SmartPM Technologies, a leading construction project analytics provider, adds an industry-first, automated narrative report to its platform. It is the industry’s only program that can automatically generate a narrative based on the schedule data set at the touch of a button.
The report is a comprehensive, text-based summary of multiple aspects of a construction job. While it can be useful to all stakeholders involved in a project, it is especially well-suited to construction executives who want a full reckoning of a project’s status but don’t have the time or expertise to pore over numerous charts and graphs.
Construction companies and contractors traditionally provide their clients—generally the building developer/owner—with a text-based, monthly (or other frequency) update on how the project is progressing, any issues or concerns, potential bottlenecks, etc. While the report will incorporate information about safety issues, outstanding RFI’s, and other subjective material, it is the schedule data that will provide the overwhelming majority of the critical insights that the various audiences need to receive.
The shortcoming of other construction data analytics programs is that whoever is writing the report has to collect the relevant schedule data themselves, analyze it, then turn it into a narrative. SmartPM scans through all the schedule data, analyzes it, then automatically produces the results in text format by automatically filling in the fields of an internal template with standardized text, customized with the project’s unique numbers. The report pulls from a wide spectrum of schedule data, including schedule quality, performance (plan vs. actual), critical path analysis, milestones, compression, and more.
As project updates are input into SmartPM, the program pulls in those new parameters and incorporates them into the narrative. So, regardless of the frequency with which these reports are produced, as long as the program is updated with the most current information, the report will present an up-to-date snapshot of the project. While some competitive programs do have narrative capabilities, none can analyze as many categories of schedule data as SmartPM and, as a result, cannot generate as comprehensive a report.
According to Michael Pink, SmartPM CEO, this reporting feature is an extension of the company’s primary objective. “This more or less goes back to the original goal for the SmartPM platform: to take the most complicated data set in the construction field—the schedule—and present it at a level that anyone can understand,” says Pink. “The platform can still provide the ‘deep dive’ statistics, charts, and graphs, that some people require. But the report is an incredibly useful tool for the executive who wants that same information in an easier-to-digest, narrative format.”
The report feature, though incredibly useful, is still a work in progress. “In the future, as we pull in new data sets and overlay them with the schedule data, we’ll be able to push that information back out to the narrative to make it even more comprehensive—and far more insightful.”
ABOUT SMARTPM TECHNOLOGIES
Founded in 2016 by Michael and Richard Pink, SmartPM™ Technologies Inc. is a leading construction project analytics provider headquartered in Atlanta. SmartPM launched its cloud-based software in 2019 and is the only schedule analytics solution designed specifically for the construction industry by industry analytics experts.
SmartPM drives project management by analyzing essential data from the construction schedule via proprietary Schedule Intelligence™ technology, automating time-consuming project and schedule reviews while extracting meaningful insights to reduce delays, prevent overruns, and avoid costly legal disputes. For more information, visit https://smartpmtech.com/.
NOTE: Michael Pink, CEO of SmartPM Technologies, announced in April the addition of a new Executive Dashboard to its industry-leading, cloud-based schedule analytics and project controls platform. The Executive Dashboard will enhance the functionality of SmartPM by providing overall project insights for a company’s entire portfolio of ongoing projects. This is accomplished by aggregating schedule data across a number of mission-critical analytic categories, combining them, and producing a “macro view”—an average of the performance in each category. This comprehensive insight will help executives identify specific areas that regularly prove to be “project killers,” allowing them to create long-term corrective actions and ultimately reduce their collective project risk.