Even if every member of your business team is an expert in their field, it is not guaranteed. Without a good and efficient project management system in place, it is unlikely that you will achieve the successful results you want, even if you have the right resources in the area. This article will teach how managing projects efficiently can help you grow your business. But first, let us discuss what the project management life cycle is.
The Project Management Life Cycle
The project life cycle is discussed in this section. The project life cycle outlines project managers’ stages to execute a project from start to completion properly. It begins with initiation, moves on to planning, manages, monitors, and wraps up.
Initiating Phase
This phase of a project’s life cycle aims to figure out the project’s vision. How many floors do you want your vertical development to be? Do you plan to add amenities or a roof deck? Once you have a clear and consistent vision, the next step is to figure out who should be involved in the project, the estimated resources, and other items that set the stage for everything.
Planning Phase
In the planning phase, you start finalizing the project management plan, scope, work breakdown structure, and other things, ending with qualitative and quantitative risk analyses and responses. This detailed plan will serve as the baseline of your project, from schedule, budget, and scope. Everyone on your team will know the project’s goal and precisely what they need to do to finish on time and within budget.
Execution Phase
This execution phase is where you finally start construction. Most of the budget is spent, most project deliverables are made, and things start to get done. You follow the plan for your project, which could take weeks, months, or even years.
Monitoring Phase
During the monitoring phase, you review and analyze how your project is progressing. You can set it against your baseline in the planning phase to see if the project is going how it is supposed to go, and if necessary, you make changes. No matter how well you plan, you will still need to be constantly on top of tracking and reporting to ensure everything is going smoothly.
Closing Phase
The closing phase is the last part of a project’s life cycle. It is essential to end the project formally and get the customer, stakeholders, and project sponsor to sign off on it or give their approval. Once this stage is over, the client resumes full responsibility for maintaining the finished project. However, a contractor may still need to be on standby for a warranty period agreed upon during the contract.
Importance of Project Management to Your Company’s Success
When project management is done correctly, it can completely change your project handling, and it can help the business as a whole run more smoothly. Using project management software for the construction industry is a great way to automate all those tedious tasks and allows you to shift your focus to more critical studies.
With the growing demand for construction projects comes the increased need for project managers. Since project management is becoming more critical, project management skills have never been more important. A manager’s responsibility is to ensure everything goes well and as planned. They have the skills and technical know-how to get things back on track when something goes wrong.
Luckily, there are many ways to become a good project manager. With the digital advancements available in the market, contractors are shifting away from the traditional way of managing projects and turning to construction technology. Your project management plan goes from good to great if you hire the right person – they make the plan for your project happen.
Ten Ways A Project Management Software Can Streamline and Optimize Your Processes
Even if every member of your business team is an expert in their field, it does not mean your business will do well. Without good project management, it is unlikely that you’ll get the results you want and your team’s work will be worth it. In today’s modern age, you take advantage of the features of construction technology, such as software, that can help you be efficient and effective. This section will share ten ways a project management software can help you streamline and optimize processes.
Monitor Your Resource and Inventory Levels
Monitoring your resources is a critical factor that makes or breaks your project’s success. Knowing how much you can do with your resources can meet customer expectations, boost productivity, improve customer service, and cut costs. An inventory management software can help you stay on top of every movement of your resources, from when your workers use them to when the deliveries arrive. This way, you can have an overview of your stock levels and ensure that you always have the correct quantity at the right time.
Prioritize Your Projects
Prioritization of projects lets you rank tasks related to a project against each other so that you can figure out who is responsible for what. This way, you can check which activities are critical and need to be done first so that other tasks can follow. Prioritizing also helps your business because it lets you focus on one task at a time, which means you can reduce or get rid of problems.
Automate Billing and Invoicing
As a contractor, you must submit billings and invoicing on time to keep your cash flows healthy. If you are not being paid for your work, it can severely impact your profitability and result in a loss. Using construction software, you can see when you should send out progress billings and document them properly. Consumers think that everything is easy because all they have to do in the end is pay a monthly fee or pay their credit card bill. But the situation is much more complicated for businesses.
Improve Communication and Collaboration
Communication inside a business is essential, regardless of any industry. When many people are working on different aspects of a company, getting everyone on the same page can be challenging. This is especially applicable for construction, where you must work with your employees, subcontractors, and other trade partners. Technology such as construction management software for subcontractors can make it easier for people to talk to each other reliably so that important information does not get lost in translation or slip through the cracks. Everyone can access the same updated information with just a few simple clicks.
Better Budget Monitoring
You can grow and scale your construction business if you can predict how the value of individual projects will affect the company’s direction. Putting together a budget for a project can be challenging for a business. By taking control of your budget and reviewing past financial data, you can get insights that can improve your budgeting for the next one. It will also let you compare the actual budget to the budget you had planned, giving you a clear picture of the current budget and your predictions for the future.
Increase Project’s Productivity
As a contractor, you may often have to work on more than one project simultaneously. So, it is essential to keep an eye on how tasks are going to ensure they are delivered and finished on time. A construction employee scheduling software can help you give employees the right amount of work, make schedules, and set the proper budget for each project. This is important because you’ll need to match your clients’ money with your employees’ billable hours to maintain your company’s profitability. You can also be able to cut business costs that are not necessary if you speed up different tasks by automating them.
Centralize Documents
With more people becoming more digitized and working on their computers, keeping important documents and information in one place is essential. This will make it easy for you and your team to get to these, saving time and effort. If the system is disorganized and spread out, on the other hand, employees have to look through emails or chats to find the information they need. You can have one single location for your documents and limit access based on the people who are allowed to view them.
Complete All Project Deliverables
Project management can also help your business grow by ensuring that project deliverables are handled well. Each deliverable is tied to a different project milestone. When you complete the project, you should ensure that you have completed all the obligations in the contract.
Guarantee Customer Satisfaction
Project management can help your business grow by making your customers happier. In line with this, satisfied customers can also bring in more repeat business and good reviews. Since you have access to the updated information in a simple glance, you can respond to customer questions and concerns more quickly, effectively, and efficiently, making them happier.
Access The Construction Software Anytime, Anywhere
When managing construction, you split your time between the office and the field – which can be challenging. However, construction software can be accessed through a phone or a desktop, allowing you to check and see all information with a few simple clicks. When you utilize this the right way, you will not have to carry a lot of heavy paperwork or spend time going to the office for things that can be done from home. Everything can be done and assessed online.
