Projectmates Construction Software Blog

Mapping your workflow process

Each stage of construction is dependent on the previous one. Starting from the design and bidding process through project completion, to preventative maintenance. The entire project lifecycle is connected. A great construction project management software creates a lifecycle workflow where all the different parts are linked to provide summaries and reports to the decision-makers in leadership roles, while also collaborating with the entire project team.

When it comes to intuitively mapping out the construction process, Projectmates is built for high performance.  All information input into the system is displayed intelligently in the appropriate modules with minimum effort from the users. We’ve already done the work for you. You just get to enjoy its user-friendly interface, while gaining a lot of productivity from the feature-rich tools.

Better accountability and more transparency provide better insight, avoid confusion and bring everyone up to speed on project progress.

Collaboration and Teamwork

The world of construction has always had few constants and many variables. Delays, change orders, budget shortfalls, fluctuating owners’ needs, and technological changes require constant modifications to the project. On top of that, the downward spiral in the economy in the last year or so added even more stress to an industry that already has its fair share of uncertainties. One would imagine that the power of teamwork would be sorely tested under the circumstances. But that’s not always the case.

A recent article in Construction Executive touched on this topic. The article focused on a construction team that worked on a big medical complex that consisted of medical and scientific research centers and had many different parties - architecture firm, contractors and sub-contractors, engineering firm, project managers and the owner. Collaboration was definitely a challenge. But the team was able to overcome most of the anticipated issues by following a divide-and-conquer modus operandi. Teamwork is definitely the key to the completion of a successful construction project. The amount and quality of planning is critical as well and can take up endless man-hours.

The best way to ensure that teamwork always works is by establishing an online project management system that keeps everyone on the same page at the same time – giving them role-based access to update & store documents and project data from wherever they want. Web based construction management software systems provide the kind of visibility and flexibility that allow key players to focus on building rather than collaborating. The software does all of the work for you. A construction managers only issue should be - how to get everyone to use it so it becomes a centralized database? Find a solution built with a user-friendly interface and your team will be highly motivated to use it.

The Final Countdown to 2010!

It’s the final countdown to 2010! It’s also a good time to look back at 2009 and take stock of our achievements at Systemates. With two major releases (and one minor) launched and customer success stories to share, as well as an ever-expanding web presence to better reach our customers and partners, we have had a good and productive year at Systemates.

We kicked off the year with a major release - V9.0. This version had all the bells and whistles that make a good web-based software a pleasure to navigate. A powerful Ball-in-court applet, a scrolling photo feature, and a project map powered by Bing were just some of the cool features. By June we had V9.5 with some improvements to the preventative maintenance and repair work orders module. And we wrapped up the year with V10.0 – offering a completely revamped financial module featuring Earned Value Analysis, enhanced Budget Tracking and a versatile Portfolio Management module.

One of our biggest customer success stories was successfully integrating Projectmates with Oracle accounting system for a large S&P 500 retailer client. Another major success story was streamlining Projectmates’ financial tracking capabilities with the labor timesheets for a large government client and allowing them to get a clear picture of total project costs in real time.

But it’s not been all work! Systemates actively supports sustainable construction and our goals are aligned with LEED, which is why we became a member this year. Our online document management tools save about 3 tons of paper for every construction project (on average). And we have had plenty of fun writing our blogs and keeping you informed and posted on industry happenings and Projectmates updates on our user group at LinkedIn.

We’re excited about 2010! We have many innovative ideas we’re going to start working on next year! Happy New Year from the team at Projectmates!

This holiday season – we present Projectmates User Group! Stay Connected!

There are more articles available online on social networking and the benefits thereof, than there are on the Tiger Woods story! Imagine that! But with enough being said on the topic, I will try to avoid preaching about the merits of virtual business interaction – and get right down to what really seems to work – at least for most businesses. At Projectmates, we created our brand new user group on LinkedIn.com to provide our customers and partners with a platform for interactive communication. We just got started, but it’s been great so far! It’s a great place to go in to share something new you learnt about the industry or to simply reiterate and remind other users about an important best practice in construction management or related topics.

 

Click here to be a part of the Projectmates User Group on LinkedIn.

We love our new user group on LinkedIn already. It’s exciting to be able to give our customers more avenues to reach us and share their thoughts, views and opinions in an informal setting. Everyone has a “Eureka” moment when they come upon a new or fascinating viewpoint, idea or news article that they cannot wait to share with other enthusiastic users on the group. If it benefitted them in some way, it’s sure to benefit others as well. That’s what a user group ought to do – provide something of value to its users.

 

Here’s the wonderful thing about connecting virtually. Sure, you can attend several networking events a year and pocket a100 business cards at every one of them. But in a world where executives are starved for time and companies are adapting strict cost-cutting measures, social networking sites (for the serious networker) is the next best thing to sliced bread and butter. I don’t believe it will or that it should necessarily replace traditional face-to-face interaction. I think the former should complement the latter and reduce them when necessary. It’s important to remember the ‘networking’ part in social networking. So use it to your best advantage! Be active and ‘follow’ activities of your business acquaintances. The next big business opportunity may just come from that!

 

Joining a user group definitely has its benefits. For instance, if you join a Projectmates user group at LinkedIn, you might find yourself automatically connected to several other connections within the construction industry. You may come across familiar names that you would like to hear from or would like to be connected too. One connection leads to several others! We all know that word-of-mouth and references speak much louder than any other marketing tool. Having people endorse you will come in handy when looking for a job or trying to bid on a project within your industry and finding and communicating with key contacts makes all the difference.

 

And finally, you never have to worry about looking for that lost business card again. Just sign into your networking site and get all the information you want about your contact. How easy is that?

 

Come be a part of the Projectmates User Group on

Graphs and charts speak a 1,000 words!

Most people have better memory retention when they see a graph, chart or table as opposed to plain words. Especially when it comes to complex data – there’s really no better way to express compound information than through graphs, charts and diagrams. That’s why you’ve got to love any type of dashboard reporting. Like any other software solution, project management software, especially in the construction industry is served best with a versatile dashboard reporting module or Portfolio Management.

 

A good project management software solution will have Portfolio Management that provides excellent visibility and overview into a company’s construction projects. It’s akin to having a clock that shows the different times in major cities around the world. With all your projects ordered and tabbed, one snapshot view should tell you the status of all your projects simultaneously.

 

There are numerous ways to enjoy the benefits of Portfolio Management but this tool is most effective when grouped and displayed in a user-friendly format with easy navigation and easy-to-read reports. The new Projectmates V10.0 Portfolio Management is versatile and has the capability to produce a variety of reports conveniently grouped under – Construction, Workflow, Financials, and Project Status. This type of dashboard reporting helps in managing the entire project portfolio as a whole, and not just as individual projects.

 

For individual project status monitoring, Earned Value Analysis is a handy tool – another great feature in the new Projectmates V10.0. Combining key factors such as planned time and cost and actual time and cost of a project, simple coefficients will tell you – at a glance – how your projects are faring in terms of time and schedule. Because sometimes, you got to look at the big picture!

Importing with Excel

The ability to import Excel sheets into Projectmates can save you tons of time that would otherwise be spent in data entry, but it can also give rise to some unexpected errors.  If you've ever encountered difficulties when trying to import Excel files into a budget, schedule, punchlist or any other module with this time-saving feature, these suggestions should alleviate some of your concerns and have you importing like a pro in no time.

Here are some of the most common reasons why an import will fail and what you can do about it.

1.  Some of the required fields are missing.  Check to make sure that all of the required columns are completely filled out for every row. Required fields are marked in green on the template.  Sometimes empty rows at the bottom of the table will cause this error if any of the cells contain spaces, tabs, or other invisible characters.  Try highlighting several rows at the bottom of the table, starting with the first empty row, and deleting the rows (Right-click and select delete to do this, rather than just hitting the Backspace or Delete key)

2.  Dates or numbers are not in the proper format.  Make sure that all dates are displayed in the format of 01-Jan-2010 and fields that require a number do not contain any letters or special characters including dollar signs and commas (Note: decimals are ok for currency fields)

3.  Cell Formats are incorrect.  All fields should be formatted as TEXT in Excel.  If you are attempting to use formulas in your spreadsheet, you must copy and paste those cells using 'Paste Special' then select the option to paste 'Values' so that the formatting can be changed to Text.  Sometimes Excel will AUTOMATICALLY AND WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION change the formatting of a column to 'Number' if the first few rows happen to contain numbers.  To force Excel to recognize these as Text fields, you will have to add an apostrophe in front of the number in the first row.

And finally, if all else fails, copy all of the non-header cells in the table (Select the cells, don't just highlight the entire table or entire columns/rows) and paste them into a fresh Projectmates template, which can be downloaded from the same page where you would import the Excel file. This will solve many formatting issues that can occur while working in Excel.

Bids for government construction projects heat up

You can thank the economic stimulus package for increased government building projects. But despite the abundance of jobs, getting the winning bid may not be a cinch.

According to a September report on Taragana.com, every state this year has reported average winning bids coming in from 5 to 12 percent below estimate, said Tony Dorsey, spokesman for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, whose organization polled state governments this year on the first round of projects funded by the federal economic stimulus.

The lower bids are being attributed to reduced prices for materials. But increased competition is also a factor.

Jim Andoga, president of the Irving, Texas-based construction giant Austin Bridge & Road told the Web site his company, facing more competition, has reduced built-in profit margins in its bids by about 20 to 25 percent over the past year. In 2006, he bid an average of 9 percent over engineers’ estimates, compared with 17 percent under this year — and still has not won as often.
 
This seems to be a stark contrast to what’s happening in Ohio.

The Columbus Dispatch reported in July government projects in that state are getting fewer bidders and higher bids on projects.

The paper reported contractors are seeing unstable prices for fuel and construction materials and are overbidding, or simply not bidding, on municipal and state projects.

Scott Varner, Ohio Department of Transportation spokesman, said his department is also seeing fewer bidders despite the fact state contracts often include sliding adjustments to account for unexpected cost changes during the years it takes to complete the project – helping to mitigate the risk factors.

"There's greater risk in putting in a fixed price bid today than there was two years ago," Chris Runyan, president of the Ohio Contractors Association told The Columbus Dispatch. "We have never seen price increases at this rate in all of the 25 years that I've been involved in the transportation industry."

Whatever the case may be for your bids, Projectmates can help you get organized during the bidding process and keep everything on budget. The online capital project management software is designed to share documents, track budgets and financials, manage changes and report progress with ease. 

Healthcare debate affecting construction outlook

We’ve heard so much in the news lately about the healthcare reform debate. What I haven’t heard talked about is the future of healthcare construction … until now.

Jim Haughey, Reed Construction Data chief economist, said in July healthcare spending is certain to expand in 2011 and create a need for more facilities – hospitals more than residential care.

The good news for those in the healthcare construction business is it looks like there will be plenty of projects in the next couple of years.

“The long term outlook for healthcare construction remains good and will likely be boosted somewhat by whatever Congress decides to do,” he wrote on the RCD Web site.

The uncertainty facing hospitals is also affecting medical offices, nursing homes and residential care facilities … compounding their woes are the effects of the recession and surplus office spaces.

Haughey says overall, healthcare construction spending growth has declined from several years in the 10 percent range to about 2 percent, allowing for drops in construction materials costs, since last fall. He is predicting a further 7 percent decline through the end of 2009. But there is light at the end of the tunnel!

“This is as much due to the uncertain market environment as it is to the recession,” Haughey said. “Then expect a return to the 10 percent growth range by late next year (2010).”

He does warn you to be open-minded and flexible about your projects, however.

“But depending on what Congress decides to do, the project owners may not be the same hospitals you now expect to expand next year,” he said.

Regardless of the size and scope of the project, you can count on Projectmates to help keep all facets of your project running smoothly, on time and on budget.
 

Projectmates lead the way with LEED

Even before going green became all the rage and green projects were being funded by the government through the stimulus plan, Projectmates was doing its part to help save the environment.

It’s a no-brainer using Projectmates saves trees by reducing the amount of paperwork involved in a project. But did you know the online construction project management software eliminates the use of 22,649 sheets of paper or 274 pounds of sheets of paper and 528 kilograms of carbon in a single $8 million construction project in submittals alone? This is the equivalent of saving over three 40-feet-tall trees with every project.

Projectmates joins Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) in its efforts to go paperless by providing the platform for completely electronic creation and management of all submittals, RFIs, meetings, bidding and over 200 portfolio reports for LEED construction projects with our Web-based construction project management software.

Projectmates software supports LEED projects by also providing the accountability and transparency needed to manage all LEED-related tasks. Users of LEED projects will be able to track projects, meetings, documents, tasks, timelines, credits and much more.

Green schools for less green

Did you know building green schools can be budget-friendly? Rachel Gutter of School Construction News says so.

We’ve all heard that green schools save money, over time, reducing energy and water expenses. But Gutter says these days a green school can be built for a price comparable to a conventionally designed facility.

I have to admit I was skeptical of this when I first read it. I always heard green building required higher costs up-front, then you would recoup that in utilities savings years down the road, but she has proof it can be less expensive on the front-end to build green.

Gutter says West Brazos Junior High, the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified school in Texas, was built for 18 percent less than an average middle school in the region. Northland Pines High School in Eagle River, Wis., is an LEED Gold school built for 25 percent less than the regional construction average for high schools constructed in the same year.

While she likes the advances being made in new green construction, Gutter says the greatest opportunity to have the biggest impact on energy and water use and the least impact on the environment is through the greening of existing schools.

Just as with new green construction, implementing green strategies into existing school buildings doesn’t have to come with a hefty price tag. She suggests districts develop a plan to introduce new green strategies, technologies and policies over time, focusing first and foremost on high-impact strategies that yield immediate savings or have a significant impact on student health and wellness.

Projectmates can help you go green in your school construction project by reducing the amount of paper used, and keeping your projects on budget and schedule through up-to-the-minute reports. Our Web-based construction management software also will help you manage your building structure through its lifespan.