10 Benefits of 5D Schedule Management for Construction
Solid schedules bring certainty, and play a sizeable role in planning, coordinating and managing the entire project smoothly and in ensuring a steady course. Without, project delays, costs overruns, rework, and elevated frustration levels inevitably occur.
Construction and management schedules, however, can be tedious and time-consuming, and at times, outright frustrating. Some of the challenges facing today’s building project scheduling are:
- Schedules not connected to BIM models.
- Cost and resources information silos between cost and project management departments.
- Difficult to compare different versions of schedules.
- Schedules not managed on cloud, meaning bulk information is difficult to attach to the schedule.
- Project performance cannot be real-time updated on Business Intelligence dashboards
- Lack of mobile applications.
- Not connected to workflows, causing inconsistent coordination.
- Not able to run 5D simulation to forecast project cost and time, and predict risks.
A total solution platform should at least address the above challenges, but what if this platform can also assist in other aspects of your project, such as integrating your schedules to your BIM models, allows teams to collaborate in real-time, and offers mobile applications to help manage and update the project status anytime and anywhere.
With MTWO Complete Construction Cloud – a future-proof cloud platform built to support construction companies to manage all projects in one place – teams can easily manage all the scheduling of their enterprise-wide projects end to end. All trades, all processes, all teams, all connected on one platform.
Here are 10 ways of elevating your construction project scheduling using MTWO from 4 aspects: Connectivity, Collaboration, Accuracy, and Efficiency.
- Schedules are connected to BIM models for 5D simulation
Your project schedules are linked to BIM models with MTWO. 5D BIM, 3D model + time factor + cost factor, is a great way to build a project’s virtual twin. It offers “What-if” scenarios that enable better planning for uncertainties and risks, allowing visibility of the impact of any schedule changes to help the team allocate resources better.
5D simulation also allows key stakeholders to include input and feedback about the project. Teams are clear about all the activities on each stage of the project, the amount and type of work to be done, and the relevant procurement tasks required.
“With the iTWO (the core solution of MTWO) solution, we analyzed and compared costs, optimized our construction plans, ensured each milestone of the project (Shenzhen Metro Yinhu Station) and the end result is that the project team completed the structure cap 56 days before the planned date.”
– Zhou Zilu, Chief Engineer at China Construction Fourth Bureau
- Cloud-based enterprise-level platform allowing real-time control of schedules
MTWO manages data from every project, putting it all together so that you can intuitively utilize past results to establish better processes for future workflows. Based on the data from the platform, the MTWO Control Tower generates interactive dashboards to give executives and team members all the real-time and structured information to know a project’s performance and meaningful insights to confidently make final decisions.
- Gain full visibility of the project status
- Learn, predict and improve internal processes
- Being proactive, not reactive
- Cost is integrated into resource management for accuracy
Accuracy is vital for project success. With MTWO, the estimate process is followed by the schedule department referring to the same version of resources information from the cost department, saving redo time and manpower from working on one single source of truth.
Costs are connected to resources for teams to easily track materials, waste, and labor along the project phase. Teams always have a clear understanding of the direct and indirect costs of the project and are made more aware of the milestones and deadlines.
- Easy and fast project reports with mobile apps and minimized idle time with Gantt chart
With all project information available immediately, teams can make more informed decisions faster. MTWO mobile apps assist field teams to easily capture and update site progress. For instance, the To-do app supports teams to approve and track assigned tasks on the go and the Defect Management app helps teams to quickly record site defects. All data is then synchronized into the MTWO Control Tower for project status full visibility.
Teams can easily use MTWO Gantt charts to estimate the duration of a project and identify the critical path to take during construction. The hierarchy among activities clearly displays which ones require immediate attention and which must be completed before other dependent tasks can follow, minimizing idle time.
- Directly import and export schedules from MS Project and Primavera
With MTWO Scheduling, you can populate a schedule by importing directly from third-party sources such as Microsoft Project or Primavera to work straight away on any project. MTWO will turn these visual sheets into visual timelines.
- Schedules are connected to workflows for a seamless collaboration experience
Schedules connected to your workflows means enhancing collaboration efficiency along the project lifecycle. All relevant information, such as approval, comments, and documents, is recorded alongside each workflow, giving full context to team members for more informed decision-making.
- Manage multi schedules within a project
MTWO is an enterprise-level cloud platform, as opposed to project-based platform. This means you can work on multiple projects and interact with different schedules at the same time, such as the design, construction, and procurement schedules. Your scheduling data is connected to all your up and downstream project data.
- Saving more time from cross-project schedule reference
Since schedules of different projects are managed in one place, it’s easy to build future schedules based on quick references from past projects, eliminating the headache of having to build each schedule from scratch, subsequently saving you time and increasing efficiency while simultaneously building up the enterprise schedule library.
- LOB optimizing resources
LOB (Line of Balance) divides projects by location. It collects, measures, and presents information relating to time, cost, and completion, and presents it against a specific plan. The LOB aspect of MTWO allows a clearer understanding of the amount of work taking place at a certain time and place, optimizing resources, particularly for prefabrication projects.
- Multiple roles working in one platform and calendar function managing multi-national construction projects
MTWO brings together different teams, such as site members, project managers, and architects, and different levels in one team, for the timely completion of each task. Teams can more easily manage, and delegate assigned stages, resources, and task duration and to the right people to ensure the work is completed on time.
For larger owners or general contractors with projects in different regions and even in different countries, the calendar function leads to a clearer construction process, as everyone has a clear view of what’s happening, at what time, and where.
How does ‘scheduling’ look like in MTWO? Watch this video:
Your advantages with MTWO project scheduling:
- Visual work progress
- Real-time access to relevant information
- Easy to track key metrics and milestones
- Optimized resource allocation and reduced idle time
- Scheduling data connected with all other modules
- Streamlined workflows and enhanced transparency
No matter how you want to do your project scheduling, now you can do it with MTWO
In summary, by implementing a cloud-based enterprise-level software solution, all your teams are working from the same source of data throughout the project lifecycle; with every aspect managed in one place, projects are done faster and at a lower cost, while ensuring your business’s long-term, sustainable growth.
“In the construction business there are a lot of processes, the estimation process, procurement process, scheduling process, and with such tool as iTWO (the core solution of MTWO), we can combine them all together.”
– Vadim Semenov, Development Manager at YIT Group
Interested in learning more about MTWO? RIB has developed the MTWO 5D Lab. Here, you can simulate contracts and projects in real time using realistic project data. We will support your learning, from scratch, on the basis of many successfully executed projects. Learn more here.
Download the MTWO Complete Construction Cloud whitepaper below or request a free demo with our product experts.
