Practice Management Member Conversations

We are a 30 person architectural firm and are looking to upgrade the software we use to schedule staff on projects. (We run upwards of 50 concurrent projects with numerous starts and stops, so assigning the appropriate staff is critical.) We have been working with a very old program called FastTrac. It seems like there must be something better out there. Any suggestions as to what folks are using would be appreciated.
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Jerry Roller AIA
Firm Owner/Architect
JKR Partners
Philadelphia PA
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We are using Primavera to manage time, scheduling, and project tracking. It has a fairly intuitive interface and produces reports that are very useful. There is also a dashboard feature where we can see utilization of the office or by project. We can also monitor booked work and forecast periods of over-utilization where we may need to bring in contract employees. Hope that helps. ------------------------------------------- Gordon Rogers AIA EAS Department Executive Kitchell CEM, Inc. Sacramento CA -------------------------------------------
Original Message: Sent: 01-29-2013 17:07 From: Jerry Roller Subject: Scheduling Software We are a 30 person architectural firm and are looking to upgrade the software we use to schedule staff on projects. (We run upwards of 50 concurrent projects with numerous starts and stops, so assigning the appropriate staff is critical.) We have been working with a very old program called FastTrac. It seems like there must be something better out there. Any suggestions as to what folks are using would be appreciated. ------------------------------------------- Jerry Roller AIA Firm Owner/Architect JKR Partners Philadelphia PA -------------------------------------------

We recommed that you try using a broader approach to resource and budget management by using Deltek. It is not strictly a scheduling program but it will enable you to track staff, budgets and timelines. Deltek reports can be exported to MS Project and spreadsheets for display as charts and detailed schedules.

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Eliezer Naor AIA
STV Inc.
Oakland CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-30-2013 08:53
From: Gordon Rogers
Subject: Scheduling Software

We are using Primavera to manage time, scheduling, and project tracking. It has a fairly intuitive interface and produces reports that are very useful. There is also a dashboard feature where we can see utilization of the office or by project. We can also monitor booked work and forecast periods of over-utilization where we may need to bring in contract employees.

Hope that helps.

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Gordon Rogers AIA
EAS Department Executive
Kitchell CEM, Inc.
Sacramento CA
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Jerry,

I would take a look at Microsoft Project. It has the ability to assign staff to projects.

Good Luck

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Jason Hale AIA
Project Architect
HKS, Inc.
Dallas TX
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Not having ever used anything else but MS-Project disqualifies me from making a comparison, but we have used MS-Project on many projects to our full satisfaction. For the upgrading of the Berlin, Germany trade fair we transmitted our own initial MS-Project schedules covering demolition, roads and rail infrastructure, and new buildings to the general contractor who, as leader of a consortium of 6 firms, developed them further and used them to the completion of the project 5 years later


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Karl Hartnack AIA
Component Past President
Hartnack Architecture
Duesseldorf

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I am an architect and the person responsible for understanding office wide who is busy and who has capacity for a 28-person architecture and planning firm.  I use FastTrack to document overall project schedules with a column for each project listing the assigned staff.  At one point I listed each employee as a resource so I could see not only the overall project schedules (schedule view) but a list of projects by each employee as well (resource view).  I believe FastTrac also lets you use percentages and other tools.  Our project management software Ajera, which we use for time sheets, billing etc. offers a new tool for scheduling staff and tracking time, which I experimented with.  In the end, I have found that programs can suck you in to unnecessarilly micromanaging each minute of someones time.  It was not productive and not effective.  So I stepped back and simplified.  I use FastTrack as described above and list our current projects with the overall milestones and list staff permanently assigned to them (PMs, JCs, Project Learners etc), checking in with the project managers or their project-specific schedules periodically to update the milestones.  To manage the day-to-day, I reach out to the staff at the beginning of the week and ask them to report on their availablility and needs for the week.  If someone has a short-term need, I have a good handle on who is available to help and with a few discussions with managers, I can make the arrangements, keeping everyone highly utilized.

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Douglas Cramer AIA
JMZ Architects & Planners, P.C.
Glens Falls NY
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Jerry,

Is your team primarily a PC-based one? Have you incorporated either iPads or Android tablets into your workflow?

Depending on your answer to the above questions, I would have different recommendations.

Some firms I've previously worked with defaulted to tools like Microsoft Project for staff scheduling and project management. If you're a PC ecosystem then that is one option, although I think Fast Track Schedule 10 for windows (is that what you're using) is a better option for AEC than Microsoft Project. 

While this post is from 2009 and from the UK, he lays out what were then some of the best options (in his opinion) for a mac ecosystem. It's worth noting that a number of them are no longer that well supported or evolving and that many of those which have evolved are the web-based cross-platform options.

I've also seen a number of cross platform teams making use of BaseCamp from 37 Signals because it had great mobile and web support and so was not tied to any one device or operating system. However from a top-down staff planning point of view it wouldn't be my software of choice.

Personally, we use OmniPlan (mac & iPad only) for a number of reasons which I can go into more if you wish.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Patrick Hoffman
New York NY
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