Means and methods of construction project controls and project management have changed little over the years, in terms of their objectives and criteria – meeting minutes, budgets, estimates, and schedules. Only the way in which various building industry professionals go about achieving these ends has changed. I am referring, of course, to the digital age, which the construction industry has been playing catch-up ball to since MS DOS hit the stores.
With the release of Auto CAD, the design industry was among the earliest adaptors and adherents of sophisticated digital technology. Later, the advances of three-dimensional modeling pioneered by Frank Gehry*led to the ethereal BLOB movement, before the implementation of BIM; at least into megaprojects with budgets that can bankroll it.
Megaproject contractors can afford to implement BIM on their megaprojects; however, their smaller subcontractors invariably will not. If the subcontractors – especially MEP, do not use it, the BIM coordination benefit will be compromised, leaving smaller contractors in the lurch. The proprietary non-standardization of BIM file types assures that the BIM industry will remain fragmented for some time, until one or two giants emerge and find a way to make the technology more accessible, and mainstreamed -which is what those who perpetuate BIM hype would have you believe. At present, nothing could be less true.
Many veteran executives who did not adapt to the computer age may feel they’ve missed the boat. Perhaps that is part of the reason the building industry has been slow to adapt to the digital age. In my mind, these sorts will go the way of the leaf-eating dinosaurs. To offset this perception, software developers deliberately dumbed down tools intended for the building industry. Accordingly, with a few exceptions, such programs have never really taken hold.
Nowhere is this truer than in building industry mobile phone apps, which (except for games) don’t seem to be catching fire in the App or Play Store. There are plenty of sharp tools out there – underutilized tools, the result of a short demographic of users. The trouble is, the more sophisticated tools are only as useful as the operator is experienced, and the application is integrated, i.e., if the app isn’t implemented system-wide, it’s probably running in a vacuum. I don’t like to roll out new means and methods until I am confident I will have buy-in from the whole team.
Insofar as the plethora of currently available bloated project management PC/MAC software geared toward the building industry, these tend to either disappoint by being too cumbersome, or merely by underperforming at most of what could be done much easier using simple spreadsheets and word processing documents uploaded to an ftp site. At best, some do one thing well, and others not, requiring double-entry somewhere in the path.
Any CPM scheduling software is really just a relational database, with a (often) glitzy interface, intended to seem intuitive and user friendly to its operator. Various software programs achieve those ends to varying degrees of effort and success, yet seldom does a program do both well. XER Toolkit, which opens as a tab in MS Excel gives a scheduler a stripped-down spreadsheet user interface, well exemplifies how GANTT charts are merely dolled-up spreadsheets. For that reason, it is a useful oversight tool, when used in conjunction with established platforms, which it can import/export.
I still prefer to use my Deltek Acumen Fuse forensics and Executive Reports for my oversight work. My clients don’t always feel like they need to understand my reports completely, but they certainly are eager to learn when it comes time to create a mitigation, recovery or claim schedule. In other words, once they see the tangible benefit of investing in sound oversight software, they’re suddenly all ears.
I have only a passing interest in 4D scheduling because 1) it is not well enough established or mainstreamed, and 2) it does not seem to be more than a prop for a dog and pony show with the owner, i.e., I don’t need it to “see” the job: I’ve been around long enough to be able to visualize what a given scope of work might look like at 25, 50, or 75% complete. This vision is something that owners are challenged by, which is why the 4D exercise is – well, like I said.
My plan for my future CPM scheduling projects is to use my vision to tele-manage projects without leaving my office. Site web-cameras, and progress photos are pretty much all I need to have a sense of just where a project is positioned. Naturally, there are, and will always be, projects that are simply too big, or too complex, to manage the schedule remotely.
There is no factor inhibiting remote monitoring, or tele-managing, other than what I perceive as skepticism or indifference from builders and owners: simply put, the concept would be still a little too progressive for the slow to react building industry. Many schedulers I know already work this way. The advantages and benefits to the industry could be enormous. Should that happen, the likelihood is, that by such time, remote schedule monitoring for domestic building will be outsourced to contractors in poorer countries.
