Construction Project Management and Scheduling Software Buyer's Guide: Benefits

Since project management software means different things to different construction businesses, the possible benefits vary. In general though, look for a new project management system to give you these advantages:

• Standardization of processes, which should streamline construction scheduling, budgeting, reporting, document control and change orders.
• Timely visibility into existing and potential problems, allowing you to prevent or quickly solve issues.
• Elimination of communication bottlenecks, especially if your package supports automated workflow.
• Better performance management of employees, suppliers and subcontractors through on-demand reporting of key   performance indicators.
• Consistency of hiring and training new project managers, which simplifies business expansion.
• Increased accuracy of time and cost estimates; archived project records serve as reference guides for new projects.

Megan Hamel LeBlanc, Estimator at Hamel Builders, Inc. in Elkridge, Md., points out that standardizing on a project management system -- Hamel uses Prolog -- can also make it easier to start new projects, considerably reducing the time it takes to build and communicate plans and workflows.

"Time is saved because you can duplicate things easily," Hamel said. If you are sending the same information to a bunch of people, you only have to create one transmittal, then you can duplicate it to everyone. We send out, on average, 100 to 200 drawing packages per project. If I had to hand write them all it would take at least five minutes per transmittal. With Prolog, I can make one electronically, in roughly two minutes, and duplicate it for all the subcontractors in that trade. Just that function saves about a day and a half of work.

*** Go to the next article: Construction Project Management and Scheduling Software Buyer's Guide: Evaluation