Project management tools: keeping calm even in the Corona crisis

Project management in plant construction: time is money

Project management in plant construction is dependent on a large number of factors. If delays occur in a tight project plan, this frequently results in a financial cost – one of the reasons why the Corona crisis hit the industry hard: delivery times could not be met due to factory shutdowns and breakdowns in international freight traffic, which in turn caused delays at other points in the value chain.

While the summer with its sharply reduced infection figures in Europe still offered hope for improvement, it could now become clear that the storm is far from over: a second Corona wave in the winter months offers the potential to once again confuse supply routes and much more. Crisis management could once again become an important feature for project planners. It is important to keep the impact of the pandemic on plant construction projects as low as possible. However, this requires a high degree of control and transparency.

Through the crisis with project management tools

Modern project management tools as well as planning software offer the plant construction industry the opportunity to make the best possible use of existing potential during the crisis and at the same time to take a step forward in terms of digitalisation.

One of the biggest advantages of project management software is the fact that all important work steps can be entered and made available online. This creates a common basis for all employees – a hub, so to speak, in which all information comes together and is always up to date by project participants at all levels, right up to project leaders or managers. Ideally, the project management software bundles the large volumes of data and makes them available to all employees in a comprehensible form. Especially in a crisis, such a feature makes planning much easier.

COMAN achieves this effect through so-called Smart Objects: for this purpose, the plans of the plant construction project are provided in the software. Certain areas are divided into assemblies and individual objects and their status is visualised with the help of colours (for example red, yellow, and green depending on the current construction progress). If a group or object is clicked on, all relevant data such as deadlines and parts required for completion are available there. This object-oriented approach to project management ensures that tedious searching in handwritten lists or Excel tables is largely outdated. If delays occur, the appropriate people can quickly search for the causes in the central Manager or in the summary Dashboard application and initiate the correction of defects.