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Construction Project Management Software Solutions

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The Best Technology for Your Project Management Information System

How-To |

This is part two of four in a series of blogs called Tips on Deploying Construction Project Management Software for Your Organization.

How do you evaluate the best technology for a new project management information system for your construction organization? Here are some tips and lessons learned to help you select the right technology solution to fit your needs for at least the next five to ten years or more.

Technology seems to move faster all the time. It is easy to feel overwhelmed when evaluating one solution versus another, especially with something as important – and potentially costly – as a Project Management Information System (PMIS) for your construction organization. You must consider not only whether a given platform will meet your needs today but also if it will be flexible enough to meet them in a year or two. The truth is, not every option on the market today will be supported or updated a few years from now, and that is a significant risk.

The good news is you can make your next PMIS more future proof by asking the right questions during the selection process. My advice, based on helping clients design and deploy solutions to manage construction projects of all sizes, is below. If you have not already, I suggest that you check out my previous post Picking the Right Construction Project Management Software, where I offer tips and suggestions on how to plan your PMIS deployment. This article assumes the planning is complete, and you are now ready to begin the PMIS selection process by evaluating the available technologies.

Technology to Look for in a Project Management Information System

What technologies should you be looking for in a project management information system for your construction team? Here are eleven lessons learned to help navigate the IT landscape:

1. A web-based solution. Believe it or not, there are still PMIS products out there that are server/desktop applications. Any PMIS that is not a web application is not a suitable enterprise solution. With progressive web applications (PWAs) gaining traction (see below), you can expect to see this technology replace desktop apps.

2. An enterprise-grade cloud platform. Be sure to find out where a prospective vendor hosts their PMIS solution. Why does this matter? You do not want a product hosted in a server under someone’s desk or a one-off data center. You want a solution hosted on a leading cloud platform like Microsoft Azure to ensure that your PMIS vendor can provide you with the scalability, geographic localization, and enterprise security that you need. Azure also offers a wide range of additional services such as AI, workflow logic apps, SQL services, and Microsoft 365 to enhance any PMIS. Finally, an established cloud provider like Microsoft has extensive experience serving the enterprise with software and hardware solutions, and directs significant investment into Azure, ensuring that it will be around for years to come.

3. Built by construction professionals. The more construction experience the vendor’s development and implementation teams have, the more likely the product will meet your needs and will deploy successfully at your organization. And if you need any changes to the software, a vendor well versed in construction will be able to understand better or even anticipate your requirements, reducing time and cost to get a successful PMIS up and running.

4. Progressive web apps. An IT revolution underway now is progressive web applications (PWAs) replacing traditional web browser apps. The significant advantages of PWAs over traditional desktop and web browser apps include: 1) PWAs work across any modern browser; 2) there is no app to install on the device; 3) content can be available offline without an internet connection; 4) PWAs can leverage hardware features of the device such as notifications and peripherals; 5) PWAs behave just like a desktop app from the user’s perspective, and 6) PWAs perform faster than traditional web apps since they can take advantage of browser data caching.

5. Integration with Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office is not going away any time soon and is the preferred suite of tools for managing projects regardless of the PMIS used. Ensure that any PMIS you evaluate integrates deeply with the Microsoft Office applications (like Excel and Outlook) that your teams use every day.

6. Mobile and Offline Support. Let’s face it; construction work happens in the field. The PMIS you select must be available online while also having the ability to work offline on any device, even without an internet connection.

7. Email Integration. Most of us spend our days in our email application. Not only is email the audit trail on most projects, but it is also the best way to communicate with internal and external team members. A new PMIS should allow users to perform their day-to-day tasks, such as approving forms and documents, right in their email client.

8. Simple UI/UX. Construction organizations have team members with varying levels of technical expertise. If users cannot get past the user interface, the entire PMIS will be dead on arrival.

9. Technology Roadmap. Ask every prospective PMIS vendor for a technology roadmap of future features and enhancements to the product. You also want to know the frequency of updates made from user community requests. Some companies only make changes to their products every six months, so if you need to customize your solution with a vendor like this, know that you will have to wait.

10. Open APIs – Make sure the PMIS has open APIs that allow integrations with your other systems. A robust, documented API will ensure that the PMIS you deploy does not become a data island that puts your project information in a difficult-to-access silo.

11. Not monolithic. The days of buying a massive software program that costs millions of dollars where you only end up using only five percent of the features are over. Find modular solutions that provide apps and modules that you can assemble into a customized PMIS that supports your needs. That way, you only pay for what you actually use.

Get More Tips and Advice on Project Management Information System Solutions

I hope the tips I shared above help you on your PMIS journey. If you missed it, check out my previous blog post about how to start planning for a new PMIS deployment. In future posts, I will provide lessons learned for implementing and supporting a PMIS.

For more advice on finding the right PMIS and tips to manage your construction projects better, sign up for our newsletter in the footer below. And if you are looking for an enterprise PMIS or have any questions, contact us for a free consultation. Good luck!

Check out more blogs from Tips on Deploying Construction Project Management Software for Your Organization

Picking the Right Construction Project Management Software

How-To |

This is part one of four in a series of blogs called Tips on Deploying Construction Project Management Software for Your Organization.

If you are a construction organization, I would assume that IT is not your strong suit. Nor should it be. You need to focus on construction. You probably already know that trying to navigate the IT landscape can be both intimidating and frustrating. While there are many construction project management platforms on the market that all provide very similar functionality, by doing some up-front planning, you can improve your chances of selecting and successfully implementing the best solution for your organization.

Below are seven lessons that I have learned from years of deploying construction project management software for enterprises. Hopefully, these tips will help make your selection process a little easier.

Seven Tips for Selecting a Construction Project Management Solution


1. Define the problem statement. What specifically are you trying to improve by implementing new technology? Check with subject matter experts within your organization to determine what is working and what is not. Then formulate a problem statement that includes a cost-benefit analysis by filling in the blanks of this statement: "If we do X, it will save us Y and improve our offerings by Z." It is incredible how many companies looking for a new software platform do not perform this most basic and crucial step.

2. Develop "as-is" requirement documents. I have written about the importance of "as-is" requirements in the past. In brief, to understand what you might need tomorrow, you must thoroughly understand how your processes work today. Prepare business requirement processes, flow diagrams, risk areas, data dictionaries, and reports based on how you currently do business now, not how you would like to in the future. Hire a third-party consulting company to challenge the robustness of your processes and identify where technology will help improve them. The exercise of uncovering how you do things is critical. You might find that you do not know your processes as well as you would have liked. Also, you might have tools already at your company that can provide what you need with little to no modifications, or maybe your processes do not lend themselves to an upgrade in technology.

3. Do not be made to feel inadequate because you use Excel to manage projects. Be aware that using Excel to manage projects does not mean you are behind the times. In my experience of over twenty years in project controls, Excel is the de facto standard to manage projects regardless of what enterprise software companies claim to use. Believe it or not, teams use Excel to run multi-billion-dollar projects and programs and have done so for decades. Do not be too quick to throw out your Excel files unless you have evidence of problems. Also, if you are using SharePoint, know that you can turn your Excel files into a web-based project management system. Contact us to find out how.

4. Avoid looking at software products until you complete steps 1-3. One of the biggest mistakes companies make is starting to evaluate project management software systems on the market before knowing: 1) what they already have and 2) what they need. When we founded Lydon Solutions, we worked with multiple sizable companies that could have upwards of twenty construction project management systems deployed across the organization. These companies were paying for all these tools but under-utilizing them because these expensive software platforms never actually solved the core problems. Nowadays, we see even smaller companies with the same dilemma. Do not be fooled by the software salesperson and all those pretty charts. Focus on how and if their software can solve your specific problems.

5. Decide your level of involvement. Evaluating, planning for, and implementing the right construction project management software for your organization is a big undertaking. Even if a vendor tells you their product is an off-the-shelf solution and you can hit the ground running day one, they are glossing over the setup, configuration, and training that will be needed to get the system working for your team. If your organization intends to manage the entire selection and deployment process internally, then make sure you know your IT group's experience level and availability to deploy and support the selected solution. If you do not have that internal team, then you need to understand the level of external support required and the associated costs. Also, beyond just administering the system, you will need management oversight to support the deployment. We recommend designating at least one sponsor, a senior manager or executive who is ultimately responsible for the successful implementation of the system. You will likewise need at least one subject matter expert (SME), someone who knows your business processes and can be available from the beginning to help with the rollout of your new solution.

6. Change is inevitable, so plan accordingly. There is not any construction project management software system out there that will not need to be "tweaked" at some point after implementation, either through configuration or custom code, to address changes to your company or projects. Make sure you have the budget and resources to support such changes. Also, ensure that whatever software you are considering allows for your required company-specific modifications and does not force you to change your business processes to fit how the system works.

7. Pilot a project. Way too many times, I have seen the mistake of companies trying to roll out an enterprise project management system across the entire organization without doing a pilot first. In my experience, enterprise software implemented organization-wide in this top-down fashion will either likely fail, end up costing two to three times more, or both. I encourage companies to start small with a pilot program with minimal functionality, get the win, and then expand. This approach minimizes your investment, obtains crucial buy-in from your team, and if you have a subpar experience with a vendor, you can write them off before making too large of a commitment.

Get Help with a Construction Project Management Software Solution for your Team


I hope the above lessons that I've shared can help you find the right construction project management solution for your organization. As you can see, more up-front planning on your part is needed before you put a request for proposal (RFP) out on the street or start inviting companies to provide software demos. Stay tuned: we will be providing more tips on assessing the right technology framework and managing a successful implementation of construction project management solutions in future posts.

If you have any questions or are looking for a project management software solution for your construction organization, reach out for a no-obligation consultation with our team. Good luck!

Microsoft 365 is an ideal collaboration tool for challenging times

How-To |

Efforts across the nation to combat the spread of Coronavirus have transformed the workplace overnight by emptying offices, halting business travel, and promoting remote work. We can all hope that the need for these measures will be short-lived, but it is safe to say that the future of how we work and interact will potentially be forever changed.

Some businesses were already ahead of the curve embracing digital collaboration and remote productivity tools. But many organizations, particularly in construction, are playing catch up. Fortunately, most companies already have access to best-in-class collaboration and remote work tools with Microsoft 365.

Read on to learn how the Microsoft 365 suite can empower your employees to be productive no matter where they are. And if your organization needs expert guidance getting up to speed on remote collaboration, Lydon Solutions is here help. Contact us for a free consultation today.

Using Microsoft 365 for Remote Collaboration

Microsoft 365 offers many features to improve collaboration across the enterprise that extend well beyond Outlook, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. The service includes a host of new applications that let teams easily share information, manage projects, and effectively collaborate while working remotely.

Collaboration Tools in Microsoft 365

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SharePoint Online is a web-based enterprise content management (ECM) tool that integrates with Microsoft Office. You can use SharePoint as a document repository and information portal to share and manage content, make information quickly searchable, empower teamwork, and enable seamless collaboration across the organization. SharePoint is also the backend to many of the popular applications in Office 365, such as Teams, Planner, Project, and Yammer. Microsoft has a getting-started resource for SharePoint here.

Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaboration platform combining persistent workplace chat, video meetings, voice-over-IP (VoIP), file storage, real-time document collaboration, and integration with a growing list of apps from Microsoft and third-parties. This impressive lineup of features is why the application is fast becoming an easy-to-use project management aid that can help you organize small teams, manage progress, and store project information. You can even combine Teams with Microsoft Whiteboard for real-time visual brainstorming and problem-solving. You can learn more about Microsoft Teams here.

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Microsoft Planner is a project management application that allows organizations to create, assign, and organize work visually with support for private or shared plans for collaboration. This easy-to-use tool is an excellent option for those that prefer to manage simple projects using Kanban, calendars, and task lists. You can learn more about Microsoft Planner here.

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Microsoft Project Online is a cloud-based tool to help project managers develop a schedule, assign resources to tasks, track progress, manage the budget, and analyze workloads. Microsoft Project is a staple in the construction industry for managing project schedules, and both the cloud-based and on-premise versions integrate deeply with the rest of the Office 365 suite, including other collaboration tools like SharePoint and Teams.

Reporting in Microsoft 365

Power BI is a business analytics solution that lets you visualize your data, making it easy to share insights across your organization or embed reports in your app, SharePoint sites, and websites. With Power BI, you can connect to hundreds of data sources and bring your data to life with live dashboards and reports. Power BI is a great reporting solution for creating interactive dashboards that can embed in SharePoint pages or external websites with the ability to permission control reports.

Workflow Automation Across Microsoft 365

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Power Automate is an Office 365 service that makes it practical and simple for line-of-business users to build workflows that automate time-consuming business tasks and processes across applications and services. Power Automate is Microsoft’s workflow engine, and it continues to gain more and more connectors and functionality. Users can work smarter by creating workflows to automate manual processes such as approvals, alerts, and data integration, even sharing them with the rest of the organization.

Build Custom Applications in Microsoft 365

Power Apps is a suite of services, connectors, and a data platform that provides a rapid application development environment to build custom apps for your business needs. With Power Apps, you could create custom forms and make them available as a standalone application or post it to SharePoint Online.

Get Expert Help with Microsoft 365

Are you feeling a little intimidated by all the features and options found in Microsoft 365? Lydon Solutions can offer expert assistance if you need help setting up your Microsoft 365 tenant to manage projects. We also offer a complete turnkey solution for construction teams called Construction Viz that is powered by SharePoint and Microsoft 365.

Contact us today to request a free consultation.

Please be safe and look out for one another during these challenging times.

Organizing your intranet for the future with SharePoint hub sites

How-To |

Microsoft recently introduced SharePoint hub sites to help users organize their intranet sites better. A key advantage of the hub sites is that they enable you to model relationships between sites as links, rather than as hierarchy or ownership, thereby giving your organization the maximum flexibility to adapt to changes in the way that you work dynamically. Here’s how you can take advantage of hub sites in SharePoint.

Why use SharePoint hub sites for your projects

When setting up projects in SharePoint, most organizations probably create a site collection and then add sites and subsites within it. This hierarchical approach allows for permissions inheritance, integrated search, and consistent URLs across the sites. While this approach is still valid in some cases, a significant downside is its lack of flexibility if your organization later decides to restructure projects or groups.

Another factor complicating the hierarchical organization of sites is the fact that many applications in Microsoft 365, including Teams, Planner, Yammer, and Project, automatically create SharePoint site collections whenever you add new projects. As your teams make use of these applications to create project sites, you can find yourself with site collections scattered all over your organization without any relationship. The need to relate site collections and data together is why SharePoint hub sites are essential.

Advantages of SharePoint hub sites

So, besides ease of organization and flexibility, what other advantages do hub sites provide? A few notable advantages include:

  • Search across all associated sites and subsites
  • Shared navigation across all associated sites
  • “Look and feel” inheritance to associated sites
  • Information aggregation from associated sites and subsites

How do I set up a hub site?

You can select any site collection to be a hub site from the Microsoft 365 SharePoint admin menu. There are two options available:

  • Register it as a hub site. By registering the site collection as a hub, you can associate other sites to it. For construction, the hub site could be a program, department, or organization with the associated sites being projects.
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  • Associate with a hub. Sites can only be associated with a single hub site. Associated sites automatically inherit the benefits of the hub listed above. Note: You can also associate a site to an existing hub from within the Site Information panel of a modern site collection, if you have appropriate permissions, without having to go into the SharePoint admin center (see the screenshot below).
SharePoint Hubs

For more information about SharePoint hub sites, check out this documentation article from Microsoft.

Get expert helping with Microsoft 365

Lydon Solutions is here if you’d like help setting up SharePoint hub sets for your organization or are looking to take better advantage of the features and applications of Microsoft 365 such as Teams, Project, SharePoint, Office365 groups, inherited permissions, and site mailboxes.

To learn more and schedule a free consultation, contact us.

Office 365 Groups – What Are They and How Are They Used?

How-To |

Users of Office 365 are faced with many different technological tools and approaches for creating and managing their projects in the cloud. Some of these tools can seem overwhelming.  

Office 365 Groups bring all these tools together, so you have an integrated solution to manage your project. Office 365 Groups present a new way to allow team members to collaborate in a common workspace with a familiar set of tools.  

You can create an Office 365 Group from Outlook, Yammer, Teams, SharePoint Online, or Planner. When an Office 365 Group is created, you automatically get a shared Outlook mailbox and calendar, One Note Notebook, Planner instance, and SharePoint site collection. A Team’s Team and Yammer Group can also be associated with the Office 365 Group. And you don’t have to worry about permissions since everyone added to the group automatically gets permission to use these applications. 

Benefits of an Office 365 Group:

What are some benefits of this approach?  

  • Can be set up quickly (two clicks). 
  • Includes key applications to manage a project. 
  • Automatically assigns user permissions. 
  • Creates an Outlook project/site mailbox and calendar. 
  • Automatically integrates all the tools within the application.  
  • Creates a new menu system to navigate those applications. 
  • Allows external applications—such as Trello, Asana or Twitter—to “connect” to the Office 365 Group, which extends its functionality. 

Considerations when creating an Office 365 Group:

  • Depending on your Office 365 access, users might create an unwieldy number of Groups and exponentially increase the complexity of the tenant. For that reason, access should be limited to specific site administrators, and should follow a standard setup, taxonomy, and governance structure.  
  • Office 365 Groups grant access to applications with basic permissions. If you have external users that are part of the group (e.g., contractors) and are using SharePoint to store content, you may need to further manage permissions, depending on the content.
  • You can “Connect” an existing classic SharePoint site collection to an Office 365 even if it’s not a modern SharePoint site. However, once you connect to an Office 365 Group, your site will be upgraded and your Home page will be replicated. If you want to go back to your original classic Home page, go to Site Pages and make that page the default home page.      
  • When you create a new Team or a modern SharePoint site collection, an Office 365 Group will be automatically created.

Microsoft is developing a new Fluid Framework which will further align all Microsoft productivity/collaboration applications into a consistent UI. This will break down the barriers between applications even more, and might change the whole Office 365 Groups experience. We will see.

In summary, Office 365 Groups are an easy way to bring all your favorite Office 365 productivity/collaboration applications together into an integrated solution that is easy to set up. We will discuss the set-up process in our next ‘Tips from the Field’ post. Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter in the footer below to get more helpful information like this for project management professionals.

Construction Project Owners: Don’t Buy Another Proprietary PMIS

How-To |

Are you considering deploying a proprietary Project Management Information System (PMIS) in 2019? Our advice? Save time and money by investing instead in a system with built-in data warehousing and reporting capabilities. That type of solution will automatically aggregate the data you need – no matter which system houses it, and whether the system is internal or external.

The Status Quo Problem

To understand the value of a data warehouse and reporting solution, it helps to look at a typical scenario, which illustrates the problems Construction Project Owners often face.

Hoping to improve the project management process, the Owner buys a new PMIS and requires each contractor and vendor to use it. However, many of the contractors and vendors want to use their existing construction project management software, which is integrated with their other company systems.

So what often happens is that contractors enter data into both systems (theirs and the Owner’s). In many cases, data will be manually processed for reporting, which means it will be exported, manipulated in spreadsheets, and imported into the Owner’s PMIS. This is costly, time-consuming and error-prone.

And, even within the Owner’s organization, each PM and team probably have their own way of managing their projects. The chances are that the shiny new proprietary PMIS won’t be flexible enough or easily customizable to meet each project team’s needs. So the various teams will probably continue managing projects their way – often with spreadsheets – and only input the bare minimum into the PMIS.

The result is blind spots and inefficiencies. There is no real-time, single source of truth for a project. And a lot of time is wasted at every level of the project, internally and externally.

All this is made more challenging because Construction Project Owners typically aren’t IT experts; it just isn’t their core competency. And most project teams don’t include IT specialists. Both these factors make bridging the gap between different systems that much more difficult for Owners.

The Solution

What to do? Simple. Don’t invest in another proprietary construction project management software system. Instead, focus on getting a system with a common data platform/data warehouse that can integrate data from all the various project management systems and applications used by your organization and your contractors.

In general, Construction Project Owners would be better served by focusing on operating a central data warehouse and using APIs/web services to connect to the allied systems that have the needed data. This kind of approach can work even if the information is in spreadsheets.

Under this system, the data still resides in the originating internal or external system. But the key project data that Owners need to manage projects is integrated into the data-warehouse solution. From there, the data can be queried and displayed as needed via a web portal, using real-time dashboards, KPIs, or tabular reports.

Why Does This Matter?

Implementing a data warehouse solution that collects all relevant project information in a central location controlled by the Construction Project Owner can improve accuracy, enhance productivity, and reduce administrative costs simply by reducing manual inputting. A data warehouse can help bring projects in on time and within budget by ensuring the right people are reviewing their deliverables and tracking overall program/project costs and progress.

And there are other, longer-term advantages to the data-warehouse approach. A data warehouse is essential for maintaining an archive of projects for audit purposes as well as lessons learned well after project completion. Data from construction projects can help Owners:

  • Identify trends
  • Address claims
  • Inform better design practices
  • Reduce costs
  • Expedite project delivery
  • Facilitate operations and maintenance long term

Because the data warehouse contains information tailored specifically to their needs, Owners must decide up front what type of information will be potentially useful and ensure that all that data is centrally stored. Owners should not rely on individual contractors and vendors who may not automatically store all the information the Owner will need.

Construction Viz

All this brings us back to the beginning when we advised you not to buy a proprietary PMIS. That, in itself, may seem strange. After all, isn’t that what we sell?

Yes. And no.

Construction Viz is a full-featured PMIS, with all the tools you need to manage your projects. This easy-to-use, customizable, and secure application has all the reports, forms, workflows, dashboards and other capabilities you need.

At the same time, Construction Viz is more than a PMIS. We designed it to be the ultimate collaboration and data-management platform. Construction Viz is one solution to manage and report on all the project data, no matter where it originated. That’s because Construction Viz is built on top of Microsoft SharePoint (the best-in-class collaboration platform) and SQL (the best-in-class data platform). Construction Viz can integrate with SQL and other common applications (e.g., Office, Microsoft Project, Oracle Primavera, SAP, ArcGIS and more). And it provides the portal needed for real-time dashboards and reporting.

So this PMIS-and-more solution can handle the data-warehouse layer and has the APIs needed to pull data in and push information out. Construction Viz provides the data warehousing and reporting capabilities Owners need to get a comprehensive dataset of needed information.

Summary

Construction Project Owners would be best served by focusing on data aggregation and reporting instead of only looking at the front-end input (e.g., a proprietary PMIS). The front-end input will change. The real value is in managing the data and exposing it for project teams to consume. With its data warehouse capabilities and portal, Construction Viz is designed to meet this need.

Learn more about Construction Viz and schedule a free demo and consultation at constructionviz.com.