What Is Construction Project Management Software? Part 2

by XAMTA INFOTECH Construction Industry September 14, 2021

Part 2: Effective Construction Task Management

Every Gantt chart commences with a task listing; thus, an effective activity management function is essential.

Task management stands as one of the core and most crucial functions of any construction project management software. In other words, flawless task management is a prerequisite for any Construction Project Management (CPM) tool.

Speaking of effective task management tools, your construction team should significantly enhance productivity and easily identify and rectify potential mistakes. The ideal tool should streamline all small tasks into one coherent workflow, saving considerable effort and time.

Dashboard for Reporting

While this feature may not seem crucial initially, you'll quickly discover it as one of the most valuable functions in Construction Project Management. Imagine an automated integrated dashboard that's customizable for each stakeholder, allowing you to create detailed reports quickly. It sounds fantastic.

Moreover, it ensures the satisfaction of all stakeholders—no one wants to sift through messy manually written reports.

Timesheets

Another feature worth exploring is timesheets—it greatly aids in tracking tasks. This feature facilitates easy and stress-free progress monitoring, enabling you to validate task estimates and identify potential delays in advance.

Timesheets are crucial for construction teams to stay organized and ensure timely completion of tasks. Time tracking, coupled with collaboration, is essential, as these elements directly impact project outcomes.

Estimation in Construction Project Management

It is a vital tool required by most construction companies. It allows companies to complete all their projects on time. Combined with the timesheets feature, estimation ensures the successful completion of the project.

You want an instrument that aids in delivering bids at a higher value and provides backup with integrated scheduling and benchmarking. Some tools can even integrate with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to generate nearly perfect estimates from the timeline and capabilities.

Cost Management and Accounting

Although all construction project management software solutions offer benchmarking and budgeting features, excellent project management requires forecasting and estimation features for a better project outlook. When one can monitor and manage the smallest details, the likelihood of surprises is significantly reduced. This is particularly crucial when your company has in-house accounting.

Even though Excel spreadsheets are excellent for tracking costs and payroll, accessing data from these sources isn't easy, nor is sharing up-to-date information with key decision-makers. Many construction project management tools offer accounting capabilities, allowing the user to monitor payroll, budgets, invoicing, and billing.

Field Management

As more job sites are added, project managers have more responsibilities at hand. They need to oversee fieldwork at all project sites and ensure everything is working in sync.

Look for a solution that provides a field management function to assist in creating and communicating daily plans, working in collaboration with team members, and summarizing the day's work at the end of the shift.

Some advanced solutions may even assist in close contact by organizing inspection forms with features for safety, equipment, and quality.

Data Analytics in Construction Project Management

Various construction project management solutions can help streamline workflows, track communication channels, and manage every project. However, if you want to level up, get an instrument that makes it easy to analyze your data and turn various processes into effective ones.

Some tools have a reporting feature to provide an in-depth analysis of the utilization and productivity of assets. Not only this, the user can monitor resources and analyze the value earned by tracking processes on a schedule and cost basis.

These assist in enhancing productivity, ensuring strategic insight, and improving efficiency. For example, if you were to face a labor shortage (a common challenge in many construction projects), one could overcome it much faster with the best Construction Project Management software and take appropriate action promptly.

Material Management/Tracking Equipment

In most cases, materials management comes hand in hand with another tool—equipment tracking. Together, these allow the user to monitor and manage materials provided by the supplier, including quotes received and the price paid for it.

Thanks to equipment tracking, you can determine how different types of equipment should be used. Additionally, it should reveal when the warranty is going to expire or if a repair is needed.

Team Management

Team management is often overlaid with scheduling features. But, when one looks at a specific team management option, the top management tools have easy management of status, progress, activities, and time tracking. This enables better coordination within the team and keeps the team informed of any possible project alterations.

Additionally, some contractor software solutions offer GPS tracking of the staff. This helps in learning about the location of the team members.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The CRM feature lets contractors enter the contact information of their clients or procure it from other places.

Moreover, this useful feature assists you throughout the entire lifecycle of your clients.

Some CRM solutions present in the market allow contractors to execute scheduling and send direct reminders automatically to the clients. There is other software that presents search as well as history features for the clients. This has the potential to greatly improve progress tracking and communication with the clients.

Job Costing

Job costing is an accounting tool that tracks the costs and revenues of each job. The top construction management software should have the ability to create standard rates for the various construction services provided by the company. Additionally, it should be able to break down the cost for each employee, production manager, supervisor, and contractor.

A construction PM should be able to manage timelines of the project, track time expenses, and generate actionable data to enhance productivity, create invoices, and produce purchase orders (PO).

Document Management

Even a simple construction project can produce documents that may be challenging to handle. A good construction management software is one with the functional capacity to manage all permanent documentation.

You definitely wouldn't want multiple programs to generate workflow data reports. A single software should be able to send all the reports in a single interface.