More Than a Project
By integrating with other applications and technologies, project-management software can often afford the company benefits far beyond the obvious.
To steal a phrase, “We’ve come a long way, PM.” Project management, once thought of as a necessary, but mundane task to every job is now acknowledged as one of the three most critical aspects of constructing buildings and companies, too. With bidding/estimating and overall financial management applications, project-management software is becoming the place to find cost saving and profit-building benefits.
But project management alone, while an important piece in the contractors’ toolkit, lends itself to much greater value when integrated with other applications and technologies. All contractors have probably made at least some ties between project management and financial applications so costs and time can be accounted for ongoing. But progressive companies are finding even more success connecting project management with technologies as diverse as GPS (global positioning system) and Webcams.
Leslie Shiner, principle of construction consulting firm The Shiner Group, www.shinergroup.com, Mill Valley, Calif., notes, “Project management can utilize new technologies such as GPS to track the location of employees and equipment. Not only does this help project management manage the crew and its gear without having a project supervisor on the job site, but some contractors are using the GPS technology to create timecards. This way employees do not need to fill out timecards.”
Another integration involves document management. Shiner continues, “Online document management can provide benefits by tracking the many different versions of the plans, specifications, and addenda. Many project managers are using a document management system to upload the information for all to view. Using protected Websites, the managers can make sure that everyone involved in the job has access to the latest documents, and comments or questions can be posted so everyone can share the communication regarding the job.”
Integrating Earth
Richard Sappe, AEC industry market manager, Primavera Systems, www.primavera.com, Bala Cynwyd, Pa., talks about one interesting integration he is seeing for project management: GIS (geographic information system). GIS is an information system capable of integrating, storing, editing, analyzing, sharing, and displaying geographically-referenced information.
He points to one particularly successful implementation from Burns & McDonald, www.burnsmcd.com, Kansas City, Mo. The company has tied its project-management system, which is both a contract management and planning system, to Google Earth, http://earth.google.com.
“The nice thing about Google Earth as far as a GIS system is concerned is that it’s so accessible to the entire collaboration sphere of that project contractor, subcontractor, owners, and all the stakeholders in the general population,” says Sappe.
Google Earth is capable of navigating and zooming in to satellite images and maps of a specific environment. Burns & McDonald has integrated Google Earth so the user can draw on information from the system and display that while instantly tying into information from design tools into the Google Earth environment. A superintendent in the field with a wireless laptop can actually be on site, log into Google Earth and zoom into the area where they’re working and review a wealth of information—like right of way status and contact information for the people living in the houses along the construction site. They can define certain needs and requirements—such as design information for a particular transmission tower that’s being erected on that site or the status of completion along that route—and that pulls information in from their call center.
“It really provides them a fabulous way of enabling anybody who is in their extended project team to access a lot of different information in a very easy to use GIS, geographically-based system,” explains Sappe. “It’s one thing to get information that says such and such a right of way is approved, it’s a whole other thing when you can go into a system, click on a parcel and see what’s the status of that right of way. Or what’s the concern of this particular property owner. A very slick integration that they’ve put together that has been a huge benefit to them in the field.”
Vendor Help
Combining various applications to integrate data flows for better value can be a daunting task for the usually small—if existing—IT department at a company.
Sue Watkins, director of marketing, Meridian Systems, www.meridiansystems.com, Folsom, Calif., says it is an interesting landscape out there in terms of what customers have been doing.
“I think there are some technology innovations, as well as industry issues, that will drive changes over the coming years. I don’t think we have seen a lot of it yet, but we see a lot of dynamics out there that will probably bring about change,” says Watkins.
On the technology side, Watkins is seeing XML (extensible markup language) technology and SOA (services-oriented architecture) playing a bigger role.
“Early on that had a lot of value to the CIO or IT decisionmaker in an organization. A while back we made a decision to develop on that platform, mostly because of the advantages for integration that it brings,” says Watkins. “The reason being, there’s really no standardized way that companies want to integrate applications and data. The one thing we’ve seen for sure, everybody’s different in how they want to do integration and what their definition of a successful solution is. The good thing about Web services/XML technology is that it opens up multiple points of entry in our Proliance system for companies that want to integrate. If I can get a system that’s built on an open architecture it will really open up a lot of opportunities to integrate my system however I might want to do so going forward.”
Many smaller firms rely on standard applications for much of their front office work and integrating new technologies with it can be frustrating. Watkins responds, “We’re seeing a shift now where that is starting to change. There’s a different way companies can develop applications and it’s the Microsoft Office Business Application (OBA) strategy. Most companies have had to take the whole enterprise application hook line and sinker whether they liked it or not. They’ve had to train on a new system and the issue for a company implementing an enterprise project-management system was, ‘Will my users adopt this system?’ Since we’ve initiated a strategy of developing Microsoft Office Business Applications, it allows us to tailor an interface for each of the project team members.
“I’ll give you a specific example: The project manager needs to have full access to the application, obviously. But there are often contributing users—who maybe just enter contract data or invoices into the system—who are already familiar with Microsoft Office and are comfortable working in Excel. By using an OBA strategy, we can create a mini application that will take the data from Excel and bring it into the Proliance system automatically.”
Bottom-up Integration
In late 2000, Adolfson & Peterson Construction (A&P), www.a-p.com, Minneapolis, Minn., put together an in-house committee—Team Digital—to evaluate its technology systems and devise a strategy for change. Team Digital determined the optimal long-term solution would be the implementation of separate, construction-specific applications for accounting, project management, estimating, and CRM (customer-relationship management) that could run on a standardized SQL platform.
“How do you bring information together when you have your budget in Meridian’s Prolog and your actuals in the accounting software?” asks Frank Carlson, director of business applications recommendation, Adolfson & Peterson Construction. “We use Microsoft Reporting Services to seamlessly display information from both SQL databases on an intranet site which makes the data appear integrated even though it isn’t.”
A&P’s limited IT resources required it to configure both applications to mirror setups like cost codes to create compatibility without moving data from one program to another. Through the intranet, a custom metrics dashboard displays a series of job overview reports with realtime aggregate numbers (pulled from both programs) and the ability to drill down to detail.
While many companies take a top-down approach to new technology initiatives, the semi-autonomous structure of A&P’s various locations prompted a different kind of Prolog rollout.
“Our implementation was more of a bottom-up, grass-roots adoption of the software,” says Carlson.
He compares the experience to viral marketing; use of the Prolog product throughout the company expanded as its merits and early adopters espoused problem-solving abilities.
Eye in the Sky
Integrating Web cameras with online applications and collaboration capabilities adds several new dimensions to project management.
Jon Antevy, CEO, e-Builder, www.e-builder.com, Plantation, Fla., worked with Chandler McCormack, president, Oxblue Corp., www.oxblue.com, Atlanta, Ga., to integrate OxBlue’s ruggedized construction cameras with e-Builder’s online applications.
Antevy comments, “When our clients log into our system they have a dashboard—what we call an overview—of all their projects. Because we’re focusing on owners, they usually have multiple projects running all at the same time and they want one place to go to get their information. What this partnership allows us to do is we’re facilitating that dashboard where they can go into a particular project and then click on a corresponding button and up comes the live camera showing the latest image of the project. Right next to the image of the camera is some financial information on how they’re doing against their budget. Right alongside that information is the schedule, how they’re doing on their timeline. Along with that is also some documentation, perhaps AutoCAD drawings or design drawings of the project. There is correspondence being sent among its e-members.”
McCormack continues, “I can look at that camera image and I can then generate an action item to somebody on the project saying, ‘I see there are three people who aren’t wearing their hard hats.’ Or, ‘I can see that this column hasn’t been put into place as the schedule noted it’s to be.’ That’s how they work hand in hand.
“We have clients with more than 10 cameras on a jobsite, but a lot of times we have either a single camera that can canvas the entire project, or a camera on opposite ends of the project that gives them coverage of the front or back two sides.”
Taking the initiative to integrate other applications with project management sets some vendors apart. Most provide application programming interface connecting points throughout programs. A different approach, one that gained traction during the 1990s, is using the Internet as the delivery vehicle for integration.
As Dann Kroeger, CEO, HeadsUp Technologies, www.headsuptech.com, Overland Park, Kansas, points out, “Accounting and estimating are two functions best accomplished using the client/server approach. Accounting because, given the resistance of construction to adapt to technology, it would be a hard sell to get them to do it online. Estimating because it is processing intensive and usually not collaborative. HeadsUp set off to integrate the other construction project management functions including scheduling, approval document management, reference document management, resource management, field reporting, alert notification, correspondence, and collaboration online.”
HeadsUp interfaces with a number of estimating systems, transferring estimates by cost code and sometime purchase orders if the estimating system is capable. That’s usually a “one-way” path. It also interfaces one way or both ways with accounting systems for synchronizing cost codes, client information, vendor information, employee name and number, budgets, actual costs, project set up data, purchase orders, percent completed, earned value, self perform time cards, payable creation, subcontracts, owner and sub change orders.
Coming Attractions
Kroeger predicts there will be new technical devices in the field to transmit information. From a practical standpoint, expanding broadband wireless capabilities will impact the market more than anything.
EVDO (evolution-data optimized) is a telecommunications standard for the wireless transmission of data through radio signals. EVDO Rev A* provides laptops with one MB (megabyte) download capability and Rev B will provide a three MB download, meaning contractors can begin to directly capture field data in more areas.
No matter what technology is being integrated with project management, other companies will sit and wait.
“There’s a lot of hype in the marketplace right now, and our customers are on a mission to learn more about it and how to take advantage of it. Even for initiatives like BIM, we’re still in a wait and see phase: how do our customers want to use that because it really depends on what they want to use that technology for how we can respond. Are they looking to see some very efficient design methodologies being incorporated and then taking some of that cost data and bringing it into their project management system, or project budget development and cost tracking? It’s still pretty early.” •
Tom Inglesby is a contributing writer for Constructech.