Don’t Follow Construction Scheduling Software. Do THIS instead!
Nearly 60% of general contractors use construction scheduling software to manage projects large and small. But is that enough?
It’s 3:00 am.
In less than three hours, dozens of laborers and a team of operating engineers will begin arriving through the north gate, prepping for today’s concrete pour.
Everything’s riding on this.
But there’s a problem.
Your Construction Scheduling Software Is Behind Schedule
There are 14 critical anchor bolt assemblies required for the north wall.
But the assemblies aren’t here.
There’s a hiccup in the supply chain and your anchor bolt assemblies won’t arrive for two more days. And without these critical assemblies, the ironworkers can’t anchor the structure to the foundations.
No anchors? No iron.
Your Project Stops. Dead.
And that’s normal.
According to a McKinsey & Company report, costs and construction scheduling overruns are the norms for most technical building projects across all sectors.
Typical projects overrun their construction schedule by 20% and exceed their total estimated expenditures by as much as 80% beyond the original budget estimates.
That’s a HUGE Problem
But you don’t need more problems
You need solutions.
You need solid construction planning and tight scheduling of jobs to stay on track and within your budget for this build.
But how do you accomplish that?
Planning and Scheduling: the Traditional Method
Following the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering Institute (AACEI) best practices, you meet early, often, and regularly throughout your project with all your stakeholders, including the owner, MEP contractors, and subs.
When planning your master construction schedule, specifics matter.
So you hold a pre-construction meeting with your MEP contractors and subs to get everyone on the same page. Here, we start at the most granular level, integrating the Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) and task dependencies for every segment of work.
This critical information informs every facet of your construction planning and your job scheduling, so it has to be accurate.
Detailed Planning Session:
Guided by your construction drawings, contract specifications and detailed Work Breakdown Structures, you hold a multi-day event with all stakeholders to iron out potential gaps and conflicts while you build out your master construction schedule.
You know you have to get this right for everything else to run smoothly.
Constructability Review:
You go further by taking advantage of 3-D models and computer-generated imagery to visualize how your project will unfold. Together, you and your stakeholders talk through the project to determine the most efficient sequencing of scheduling and all the specific jobs to avoid delays and cost overruns.
You spend a lot of time at this stage planning, forecasting and fact-finding.
This is your last shot at getting it right before the project begins.
Weekly Construction Schedule Meeting:
Finally, your project is underway. You hold weekly site meetings to look ahead and identify potential scheduling problems.
And things go well… for a while.
But you get frustrated with all the time you’re wasting addressing the current scheduling issues.
By the time you and your stakeholders look forward to the upcoming scheduled events, everything has changed, nothing fits, and the master schedule needs to be reworked.
Then you have to distribute the newly revised construction schedule to your MEP contractors, subcontractors and suppliers.
And then they have to adjust their workloads to accommodate the new schedule demands.
Meanwhile, all you can do is hope that everyone’s schedule reconciles and things get back on track before the next meeting.
But they rarely do.
So your weekly construction project scheduling meetings become a never-ending cycle of work, rework, and more re-work.
Now you’re not following a schedule -you’re chasing it!
You’re doing everything right, and still falling short.
Meetings and regular schedule adjustments are a good start. But even weekly revisions are a poor reflection of what’s actually happening on the project.
The revisions and details hammered out in these weekly sessions quickly become irrelevant by the time they’re integrated into the many competing schedules of everyone on the project.
Construction scheduling software helps, but there are so many platforms with so little compatibility.
Stop Blindly Chasing an Inaccurate Schedule!
The data in your schedule needs to meet the following 3 criteria in order to be effective:
- Data should be relevant
- Timely, and
- Actionable
Without relevant, actionable data that reflects the actual conditions on and off the job site, you can’t make your best decisions. No one can.
And poorly informed decisions cause poorly executed actions, wasting time, money, and resources.
So, what do you do?
You don’t follow a schedule. You Lead - with Linarc.
You’re one of the growing numbers of smart, forward-thinking general contractors who employ a reliable construction scheduler with fully integrated intelligence.
Schedule Smart, with Intelligent Construction Scheduling Software
Imagine working with a current and relevant schedule every time you look at it. You don’t have to wait for weekly schedule updates. No one does.
Because your construction scheduling software syncs and updates itself automatically, in real time.
And, your construction planning and jobs scheduling software is open API, role specific, and integrates with other platforms seamlessly.
Your construction project scheduling software alerts all your stakeholders to every critical schedule change instantly, so they can adjust their schedules accordingly.
You don’t waste time, money, or valuable resources guessing.
Linarc’s Master Schedule includes the Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) for each contractor, including their dependencies.
And the platform is easy to use, providing accurate, relevant, actionable data. Both you and your contractors have the option to view the schedule in a broad overview, or to analyze each detailed Work Breakdown Structure in all its granular glory.
You always have relevant, timely, actionable data at your fingertips.
So you, the owner, architect, project engineers, contractors, and subs always know exactly where they stand in relation to your common targets, milestones, and checkpoints.
Just like that, your entire project team is in sync.
You don’t miss a thing, and you never miss a deadline.
Your entire project stays connected, in real-time, to the actualities of an unpredictable supply chain and unavoidable interruptions to your project’s workflow.
You see what’s coming before it gets here. Instead of reacting to what’s already happened.
Linarc involves everyone on an open, collaborative platform. You share discussions, documents, images, RFI’s, change orders, daily reports, inspection results and supply chain issues immediately as they happen, in real-time.
And Linarc integrates with other management tools, ERP and financial systems to ensure all your data is timely, relevant and actionable.
What does this mean for you?
So, those 14 anchor bolt assemblies you need for the north wall foundation?
Those same anchor bolt assemblies that are hung up in the supply chain somewhere?
You don’t need them. Not today.
Because your Linarc collaborative construction scheduler alerted you, and everyone else on the project, that the schedule had shifted to accommodate their new delivery date.
And with that small bit of relevant, timely, and actionable information, your foundation contractor made a small scheduling change that didn't require.....
- Meetings
- Consensus, and
- Didn’t require endless phone calls, emails or text messages to get everyone on board.
It’s 3:00 am
In less than three hours, your job site will come to life.
And you’re at home, in bed, sleeping like a baby.
Because by the time your foundation contractor gets to the north wall, those anchor bolt assemblies will be here. Right where they’re needed. And right on schedule.
Just the way you planned it.
Because you don’t follow outdated construction scheduling software.
You Lead, with Linarc.
Get an inside look at how to lead your team with Linarc.
