EasyPlan Project Management System

Background

Managing construction projects within strict deadlines and limited budgets is a huge challenge and many projects experience cost overruns and delays. For contractors to compete nationally and internationally in the multi-billion dollar construction industry, they need tools to efficiently manage project resources, increase productivity, meet constraints, and bring projects to profitability. Existing project management software does not provide a level of data analysis granularity to provide decision support for optimizing operations, automate progress tracking, and identify cost-effective corrective actions to keep projects on track.

Description of the invention

Waterloo’s “Easy Plan” project management software utilizes a novel “critical path segmentation” (CPS) methodology that allows tasks to be further sub-divided for further dynamic optimization and resource re-allocation functionality. The CPS methodology  overcome the key drawbacks of existing commercial systems through: powerful optimization of construction plans; audio/visual tracking of progress; more accurate computation of project schedules; integration of project management concepts; and management of multiple repetitive infrastructure projects. EasyPlan targets variety of users including construction companies, municipalities, and project management firms who require a simple yet advanced tool to support decisions related to cost-effective management of projects

Advantages

• Support audio/visual progress tracking for projects
• Unique optimization feature to meet construction constraints
• 3D/GIS features to manage repetitive infrastructure projects
• Unique ability to analyse delays and decide corrective actions
• Fully integrated concepts from estimating to project delivery
• Can interoperate with existing project management software (eg. plug-in to MS-Project or Primavera)

Potential applications

• Schedule analysis and construction optimization tools
• Progress tracking and visual communication tools