Although the adoption of a Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb, a leading construction project management software, entails the digital transformation of all project management processes required to deliver a capital construction project, nevertheless, some organizations are reluctant to implement a PMIS on projects that are already being executed. Simply they do not want to disrupt what they have in place nor do they want to go into the argument of introducing new requirements and the migration of old data.
Whether those organizations are project owners, project management consultants, supervision consultants, or contractors, they want the adoption of a Project Management Information System to be done with negligent impact on their current project management activities. In a nutshell, they mainly want the adoption of a Project Management Information System to digitally transform two specific points, storing project documents and issuing the monthly progress report. For project owners and contractors, those two requirements should be implemented on their complete projects’ portfolios. In other words, they need to consider an enterprise PMIS solution. All those organizations also need the scaled-down solution to be up and running in a couple of weeks not months with the least cost to implement and maintain.
On construction projects, usually project documents are stored in a digital format using a computer explorer where folders and subfolders are created to align the storage of those documents with their projects’ portfolio and the document filing structure used for each project. Some organizations might also have their digital documents on different document management system applications like MS SharePoint, and Aconex among others. As for the monthly progress report, MS Excel is usually the tool used by most of those organizations to create this report. To start with, for each project that the organization wants to digitally transform the document management and progress reporting functions, a project will be added to PMWeb. The project input form is used to capture all needed details about the project including its spatial latitude and longitude attributes, project stakeholders, budget, planned start and finish dates, and the scope of work among others. There is also the option of adding any additional user-defined fields if this is needed.
In addition, there is a need to have a single repository of all companies that are involved in the delivery of projects for the organization. Although this might look like a trivial requirement, nevertheless one of the key issues that face organizations is having wrong entries for companies that they deal with. Those wrong entries can be the wrong company name, wrong contact name, or wrong address among others. PMWeb, a leading construction project management software, features a companies module that is used to capture all needed details for each company. To expedite the processes of having the companies register, PMWeb allows importing the company’s details into the PMWeb database using an MS Excel template.
The third step is to create the document management repository folders and subfolders to match the filing structure for each current project unless they were standardized across the complete projects’ portfolio. PMWeb allows uploading documents of different file types in bulk to each folder. Attributes can be added to each folder to capture additional information if needed for the uploaded documents. In addition, access permission rights can be set for each folder or subfolder. In addition, PMWeb users can subscribe to each folder or subfolder to receive notifications when a new document or version of an existing document is uploaded or when documents are downloaded. Further, uploaded documents can be redlined and marked up using PMWeb Viewer.
A dashboard can be created to report on the uploaded documents based on the attribute values, category, type, and status of those documents. PMWeb allows designing those dashboards in a format that will meet the organization’s reporting requirements. The dashboard is designed to allow drilling down to the data source.
The last requirement will be to create an input form for the monthly progress report. The content of the form will be based on the project performance data that needs to be reported. It can be basic or extended information. PMWeb custom form builder allows adding all needed fields and tables to capture the required project performance data. The fields can be associated with a predefined list of values to allow the user to pick the required values. The progress report is usually used to capture details on the current percent complete, expected finish date, safety incidents, quality issues, non-compliance reports, change orders, progress invoices, progress narrative, risk, and issues among others. This form will become available for all projects for their standard monthly progress report. Of course, there is also the option of having different progress report input forms if this is a requirement.
Similar to all other PMWeb modules, progress photographs, documents, and other information needed to support what is being reported will be attached to the monthly progress report. Those could be uploaded and stored on the document management repository or just directly uploaded to the progress report. In addition, since PMWeb is a 100% web-enabled, zero-footprint application, the project schedule module can be accessed anytime, anywhere using any smart device. If a smart device is equipped with a camera, PMWeb will give the user the option to take a photo or video of the current project progress and attach it to the monthly progress report.
The data captured in the monthly progress report input form becomes the basis for the monthly progress dashboard which again can be designed in any desired form or format. It can also be designed to display the progress photographs attached to the progress report.
For projects in which we are equipped with construction site cameras such as time-lapse cameras, the monthly progress report can be designed with a hyperlink to the camera IP address. When the user clicks on the link, the user will have real-time visualization of the project’s progress. Depending on the camera system, the user can also display videos of past periods’ performance.
For organizations using PMWeb as their construction project management software to capture the documents and progress across their complete projects’ portfolio, PMWeb allows the creation of a consolidated report of all those projects. If the GIS location attributes were captured for those projects, the portfolio dashboard can be designed to display the location of those projects along with critical progress information for each project as captured in the monthly progress report. The projects’ portfolio dashboard will be designed to allow the user to drill down to the selected project’s progress dashboard.
