Achieving success in a construction project depends on several factors such as the size of the project, commitment to the time plan, budget and client’s satisfaction. It is difficult to fulfill all parties’ needs in a complex process like this, but modern technology is putting all its effort to solve this obstacle by offering newly developed construction operating systems. Many building software solutions can track budget, schedule and even remotely monitor the labor workflow on site. The question left is which one of the multitudes of software solutions is the right one for you? Furthermore, how do you use it effectively?
Answering the following questions should help you find out which best helps you:
- In what way should the ideal building software lighten your daily workload?
- How does it incorporate the needs of your project management team?
- How user friendly is its handling?
- How much is the initial cost of purchase and how much will it save you in turn?
Simply by answering these questions, you will write your own checklist of demands and potentials. Afterwards, you can split the project into two major phases the construction phase, and the maintenance phase to choose the suitable software for each one of them. The best choice for you is to use a software that is compatible with the both stages such as PlanRadar. Switching between multiple software increases the chance of losing important documents, forgetting important dates or duplicate work. Find in this article the software demands for each phase and your basic requirements to have a successful construction project management program.
Building maintenance software – A key to preserve an efficient lifecycle for your facility
Maintenance has always been known as an action of repairing any anticipated deficiency that occurs during or after finishing the facility, but this is not the whole truth. In fact, maintenance is part of the construction project since day one. There must be a meaningful dialogue between the project designers, contractors and clients when the job is awarded to discuss and evaluate the maintenance plan. The problem can be shown with numbers according to City lab report about America’s infrastructure problem that is basically a maintenance crisis. The investigation showed that from 2009 to 2011 states only spent 55 percent of their road money ($20.4 billion) on expansion and just 45 percent on maintenance ($16.5 billion). Yet the amount required to keep the nation’s roads in good condition is about $45.2 billion. A gap of $28.7 billion was found that leads to bad traffic conditions in many cities.
Source: Smart Growth America
A good maintenance plan can solve all of this mess and provide the appropriate solutions needed. But how does one implement such a plan?
According to US department of interior publishes building maintenance is divided into 6 main categories every one of them occurs at a different stage of the project and has a different function. They all have to be previously prepared with backup plans to achieve the project target. The six maintenance categories are listed as the following:
Preventive Maintenance: Includes scheduled servicing, repairs, inspections, adjustments, and replacement of parts that result in fewer breakdowns and fewer premature replacements. These activities are conducted with a frequency of 1 year or less.
Recurring Maintenance: Preventive maintenance activities that recur on a periodic and scheduled cycle of greater than 1 year, but less than 10 years.
Component Renewal: Preventive maintenance activities that recur on a periodic and scheduled cycle of greater than 10 years.
Emergency Maintenance: Maintenance activities that are unscheduled repair, to include call outs, to correct an emergency need to prevent injury, loss of property, or return the asset to service. These repairs are initiated within a very short time period from which the need is identified, usually within hours.
Demolition: Dismantling and removal, or surplus of a deteriorated or otherwise unneeded asset or item, includes necessary clean-up work, during the year in which the need occurred.
Mobile Equipment Maintenance: Includes all corrective, preventive, emergency replacement. Maintenance is done on mobile equipment assets, those assets directly contributing to the Facility Maintenance mission.
Finishing your goal in building a facility means that you are starting a new goal of granting that all the systems; HVAC, electrical, plumping and fire systems are properly integrated. This obviously will not be an easy task. Complex office and governmental buildings require a professional maintenance to their infrastructure, safety and environmental systems. A building maintenance software is the best solution you can use to get your outmost benefits in this process. A specialized maintenance software will help you in organizing your view of the needed facilities and tracking the spare availability in markets. Moreover, you will be able to track your order completion and send special requests to the responsible manager. PlanRadar´s Software for Construction Management offers you the most needed tools to perform this task. Try it now for 30 days free and experience it for yourself.
Know how to use your building construction software as a bridge to success
The importance of construction software is that it fills the gap between the human creative mind and the computer systematic technique. If you used the tool that suits your needs, you will provide an appropriate level of strictness with maintaining the innovative thoughts around. Also, you will guarantee that you are not repeating the same work twice. Building construction software is a root that branches into many categories afterwards but there are four main principles for all kinds. These principles were done by Terry B. Bollinger in his paper software construction:
- Reduction of Complexity: People tend to avoid working with complex systems that have many parts or interactions.
- Anticipation of Diversity: Any useful building software will change in various ways over time, and the anticipation of change drives nearly every aspect of it.
- Structuring for Validation: No matter how carefully a person designs and implements software, the creative nature of software construction means that mistakes and omissions will occur.
- Use of External Standards: A natural language that is spoken by one person would be of little value in communicating with the rest of the world. Similarly, a construction language that has meaning only within the software for which it was constructed can be a serious roadblock in the long-term use of that software.
Any successful and up to date software now applies these four principles unintentionally to be always on track. For example PlanRadar: The software applies the four principles by providing an easy use system, changeable and developed versions that fits every type of processor windows, iOS or android. Moreover, it minimizes the chance of occurring defects and lets you use your own standards such as recording a voice memo or capturing a photo with no strict construction standards for documentation. The software also makes a personal social circle of communication for your project team and members that release most of the daily construction tension. Don’t miss the chance and try the 30 days free of charge trial version now!
6 Basic requirements for Construction project management program
Over the past 10 years, Construction Software development has made a breakthrough. Most of this software started to support multiple processes such as cloud saving sever, satiscal helping tools and defect management assistance. They offer some new simple methods of using the construction software such as supporting mobile operating systems and cloud-based computing. Most of the large companies are shifting to adopt these IT solutions, but the only challenge they face is identifying the basic requirements of the software they need to produce the expected output. To solve this problem we have gathered the main features you may need in the software, so you can check and distinguish between what are the strongly needed and what the preferred features. The following are these basic requirements with the importance of each one of them:
Cloud based construction project management software: Having a cloud-based software saves all your documents which are the golden cards in your work. Being a project manager means you know well the value of each document in your hands.
Communication platform: Offering a platform to connect the team will minimize the time and tension spent in explaining each defect or incident that occurs in the project.
Oriented task lists: Having your tasks divided and oriented each one to its responsible manager makes it easier and eliminate the chance of any interference of roles in the project team.
Timesheets: Managing your time is your key to a no-delays site work and lets you follow your scheduled plan consistently.
Notifications: No more “unseen emails” excuses, now the automated notifications feature work whenever you send something to one of your team on the app or on his mail.
Mobile application: Tracking your work from your mobile phone is the optimum need for any project manager. The project manager job is a non-fixed place profession, one day he is on site the other he is in the office or in a meeting. He can’t move between all of these places holding his laptop to track the work completion.
Choosing your building project software is easier now. It may take you some time to decide which software you need but afterwards, you are going to rest and gather the outcome yield. PlanRadar saves you around 40% of your costs which is relatively a large number that you can invest in your work. Make your decision and contact our customer center for any further inquiries to the offers and prices.
