CASE STUDY — RAPID GROWTH FOR ADVANCED MANUFACTURING INNOVATION CENTRE (AMIC)

Building the data foundation for AMIC's rapid growth — from innovation centre to Factory of the Future

The Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre (AMIC), led by Queen's University Belfast, is one of Northern Ireland's most ambitious infrastructure investments — a £100m advanced manufacturing centre set to triple capacity and transform the region's industrial base. Data Mastery built the resource planning and reporting tool to help them scale with confidence.

£100m

Belfast Region City Deal investment backing AMIC's growth

3x Growth

Resource Management Tool coupled with Project Reporting to enable growth

360°

Visibility of engineer utilisation, project allocation and revenue

"We're growing fast — new facilities, more projects, more engineers. Data Mastery gave us the structure to manage that growth. We now have a single source of truth for resourcing and we can answer questions in minutes that used to take days."

AMIC Leadership

Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre — Queen's University Belfast, Newtownabbey

ABOUT AMIC - ADVANCED MANUFACTURING INNOVATION CENTRE

A £100m bet on Northern Ireland's manufacturing future and they needed the infrastructure to deliver it.

The Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre (AMIC) is one of the most significant industrial investments in Northern Ireland's history — a £100m initiative under the Belfast Region City Deal, led by Queen's University Belfast in partnership with Ulster University, Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council, and backed by the UK Government and NI Executive.With a brand new 10,500m² Factory of the Future at Global Point Business Park in Newtownabbey — operational since April 2026 — AMIC is scaling rapidly. The centre's ambition is to triple capacity, create over 1,500 permanent jobs by 2050, and contribute more than £1bn to the local economy. That kind of growth demands more than good engineering — it demands the operational infrastructure to support it.

At a glance

Queen's University Belfast, AMIC, Newtownabbey
£100m Belfast Region City Deal investment
10,500m² Factory of the Future, open April 2026
Industry-partnered advanced manufacturing & engineering
Cross-functional engineering teams and technical leads
Rapidly scaling project portfolio and headcount

Scaling fast — without the structure to match

THE CHALLENGE

AMIC's ambition is enormous: triple capacity, expand headcount, and deliver a growing portfolio of industry-partnered projects from a brand new facility. But rapid growth creates complexity. As the number of engineers, projects and revenue streams multiplied, AMIC needed a way to manage resourcing and performance that could keep pace — and give leadership the confidence to make the right calls.

No utilisation visibility

Two critical questions had no reliable answer: are our engineers fully utilised? And are our projects properly resourced — can we actually deliver them? Without this, neither team optimisation nor project confidence was possible.

No foundation to scale from

Leadership lacked a consolidated view of upcoming projects, anticipated revenues and how future project demand would stress current capacity — essential for a centre planning to triple in size.

Growth outpacing process

Rapid expansion of the team and project portfolio meant existing approaches to resource management were no longer fit for purpose at scale.

Fragmented, manual reporting

Project tracking relied on disconnected spreadsheets and manual processes, creating delays and gaps in the information available to leadership. Reporting was retrospective and past action.

A Resource Planning and Reporting tool — built to scale with AMIC

WHAT DATA MASTERY BUILT

Data Mastery designed and delivered a resource planning and management tool built on SharePoint Lists, connected to a Power BI reporting layer. Every level of the organisation — from individual engineers to Technical Team Leads to senior management — has access to the right information for their role, without information overload.

Built to support AMIC's growth from approximately 15 teams today to a workforce of 150–200 technical staff, the tool is flexible by design — new groups and teams can be added as AMIC expands, with no rework required.

Centralised Project List

A single master list of all AMIC projects providing a structured foundation for resource allocation and reporting across the organisation.

Resource Allocation Tool

Technical leads assign engineers to projects by team, work package, year and monthly % loading. Personal views allow each lead to manage their own team, with filtering by person, project or period.

Power BI Reporting Suite

Interconnected reports — covering projects, FTE utilisation, team resourcing, revenue planning, and days planned vs actual — each designed for a specific audience and decision type.

Delivered end-to-end by Data Mastery - from data structure in Azure to the Resource Management Tool to report design and deployment in Power BI.

REPORTING MODULES

Comprehensive connected reports. Every stakeholder covered.

Each Power BI report is designed around a specific audience and set of decisions — from an individual engineer checking their own project allocations, to Technical Team Leads managing their team's capacity, to senior operations tracking financial forecasts and project delivery across the portfolio.

Project Overview

Full project list with Gantt timelines, group/team/customer filters and a high-level headcount summary. Gives Ops, PMs and Group Leads complete visibility of what's running and when.

Team Resourcing

Drilldown views by team, person and individual month. Enables a granular review of capacity at the team or single-engineer level — essential for proactive planning and recruitment decisions.

Project Resource Summary

Cross-project FTE and utilisation summary by group, customer and team. Group and Team Leads can see which engineers are working on each project and at what loading — planned vs actual over time.

Engineer Utilisation

Answers the two questions that matter most to Technical Leads: are my engineers fully utilised? And are my projects properly resourced — do we have the capacity to deliver them? FTE allocation by engineer across the portfolio, with over- and under-capacity flagged at a glance.

Financial Forecast & Days Tracking

Indicative financial forecasts by project, group and team — alongside planned hours vs actual hours from timesheet data. The planned vs actual comparison gives AMIC a direct read on how accurately teams are forecasting and resourcing, making planning quality a measurable outcome in itself.

OUTCOMES

Confident resource decisions. Clearer project visibility.

With the new platform in place, AMIC leadership, technical leads and engineers all have access to the right information at the right time — transforming how the organisation plans, manages and reports on its project portfolio.

Technical leads can instantly see whether their teams are fully utilised and where capacity exists
Engineers have visibility of their own project allocations, expected hours and work packages
Operations has a real-time view of projects, Gantt timelines and headcount across the organisation
Indicative financial forecasts by project and group give operations a clearer view of financial performance against targets
Planned hours vs actual hours from timesheet data shows how accurately teams are forecasting and resourcing — a built-in measure of planning quality over time
Cross-functional team efforts visible at the project and group level
Resource decisions that once took days can now be made in minutes

DASHBOARD PREVIEW

See the reporting in action

Interactive Power BI reports give every stakeholder — from engineer to executive — the right level of detail to make decisions with confidence.

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