Four Ways Configurable Software Improves Construction Project Management

The market for construction management software is steadily growing, which is great news for construction project managers and general contractors, who can now reap the benefits of digitized project management processes over traditional manual ones.

But even with these capabilities, managing multiple construction projects can get complicated. All projects have some aspects in common, and they also have differences. This is where construction project management software is really put to the test. Most solutions are standardized, forcing you to fit your projects to the software and not the other way around. Reconfigurations to address different project needs, if they can be done at all, require you to go back to the vendor. That can be costly and time consuming, or a complete dead end if reconfiguration isn’t an option.

The technology you choose should deliver all of the benefits you need and be capable of managing multiple projects that have different timelines, budgets and resource requirements — without creating added inconvenience or escalating costs. When considering construction project management software, it’s important to ensure that the choice you make is configurable to your company’s project needs.

Is your construction project management software meeting your requirements? As you think about how well your software is meeting your multiproject needs, consider the following:

• Is the software you use flexible enough to meet the specific requirements of each project? Or are you constrained by standardized elements that require costly and time-consuming vendor intervention to customize?
• Does it easily deliver the critical data analytics you need to understand every aspect of each of your projects, so you can make the best decisions going forward? Or are you being left in the dark about important information?
• Is it helping you manage resources across projects to your best advantage, especially in this time of resource constraints stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic? Or has it instead become another cumbersome resource for you to manage?
• When it comes to managing multiple projects and multiple or duplicate data fields, are you plagued by redundancies that add to your workload instead of streamlining it?

All these questions represent pain points for construction managers in any situation, but these pain points are magnified when you’re working on multiple projects at the same time. Fortunately, there is a solution that addresses all of them and more.

Configurable construction project management software can help eliminate these pain points so you can focus your attention where it should be ― on completing your projects on time and on budget. Here are four ways in which configurable construction project management software can help you manage your projects more effectively and with greater ease.

1. Easily customize features to meet your unique needs: The construction industry is very competitive, and getting the job done right and on time is crucial. To accomplish that, you need easy access to the reports that align with your business requirements for each project, the ability to tap the right professional services for a specific purpose, and an easy integration of these capabilities into your system. Without the ability to configure these options yourself, and to structure your project management software to fit the needs of your individual projects, you’re dependent on your software vendors to make changes. Configurable construction management software allows you to easily make changes on the fly and on your own, so you’re always up to date on your operations ― without adding extra time and cost.
2. Access the right information to make the right business decisions. How much do you really know about every aspect of every one of your projects? Are you able to measure and analyze the right data to get the best results? Making informed business decisions based on sophisticated data analytics that are specific to your preferences is crucial to bringing projects in on time and on budget and helping you better plan for future projects. With configurable construction project management software, you can program your system to sort through the noise to deliver automated reports to help you make the best decisions ― for each project individually and in aggregate.
3. Better manage skilled labor so the job can get done. The ongoing skilled labor shortage in the construction industry has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Your ability to tightly manage resources to your best advantage is crucial to navigating through this shortage now and into the future. You need to know who is available to work, when and where, and then match that availability to your needs as they change. Configurable construction project management software allows you to automate field reporting, customize labor-related data entry, eliminate redundancies and ensure worker safety so you can keep your operations up and running, whatever the circumstances.
4. Eliminate redundant data and processes. Working on multiple projects shouldn’t mean entering the same data multiple times. Configurability allows you to designate where you want data to appear and then enter it once ― whether for an individual project or for all of them. With a configurable solution, there’s less wait time, fewer data entry errors and no duplication of effort.

A configurable solution to meet your needs

Trimble ProjectSight is top-tier construction project management software that helps you manage all your projects from a single source of collaboration and information. What makes the solution unique is that you can configure it to meet your requests ― whether for an individual project or for all the projects across your portfolio. For example, it allows you to pull fields across multiple forms, so you don’t need to recreate them for each report. Or you can designate changes to only one project. You can also easily change the names of fields to fit your company’s nomenclature. This allows you to update once, change everywhere ― including on reports and dashboards. With ProjectSight, you can adapt the software’s capabilities to meet each project’s specific requirements, rather than the other way around. The system is ready to go out of the box. Simply use it as is or configure it to your specifications as you go.

“ProjectSight is a highly flexible, self-service product that removes the bottlenecks typically associated with IT or vendor intervention when it comes to configurability.”

ProjectSight is a highly flexible, self-service product that removes the bottlenecks typically associated with IT or vendor intervention when it comes to configurability. The software is easy enough to use that a project administrator, or multiple users, can make any needed adjustments. Because the API comes with the software package, you can easily integrate ProjectSight with any financial or ERP system without incurring additional integration costs. You control the security permissions and can customize them to different levels and roles. Because you can implement and make changes to the system yourself, without relying on a vendor, you’ll save both time and money.

ProjectSight’s configurability makes it ideal for construction projects across a wide range of industries, including: