Building a masterpiece, whether a precision timepiece or a modern building, demands attention to multiple moving parts. Picture a skilled watchmaker meticulously fine-tuning each cog to ensure perfect harmony—this is akin to a Planning manager carefully orchestrating schedules, teams, and materials. Both crafts require balance, foresight, and an unwavering commitment to detail.
“A great building must begin with the immeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasured.”
Louis Kahn
In construction, just as in watchmaking, every tiny adjustment can mean the difference between success and setback. Yet, the construction industry’s reliance on diverse tools and inconsistent standards often creates obstacles that hinder project insight and clarity. Only by skilfully fine-tuning processes and schedules can ambitious projects be transformed into marvels of efficiency and excellence.
In the intricate and fragmented world of construction tendering and delivery, planners encounter challenges that require expertise and adaptability before they can deliver a clear and concise plan.
Common challenges when planning and programming complex building projects
- Fragmented systems
As across most of the construction industry, planners frequently juggle multiple tools—from scheduling software to procurement tools and resource management platforms. Not forgetting the large volumes of data that are also shared via Excel. While software like Asta Powerproject offers robust capabilities for project planning, integrating it effectively with other systems for federated reporting remains a common pain point requiring specialist IT help. The result is often siloed data and time-consuming manual reporting and data updates. - Inconsistent standards
Without standardised planning practices across teams and projects, inconsistency in the development of the programme can lead to inefficiencies, errors, and lost opportunities. A lack of clear standards and expectations in how schedules are built, updated, quality checked, and reported creates risk around schedule health and diminishes the reliability of the data used for decision-making. - Lack of real-time insights
Planners often operate in a reactive mode, as information is reported to them on actual site and work package progress. This means they’re often relying on delayed or incomplete data to inform critical decisions. This lack of timeliness impacts the ability to anticipate risks, allocate resources effectively, and maintain control over the critical path. - Collaboration gaps
Building projects involve many diverse stakeholders, including clients, designers, trade contractors, and other external parties. Ensuring everyone operates with the same term of reference can be a significant challenge, especially when systems and data are siloed or programmes are issued as a static PDF or transposed into an Excel workbook. Any barrier to collaboration will impact project performance and the quality of decision making.
A unified solution: Expanding Asta’s reporting capabilities
At Acumine, we have many years of working with a number of the UK & Ireland’s leading contractors. For many of these building contractors, Asta is their preferred planning tool designed for the unique demands of the industry.
Companies also choose it because of its open data and integration potential, allowing them to connect programme data with other applications for a portfolio and executive level view of the business.
Accelerating data and analytics for Tier 1 Contractors
Acumine’s work with Tier 1 contractors such as Kier, Wates, and Tilbury Douglas, shows how integrating Asta Powerproject with Microsoft Fabric and Power BI can improve planning and programming outcomes. Acumine helped these companies and many more to standardise their data and analytics processes, to deliver real-time insights that improve project delivery governance and efficiency.
Through Acumine’s Build Intelligence™ methodology, McLaren gained access to standardised dashboards and reports, with access tailored according to role and responsibilities. These standardised reports provide McLaren with consistent, actionable insights across their projects, enabling planners and managers to anticipate risks and make data-driven decisions quicker and easier.
Getting in step with standards and integration
While Asta provides a strong foundation as a specialist line of business tool, its full potential is revealed when unlocking the data and insights through Acumine’s Build Intelligence™ platform, allowing access to project and business stakeholders to get a more informed view of their project. Acumine’s Build Intelligence™ platform expands the capabilities of tools like Asta Powerproject by:
- Promoting Consistency: Establishing clear standards for uniform schedule creation and standardised reporting.
- Streamlining Integration: Breaking down silos by connecting Asta Powerproject® data with other site progress and operational data and managing through Microsoft Fabric and its Power BI reporting capability.
- Delivering Insights: Providing wider project stakeholders with real-time visibility into project and portfolio summaries, with analytical drill-through analysis of resource allocation, critical path status, and schedule health.
For planners and planning managers, the combination of robust software and a unified data strategy is key to democratising data across all project stakeholders and ultimately achieving project success.
