between your current system (IST) and your future state (SOLL). It gives you clarity on scope, complexity, and the first steps in a migration strategy before making any irreversible decisions.