Frequently Asked Questions

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To get started, you can request a demo using your own schedules. This will help you understand how SmartPM works with real data and assess its impact on your project management process.

Yes, you can toggle between plans within the program. This flexibility allows SmartPM to be customized to meet the specific needs of each project.

Absolutely. As a cloud-based software, SmartPM automatically updates all users with the latest features and enhancements, ensuring you always have access to our most advanced tools.

 Yes, you can have projects on different plans.

To promote collaboration, SmartPM allows unlimited users.

SmartPM provides customized onboarding sessions for your company. Additionally, our Client Success team, which is made up of industry professionals with extensive construction experience, can answer industry and technical support questions.

Yes, SmartPM is designed for seamless integration with existing systems. Integrate our Analytics Engine with your existing tools for simplified workflows with our API. No need to change your scheduling tools.

SmartPM is a cost-effective solution that automates and streamlines your project management processes, saving time, reducing overheads, and improving decision-making for increased profitability.

Yes, managed services are available as add-ons. Contact us for a list of options to enhance your SmartPM experience.

Yes, SmartPM is a cloud-based software that can be accessed from any computer, tablet, or smartphone.  No software installation is required.

Schedule Quality FAQs

SCHEDULE QUALITY CHECKER

SmartPM’s Schedule Quality Checker evaluates your project schedule to ensure it’s built with best practices. It uses Schedule Intelligence™ to assess the sequence of activities, the allocation of resources, and the overall timeline, identifying any inconsistencies or unrealistic planning that could impact the project.

SmartPM’s Quality Checker identifies various common and complex errors in CPM schedules. These include missing logic, unrealistic timeline allocations, high durations, and sequence discrepancies. Highlighting these issues allows teams to make necessary adjustments for a more accurate and feasible schedule.

Quality should be assessed at every update or any time a schedule is changed. Checking quality before finalizing any updates is key to maintaining control over your schedule. 

SmartPM applies industry-standard best practices and methodologies to evaluate schedule quality. Each user can utilize a custom grading structure pulling from over 35 metrics to suit their specific project types, industries, clients, or any other parameter. 

By using SmartPM to identify and correct schedule errors, project teams can avoid potential delays and cost overruns that result from poor scheduling practices. Repairing schedules ensures that all project activities are properly aligned, leading to smoother project execution and increased likelihood of on-time, within-budget delivery.

DATA INTEGRITY

SmartPM ensures schedule accuracy through the automatic detection of scheduling errors and a comprehensive checks and balance system. This process verifies that all updates are not only feasible but also trustworthy, maintaining the reliability of your schedule as a tool for gauging progress and predicting milestones.

When SmartPM identifies variances or potential risks in your schedule, it provides detailed reports that help you understand the impacts on your project timeline. You can then make informed adjustments, amend data, and take strategic actions to mitigate risks and maintain the integrity of your schedule.

SmartPM’s change log records all changes made from one update to the next, providing a clear view of when major changes occur, such as critical and near-critical adjustments, activity updates, and more. This feature helps you understand the story of your project, identify opportunities for rebaselining, and visualize the effects of these changes on your project’s progress.

Yes, SmartPM can automate the majority of the schedule review process. This feature systematically analyzes your schedule for quality, automatically identifies errors, and suggests necessary adjustments. It streamlines the process of maintaining a high-quality schedule and helps ensure that your project timelines remain feasible with each update. Still, verify buy-in from respective parties about any upcoming changes.

SmartPM verifies schedule integrity after each update, ensuring that any activities added, removed, or modified are accurately reflected and that the project timeline remains viable. This proactive approach allows you to adapt to your project’s needs seamlessly and certifies data accuracy at all stages, providing quantitative data to guide decision-making and minimize downstream risks.

Platform FAQs

EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD

The Executive Dashboard provides a comprehensive, real-time view of your entire project portfolio from a high level. It allows you to quickly visualize the overall health of your projects through an intuitive graphical interface, identify which projects require immediate attention, and make informed decisions faster with business intelligence.

Interactive trends offer an in-depth view of various trends across your project portfolio, providing continuous and comprehensive oversight. This allows you to benchmark project performance, track progress over time, and identify patterns that may impact project outcomes.

The Geographical Heat Map visually represents the distribution of risks across your project portfolio, providing a clear geographical breakdown of potential issues. This tool is designed for proactive management, helping you to quickly perceive and address risks before they escalate.

Metadata Fields on the Executive Dashboard allow you to bring previously obscured data to light. You can use selective views to filter out irrelevant data, focusing only on the most pertinent information for your projects. This feature helps streamline data analysis and enhances the relevance of the insights provided.

Custom Metrics Cards let you select and pin vital, specific metadata to your custom dashboard. This functionality enables you to tailor the dashboard to display key metrics that are critical to your project’s success, such as project health, finish date variance, schedule performance index (SPI), quality, and compression. These cards provide a focused view of important data points, making it easier to monitor and react to project dynamics quickly.

PROJECT WORKSPACE

SmartPM’s Project Workspace leverages advanced analytics to forecast project end dates and assess the impacts of various scenarios on project timelines. By identifying patterns that form as the project progresses, the Workspace enables users to understand the long-term effects of project developments, allowing for more accurate predictions and timely adjustments.

Scenario modeling in the Project Workspace allows project managers to simulate different potential outcomes based on current project data. This feature helps in visualizing the effects of various decisions and external factors, enabling project managers to strategize effectively and mitigate risks before they impact the project adversely.

The Project Workspace includes tools specifically designed for delay analysis, helping project managers identify and understand delays’ causes and consequences. By analyzing the patterns of delays, the Workspace helps predict future complications and provides insights necessary for developing proactive solutions to keep the project on track.

Yes, SmartPM’s Project Workspace offers features that analyze the performance of trade contractors involved in a project. It identifies which contractors are underperforming and how their performance might be affecting other trades. This allows project managers and superintendents to pinpoint problem areas quickly and devise effective strategies to address these issues, ensuring smoother project execution.

By providing a centralized platform for comprehensive project data analysis, the Project Workspace empowers project managers with the tools to monitor ongoing developments closely and recognize emerging patterns. With this information, project managers can better predict outcomes and implement controls sooner, effectively steering the project toward its objectives and minimizing the risk of delays and budget overruns.

COMPANY DASHBOARD

The Company Dashboard provides a centralized view of all your project schedules, offering a clear and comprehensive snapshot of your project KPIs. It transforms intricate data into actionable insights, wrapped in a user-friendly interface that facilitates interactive engagement and a deeper understanding of each project’s progress and health.

With the Company Dashboard, you can monitor real-time developments across all your projects. It provides a clear picture of each project’s progress and health, allowing for strategic adjustments and proactive management to ensure projects stay on track and within scope.

The dashboard offers customized sorting options that enable you to focus on the most critical aspects of your projects. You can prioritize viewing data based on what matters most, such as project health, delays, or critical path issues, enhancing your ability to manage projects effectively.

The Schedule Performance features on the Company Dashboard include tracking actual vs. planned progress and the Schedule Performance Index (SPI). It also monitors critical path delays and predicts future accelerations, providing a dynamic tool for assessing your project’s adherence to the schedule and anticipating potential adjustments.

Schedule Feasibility offers insights into the quality and reliability of each project’s schedule. It displays schedule quality graded by custom criteria or color and a compression index alongside predicted completion dates. These metrics help assess the feasibility of the schedules and identify potential issues that could impact project timelines.

GANTT CHART

SmartPM’s Gantt Chart provides a dynamic view of your project’s timelines, allowing you to visualize not only the historical and projected progress but also detailed aspects such as delays, accelerations, and critical path activities. With its infinite scaling ability, you can drill down from day to quarter views, examining the specifics of each activity, including their impact on project timelines and the underlying logic of delays.

SmartPM’s filtering functions allow you to customize which project activities are displayed based on specific attributes on the Gantt. You can use built-in filters or create custom ones to focus on activities that have caused delays or acceleration, track progress made or missed, and even pinpoint activities on your actual historical-critical or near-critical paths.

Yes, SmartPM’s Gantt Chart allows you to directly track and analyze the critical path and any project accelerations. It provides visual indicators of the project’s progress, showing which activities are on the critical path, which are near-critical, and how changes in these paths impact the overall project schedule. This real-time insight is crucial for adjusting strategies and managing project timelines proactively.

Want More?

Get to know 5 key metrics that can help you start creating project controls in construction with your schedule data.
Addressing one of these challenges can significantly enhance your schedule management practices. 
Learn how to create a baseline schedule using CPM scheduling tools in 7 steps. 

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