Construction projects are a lot to manage. They can be big, complex and often unruly involving a lot of different safety concerns, equipment rental issues, and personnel problems, among many other things. But what poses the greatest challenge, even for small construction companies, is personnel scheduling. You will need multiple teams, dealing with different aspects of the construction project, as well as people to supervise them.
To make sure that everything is on track regarding the construction management process, you want incredible software that will regulate all of the factors mentioned above. That software is going to be construction scheduling software.
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As you are aware, construction is an absolute behemoth of an industry. There are a lot of different projects that can come under the banner of construction like residential, heavy industry, renovation, commercial, engineering projects, and institutional projects. Some of these projects are barely defined in the overall scheme of things, but construction project management as a whole involves many different crafts and skills like planning, leadership, and resource management to take care of every little facet of a construction project.
Amidst all these intricate tasks, scheduling and dispatching take up a significant amount of time, effort, and resources. When we talk about the construction schedule, we come to know that it is all part of the planning phase and it is crucial to deliver the project elements and the promised milestones on time without going over the budget that was agreed on at the start of the project. Evidently, it is the biggest hurdle in a construction project manager’s day is to organize all of the smaller projects in such a sequence that all of them are precisely executed when they are supposed to and not at random. No wonder scheduling construction projects is such a cumbersome task.
While there is no shortcut to bypass the intricate planning process, there is indeed an easier way to bypass the arduous task of scheduling and dispatching– by automating the process. To this end, construction scheduling software is going to be your best friend.
Before we talk about choosing the best construction scheduling software for your construction business, let’s try to understand what this digital tool is all about.
What is Construction Scheduling Software?
Construction scheduling software is a cloud-based or local computer program or application that automates certain employee scheduling processes such as work schedule management, employee communication, and time tracking. It is a platform that helps owners and managers administer their hourly workers, dispatch workers as necessary, keep track of total billable hours, and reschedule assignments as required.
Common features of construction scheduling systems include:
i) Real-time automated scheduling: The software allows managers and business owners to manage employee schedules and time by tracking their calendars in real time across multiple locations. It can instantly confirm or deny an allocation when a new booking request is made, based on availability and skill set. It can also manage a waiting list of allocations that can be substituted if an existing booking is canceled or rescheduled.
ii) Schedule overview: This is essential for viewing your weekly, biweekly, and monthly shifts so you can gain perspective regarding your employee’s schedule like coverage gaps. Filter what you want to see based on location, specific shifts, and roles. You can also view who is assigned at a certain time and location.
iii) Resource scheduling: Apart from scheduling the right person for the right job, the software enables customers to schedule meeting rooms. It also enables equipment scheduling.
iv) Calendar management: The tool can be used for meeting and appointment scheduling and sharing them with participants at multiple locations. This feature may also include synchronization with third-party calendar management applications used by the participants
v) Time-tracking and management: Allows business owners to effectively manage employee work hours by tracking their check-ins or check-outs. The software helps to manage employee attendance and keep track of their paid time off (PTO) days. Some solutions also allow integration with third-party payroll processing or HR software.
vi) Automatic reminders and notifications: Allows users to send reminders to employees or customers about an upcoming appointment via email notifications or SMS text messaging.
vii) Field Service Management: Enables managers to track and manage the activities of their field service employees and resources, such as managing dispatch schedules, optimizing vehicle routes, initiating service orders, and mapping service orders to the nearest available worker.
Now that you know what to look for in a construction scheduling system, let’s find out the best options available for your construction company.
1. Field Promax
Field Promax is the most comprehensive, easy-to-use, yet cost-effective construction scheduling software available today. It is a smart, cloud-based web and mobile application that provides a complete automation solution for scheduling and dispatching, and beyond.
Field Promax is designed with a chock-full of invaluable features and functionalities to help construction business owners take total control of their operations. You can keep track of your customer database, employee locations, ongoing job status, upcoming appointments, accounting, invoicing, and every other possible task from the palm of your hands.
The advanced digital tool comes with a comprehensive work order management suite featuring an efficient scheduling and dispatching tool, a comprehensive dashboard to view all your schedules on a single platform, and color-coded calendar views. The all-in-one dashboard provides you with access to workers’ schedules in different modes (daily, weekly, monthly, and individual schedules), necessary customer details, and work order information, along with a ton of other resources to help you automate and streamline various projects at the same time. The distinct color codes help you organize your calendar efficiently, eliminating any possibility of double booking, overbooking, mismanagement, or missed assignments.
Field Promax also comes with an integrated GPS-powered mobile app that allows managers to perform every administrative task from the palm of their hands, regardless of where they are. Not just business owners or managers, your field technicians can also access necessary customer information, accept job orders, update work status, and even create and send invoices directly from the field using the app, thanks to the seamless two-way sync with QuickBooks. It is available on both iOS and Android. With this app, you can access every feature seamlessly. The highlight, however, is that the app arguably has one of the easiest interfaces to operate.
In a nutshell. Field Promax is built to serve you every step of the way, be it on the job site or from the back office.
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2. Planday
Designed specifically for builders, Planday is packed with industry-specific features to target and address the scheduling needs of a construction business. It eliminates the manual process of collecting the employee’s availability and preferred shift. Instead, it gathers all the information efficiently and stores it for future reference when you’re scheduling.
Creating schedules based on the department and skill set ensures the right staff are employed at the right shifts. To reduce time spent on creating schedules, you can save a template which you can reuse as a base for new schedules and fine-tune it based on your current requirements.
3. eSUB
eSUB is a dedicated construction project management software well-equipped with scheduling, field communication, and document management solutions. The tool is specially tailored for building contractors with the most robust and user-friendly management solutions designed to help users improve their productivity.
The construction software is exceptionally efficient at documentation. eSUB centralizes all the processes to ensure you can control everything from a central location and do not have to jump from one location to another to streamline things. The cloud-based solution helps contractors deal with and manage daily operations without any hiccups in the process.
4. SubItUp
Engineered towards eliminating conflict schedules of staff, SubItUp ensures there will be no double-booking for your employees with its smart tech system. When a staff is unavailable, they will not be scheduled for a shift or task. It adapts to the size of your team to create solutions for devising and communicating staff schedules based on crucial factors of your organization.
The unpublished mode lets you take your time in planning schedules and making changes as much as you want without updating your team on every adjustment. Once it’s done and complete, you can then publish it. It also has other features like staff self-scheduling, staff priority, fair shift, shift reassignment, add or drop a shift, and break time arrangements.
5. Smartsheet
Communications are key to good construction scheduling and executing that schedule. To this end, Smartsheet is an excellent program to streamline and add efficiency to your project communications. With Smartsheet, work is managed so that construction projects can stay productive through better communication.
The software also manages the avalanche of paperwork involved in any project, which goes double for a construction project. With improved documentation to capture issues as they arise in a project, teams can collaborate more effectively on Smartsheet. Not only teams, but vendors and clients can also be added into the loop. All of this saves time and creates more accurate management of project resources.
Benefits of Construction Scheduling Software
A construction business can realize multiple benefits as a result of adopting a scheduling solution, including
- Improved employee efficiency: Construction professionals often find it challenging to manage client work orders during peak hours. Without the right software in place, they can risk double-booking service orders. Scheduling software for construction businesses enables easy scheduling, single-touch rescheduling, and the ability to confirm service orders with customers.
- Increased accountability and visibility: Scheduling software helps promote transparency by automatically generating optimized schedules. The software also promotes accountability by letting employees select their own shifts, when possible.
- Customer service automation: Companies today strive to retain customers to maintain their cash flow, making customer service effectiveness a key metric. Integrated customer service management becomes even more difficult for organizations that have a sizable field service workforce. A scheduling app can help by providing alerts to customers about when their service is scheduled and providing them with details about the service professional visiting their home to enhance the customer experience.
- Web-based solutions: More and more companies are adopting software that is hosted online (as opposed to on the company’s own local servers) and is accessed via the web browser. Such solutions are referred to as web-based, cloud-based, online, or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Online scheduling software is especially popular among businesses whose employees are in disparate locations; online scheduling affords easy access to remote users since all that’s required for access is a mobile device with an internet connection.
- Centralized information: Organizations where the workforce is spread across multiple locations often have problems with communicating job schedules to employees. Scheduling software centralizes data at a single location and updates it in real-time so everyone can view accurate information, and can send automated alerts in case of schedule overlap.
Wrapping Up
Creating a schedule that works well for all your employees and shift requirements is arduous and time-consuming. Small, medium and large-scale companies suffer from loss of time and resources in dealing with the confusion and potential human error when doing it manually. That is why you need construction scheduling software. It provides much-needed flexibility, efficiency, and transparency to your business, not to forget the all-important profitability as well.
Having said that, you must choose the right scheduling software to leverage its advantages to their optimum level. No one knows your business needs better than you. So, when it comes to choosing the right tools and software, you must ensure that it meets your needs to the T.
The software options mentioned in this article are all leading choices for construction scheduling. You cannot go wrong with any of these options. But in case you are confused about deciding which is the best construction scheduling software for you, or simply looking for the most affordable option, just go for Field Promax with your eyes closed. It is the most budget-friendly choice among all, which offers all-around automation support for your scheduling tasks, and more.
For more information, contact Field Promax.
Originally Published On: Field Promax ( Construction Scheduling Software )
