THE CHALLENGE
Organized chaos is still chaos. When Greg Cashen, VP of Wood Partners, was faced with managing the challenges of developing two extensive multi-family builds, this feeling drove home. Despite working with a consistent third-party general contractor for both projects, the need for more visibility for project oversight became pressing.
As a developer wants oversight of the general contractor’s work, so too does the general contractor want oversight of the subcontracted trade partners’ work. With each subcontracted trade operating as an independent business unit, a single construction project can involve over 20 distinct companies, making getting the visibility of true project progress that much more challenging.
THE SMART SOLUTION
After researching several tools, Wood Partners selected SmartPM to assist with achieving the oversight and visibility they wanted. Through its Quality Chekcer, SmartPM identified several scheduling deficiencies in the GC’s schedule files. After fixing the issues detected by SmartPM, the company could finally see a true critical path and knew a realistic end date for both of their projects.
“By using SmartPM, we are now driving the successful outcome of our projects effectively instead of waiting with our fingers crossed until the ball inevitably drops.”
THE OUTCOME
Implementing SmartPM revealed the GC’s inflated requests for additional time and funds, amounting to over $1 million in potential excess costs, attributed to poor scheduling practices. Further, SmartPM’s analysis led the GC to know the value of quality schedules. Moving forward, they hired a master scheduler and set benchmarks for best practices for future builds.
For Wood Partners, SmartPM resulted in the successful completion of both projects without any additional costs. To Cashen, “SmartPM provided Wood Partners with the missing link we have needed to effectively control our budgets and timelines for our commercial development projects.”
Creating Project Controls in Construction with Schedule Data 
