Challenges of Meeting Deadlines in Construction Projects
For any construction the biggest uncertainty is always the deadline! When the project will be finished? There are many reasons why deadlines are missed. You can even bring to you best team to the site, use the best tools and agree on most convenient contract terms and still things can go wrong caused by another subcontractor or circumstance.
Gantt charts doesn’t bring the results
Usually the site works are scheduled using Gantt charts. Every week Project Manager or Site Manager reschedules their project, because most of the time it doesn’t represent the current situation. Some of the tasks are delayed, and by crossing fingers the one who makes schedules hopes that this time the project will stay on schedule. And this happens over and over, every week. In best case the project is finished with minimal impact on the client°s expectations but in worst case schedules are missed massively, clients are not happy with the result and subcontractors end up breaking the relationship with the client, having huge impact on their balance sheet because of loss.
How different is PlanUpPro?
So how is this changed with PlanUpPro? Well PlanUpPro works differently, it doesn’t have a typical interactive Gantt chart which looks fun but makes no value for contractors. Instead PlanUpPro has an algorithm (we call it model) where it learns how your team or workers work on site, what works they perform, how your teams are affected by idleness, what happens with your tasks once you run out of materials and so on. All these things and many more are the main reason why project schedules are missed. We have trained our model on thousands of different types of projects, thus giving us knowledge and experience for many different use cases. Based on those data and site daily reports PlanUpPro recalculates and simulates different scenarios and gives data when the total project will be finished and how many mandays you would need to finish tasks. Contractors can then rely on this information and focus on strategy and how to improve their performance and budgets. Because there is no more need to reschedule your site works, the user is now welcomed to improve their strategy, processes or teams. Basically anything which improves schedule and budget. This model was tested on many actual sites and user cases and the results were impressive.
An example
Here is an example, our speciality trade contractor executed concrete works, the duration of works initially were estimated to take 6 months. However, the contractor was informed by our PlanUpPro software that he will be late by 1 month. He knew this within first two weeks once he took step on site. He was then able to review the way he executes the work, where he is losing the time, and he was able to increase the manpower at some point. Eventually he finished the project 5 days after the schedule.
Are we abandoning Gantt chart?
But what about Gantt chart display option? Do not worry, we still have it, but slightly different, with it you can schedule your resources on site. It updates on your daily performance and you can follow whether you have allocated enough resources and indicate if something is being skipped.
Author – Emil Berzins. Follow me on 