Learn how Power BI makes reporting much easier
Power BI makes reporting much easier
Client Overview
Client is an employee-owned, multi-disciplined engineering, planning, architectural, and environmental services firm in the United States. With nearly 700 employees spread between more than 30 offices in 12 states, they offer a wide range of services with a focus on aviation, construction, facilities design, federal, power, transportation, survey, and water. They sit in the top 150 of the Engineering News-Record's prestigious Top 500 Design Firms list, while Zweig Group has recognized client as a best firm to work for in the multi-discipline category for six consecutive years.
Challenges
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Compiling historical data for reporting was difficult and time consuming
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Reports were being created from many different sources, including Primavera P6 and Excel worksheets
Results
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EP-datawarehouse was deployed and snapshots are taken regularly to record historical information
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New reports are easier to create with the snapshotted data readily available in Power BI
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Previously created reports in Power BI were able to be utilized and improved with additional data provided by EP-datawarehouse
Transportation Case Studies
EP-datawarehouse Case Studies
on Tuesday, 14 March 2023.
Posted in Case Studies
Custom checks created in P6-QA helped client
Helping Client Users Self-Monitor Schedule Quality
Written by Sue Hopkins
Client Overview
Client is an employee-owned, multi-disciplined engineering, planning, architectural, and environmental services firm in the United States. With nearly 700 employees spread between more than 30 offices in 12 states, they offer a wide range of services with a focus on aviation, construction, facilities design, federal, power, transportation, survey, and water. They sit in the top 150 of the Engineering News-Record's prestigious Top 500 Design Firms list, while Zweig Group has recognized the client as a best firm to work for in the multi-discipline category for six consecutive years.
Challenges
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Needed a solution to coach their client users on scheduling best practices
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Users required a way to monitor the quality of their schedules while creating schedules, as well as when they were in-flight
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A specific set of quality checks were needed based on contract requirements and general quality guidelines
Results
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Emerald Associates built additional checks and a custom report focusing on what was of importance to their team
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P6-QA deployed on all databases to monitor project quality using out-of-the-box functions and customized checks
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The DOT users are able to self-monitor their schedules without constant assistance from the firm saving countless hours of consulting time
Transportation Case Studies
on Monday, 11 July 2022.
Posted in Case Studies
P6-QA helped to quickly review and critique a 600 million dollar project schedule
Identified Leads, Lags, and Constraints in a P6 Schedule
Client Overview
When running a large, multi-use building project in the middle of New York City, planning and scheduling is not a nice to have. As a specialty developer, having a P6 scheduling expert is a luxury the project could not afford. So P6-QA SaaS was a great fit for a quick review and critique of the 600 million dollar project schedule.
Challenges
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Reviewing an 8,000+ activity schedule when you do not have a P6 scheduling export on the team
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Giving critique on the critical path and the project workflow by discipline
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Understanding the real gaps in the schedule and how to discuss the improvements needed in an intelligent manner
Results
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In less than 2 hours, the P6-QA tool ran and gave the open ends
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In less than 2 hours, P6-QA helped with the explanation and write-up of the critical path
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Identified leads, lags, and constraints and reported on them in minutes
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The coding structure required to see the disciplines and key building areas tied to major project turnover milestones for the retail space, the hotel space, and the condominium towers was achieved with little pre-knowledge of the project
on Wednesday, 22 September 2021.
Posted in Case Studies
Learn how a large engineering firm moved to the Emerald Cloud.
Emerald Cloud, Tools and Services - A Winning Combo
Written by Sue Hopkins
Client Overview
Client is an employee-owned multi-disciplined engineering, planning, architectural, and environmental services firm in the United States. With nearly 700 employees spread between more than 30 offices in 12 states, they offer a wide range of services with a focus on aviation, construction, facilities design, federal, power, transportation, survey, and water. They sit in the top 150 of the Engineering News-Record's prestigious Top 500 Design Firms list, while Zweig Group has recognized client as a best firm to work for in the multi-discipline category for six consecutive years.
Challenges
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Client was looking for an alternative to the Oracle Cloud for them and the Department of Transportation (DOT) they were working with.
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The Program Controls manager wanted faster response time on support tickets for four databases.
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Needed a reliable environment for 80+ DOT users to fulfill their contract commitments.
Results
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Moved hosting of four databases to the Emerald Cloud.
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Decreased supported response time from days to hours
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Able to bring their DOT client online with their environment in less than two months, including upgrade of P6 and rollout of new business processes.
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Added a second DOT client to Emerald's hosting environment two years later.
Transportation Case Studies
EP-datawarehouse Case Studies
P6-Calculator Case Studies
P6-Scrubber News Articles
P6-Reporter News Articles
on Thursday, 17 June 2021.
Posted in Case Studies
Project Managers do some of the heavy-lifting to lighten the project controls team workload.
Weekly updating of OPEX and CAPEX projects in an Operational Plant
Written by Nicole Jardin
Client Overview
When you are working in an operational plant with daily maintenance, small upgrade projects and major expansion capital projects all going on at once, it is critical to manage schedule inter-dependencies and potential impacts so that nothing goes off the rails.
Challenges
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Reporting weekly progress and monthly costs to date on over 50-100 projects
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Reviewing inter-dependencies, schedule impacts, and coordinating crews with area holds
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Balancing the project controls teams' overtime each week and at the end of the month
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Ensuring interproject critical path analysis was done
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Getting updates from remote engineering firms in different time zones
Results
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With CAPPS, weekly status updates were done by the project managers and submitted to the project controls team for approval in P6
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Monthly cost updates and forecasting of EAC were done by the project managers and submitted to the project controls team for approval in P6
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Key management milestone reporting was streamlined significantly
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Project controls teams were freed up to deal with larger turnaround projects
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Project controls teams were able to focus on P6 re-scheduling and critical path analysis
on Thursday, 29 April 2021.
Posted in Case Studies
CAPPS was used on large infrastructure projects to help with timely updates.
weekly updates with costs and resources
Written by Nicole Jardin
Client Overview
Running large infrastructure projects that are highly time sensitive requires easy updating of P6 project schedules. This is not easy to do when you have highly specialized suppliers and contractors scattered around North America.
Challenges
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Timely updates from multiple specialty engineering, suppliers and contractors
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Weekly status reporting including costs to date and estimate at completion
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Updating resource usage and forecasting on a weekly basis from over 15 specialty suppliers
Results
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CAPPS was deployed to key project managers and suppliers
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Weekly updates were prepared and reviewed in meetings prior to submission to keep the communication flowing smoothly
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Used percent complete, resource usage and cost to date
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Reporting improvement and better forecasting was achieved
on Wednesday, 28 April 2021.
Posted in Case Studies
Remote PMs get updates in on time with CAPPS
Remote Project Managers get updates in on time
Written by Nicole Jardin
Client Overview
When managing a multi-million, country-wide building upgrade and retrofit program with over 150 project managers, getting timely updates is very challenging.
Challenges
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Getting bi-weekly status updates from 150 remote project managers was taking over a week to accomplish
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Capturing monthly costs in a timely manner to get the program reporting reviewed and validated without major overtime for the project controls team
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Ensuring consistent updating of key milestones and schedule slippage analysis
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Getting all PMs to take responsibility for the updates and the timelines and understanding inter-project dependency impacts
Results
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P6-Loader was used to clean up project templates for some 500 projects in play to acquire consistency
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CAPPS is used for weekly updates by over 150 PMs
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The project controls teams review and approve all updates in P6 and discuss any anomalies with the PMs right away
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CAPPS is allowing meeting updates to run more efficiently with the on-screen grid
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Program management reporting is now being done with a lot less stress and overtime
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P6-Calculator allows for flagging of variances and easy filtering of late and overdue items for the schedulers to find across hundreds of projects
Program Management Case Studies
P6-Calculator Case Studies
on Monday, 26 April 2021.
Posted in Case Studies