Wahid Tadros knows how much a construction job should be scheduled.
Tadros is the president of the heavy construction company California Engineering Contractors based in Pleasanton, California. The company was founded in 1972 and handles a wide variety of public works projects, including railway construction, rehabilitation and rehabilitation of tunnels and flood control structures. It has 45 salaried employees and its artisan workforce can fluctuate up to 200.
He is intimately familiar with the hurdles of creating a construction schedule: Over the years, traditional tools that use Gantt charts for scheduling have often required the hiring of full-time experts or extensive consultation. But that creates another level of complexity between what that person creates off-site, often without understanding the specifics of the project, and what’s happening on the job.
Wahid Tadros
Permit granted by California Engineering Contractors
“A dedicated programmer is usually not as well versed in construction as a project manager, superintendent or estimator would be, but we are forced to work with them because other software is difficult to use,” Tadros said.
Instead, CEC chose to leverage collaborative programming and whiteboard software, which is more intuitive to use and can receive input from on-site stakeholders.
“We are now able to create detailed, resource-heavy schedules in about a quarter of the time it takes to build competitive products,” said Tadros.
Use cases
The software chosen by CEC comes from Pleasanton, Calif.-based Planera, a provider of digital whiteboard and collaborative programming software for the construction industry.
While Tadros was under a non-disclosure agreement regarding the cost of the software and Planera declined to provide Construction Dive with details of its pricing model, Tadros characterized his company’s return on using the solution as “obvious and immediate”.
Using these types of tools, which are typically cloud-based and therefore accessible to different stakeholders simultaneously, collaborators can see each other’s notes and comments in real time. They also allow users to upload files and PDFs directly to the whiteboard for others to access.
For CEC, adopting Planera’s technology was a night-and-day difference compared to legacy Gannt-based schedulers.
“Because of the platform’s ease of use and native collaboration features, Planera allows everyone to participate in the planning and tracking phase of a project, including estimators and project managers,” he said. say Tadros. “We don’t need to rely on our dedicated programming team to operate legacy programming software.”
Planera’s whiteboard includes risk simulations in project schedules and quality control in built plans. CEC also said the tool has a change tracking system: if someone makes a change to the schedule, the team can find out who made the change and find out why.
In fact, Tadros said that Planera was the only tool he used that brought these elements together, and the team was up and running quickly.
“This is the first platform I’ve seen that combines the visual layout of construction logic on a 3D whiteboard, essentially a blank canvas at the beginning, and a very sophisticated critical path management engine,” said Tadros. “To make a schedule, you just start putting activities on the canvas and connecting them.”
After a couple of 60-minute onboarding sessions, Tadros said his entire team was able to start using it and creating complex schedules, including people who had never used scheduling software before.
Legacy vs modern
While learning to use the software went relatively smoothly, Tadros said there were still some bumps along the way.
“There is always a learning curve associated with integrating a new platform, as well as driving adoption and cultural change in an arena where everyone who affects and is affected by the calendar can participate” , Tadros said.
In addition, Tadros noted that some owners still required the use of legacy software. While this can create problems, Tadros said Planera was able to export files to older formats, such as Oracle Primavera P6, to accommodate these requests.
Tadros urges other contractors to try these types of tools. Given construction’s reputation for being slow to adopt new technology, Tadros said contractors who put these types of tools in place can gain a competitive advantage.
“My advice is: embrace modern workflows and technology so you don’t get left behind. It will pay dividends very quickly,” said Tadros.
