With or without the Corona Virus, Covid-19, pandemic, the good practice of remote work eventually becomes a common habit to be embraced across all businesses including the business of capital project delivery. To achieve this, the many project management processes needed to manage, monitor, evaluate, and report the delivery of capital projects need to be digitally transformed. This enables individuals from the different entities involved in managing the delivery of capital projects, including project owners, design and supervision consultants, project management consultants, contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers, to perform those processes with lesser physical contacts, when it is not needed, to support remote work. This digital transformation also supports the adoption of other best practices such as a paperless environment, lean management, collaboration, transparency, accountability, and real-time single version of the truth reporting, among others.
The digital transformation of everyday project management processes far exceeds what a document management system can provide when it comes to managing capital project delivery. This digital transformation needs to have a project management information system (PMIS) like PMWeb that enables managing the many processes of communications, cost, procurement, contract, risk, schedule, quality, safety, and other functions required for capital projects. In addition, it needs to have a project management information system (PMIS) like PMWeb that has workflows that enables emulating the different actions, and the sequence of those actions, in reviewing, sharing, and approving the everyday project management processes including the incorporation of approval authority levels. Further, it needs to have a project management information system (PMIS) like PMWeb that allows creating the reports and dashboards, in any desired format, to enable real-time single version reporting of the different project management processes as well as project, program and projects’ portfolio key performance indicators and progress status.
Web-Enabled PMIS that Adheres to Organization’s Data Security Policy
One of the challenges that face many organizations that want to have a PMIS is the data security policy requirements that need to comply with. Those organizations never permit the use of a PMIS where the super administrator rights and privileges are managed by the software vendor rather than their own IT team. This makes using SaaS-based PMIS applications unacceptable by most project owner organizations, in particular public sector entities. Of course, there is also the requirement for having the PMIS database be stored in the same country of the project owner which again makes using SaaS-based PMIS applications not possible as most software vendors would usually host their applications in their own home country.
This issue can be resolved by having the PMIS application like PMWeb hosted on-premises at either the organization’s own secured data center or any third-party in-country data center that is approved by the organization. The organization can then decide on the extent of data access permissions to be provided to the different entities involved in delivering their capital projects’ portfolios. There are even cases where some organizations who have installed PMWeb have selected to install PMWeb as an intranet application to enforce their strict application access policy through their secured network infrastructure.
Of course, having the PMIS data on-premises provides the organization with the other advantages of enabling the integration of PMIS data with third-party applications such as Oracle EBS, SAP, and MS Dynamics among others as well as third-party business intelligence and data visualization applications like MS Power BI, Tableau, Qlik among others.
PMIS Enables Managing all Needed Project Management Processes
PMWeb is specifically designed for managing capital project delivery. It comes ready with most of the forms needed to manage communication, cost, procurement, contract, risk, schedule, safety, quality, and other processes. Those include RFI, Meeting Minutes, Safety Incident, Budget, Budget Adjustment, Committed Contracts, Proposed Change Orders, Change Orders, Progress Invoices, Risk Register, Timesheets, Online Bid, and Bid Analysis among many others.
In addition, the PMWeb form builders allow creating of forms for all other processes that could be specific for each organization such as work inspection requests, project charters, non-compliance reports, permits, and audit checklists among many others. Those custom forms can be designed in the desired format as well as language, including non-Latin languages like Arabic.
PMIS Enables the Uploading, Storing, Sharing, and Archiving of Project Documents
All capital projects require maintaining hard copies of all formal communications and contract documents to fulfill the contractual requirements of the executed contracts as well as to comply with the country’s laws should the project be subject to litigation. Most of those documents are formally handed over to the project owner when the project is closed. PMWeb Document Management Repository allows mapping the exact project filing structure to enable uploading soft copies’ versions of the same hard copies’ versions physically stored in the project’s filing cabinets. Access rights to those folders are restricted as per the project’s policy. In addition, permitted users can subscribe to automated notifications of newly uploaded and downloaded documents. PMWeb document management repository allows the creation of attributes that are specific for each folder as well as it allows document version control.
PMIS Enables Submitting, Reviewing, and Approving Project Management Processes and Documents
PMWeb allows a unique workflow process for every project, including document management. The workflow uniqueness is a result of the fact that different project individuals could be involved in process review and approval steps, the sequence could differ, the time allotted for each workflow step could differ, the decisions for returning and rejecting workflow could differ and the authorities’ approval levels could differ depending on the values of each project management process. The workflows can be project or program specific or could be common to all projects managed by the organization.
PMIS Enables Real-Time Single Version of the Truth Monitoring, Evaluation, and Reporting of Project Management Processes as well as Projects, Programs, and Projects’ Portfolio Status and Performance
The information captured and gathered across the complete project’s life cycle phases for each project that the organization is executing, planning to execute, or completing, will become available to be analyzed to predict and constructively influence the time, cost, and other important objectives of the project. This information also provides the project team and stakeholders with a real-time single version of the truth of the project’s performance status that can be reported on in the desired form and format. The dynamic dashboards will be automatically updated with real-time data to provide a single version of the truth on the projects’ portfolio performance. The user can drill down to the data source to investigate the reported information when needed.
