In The Beginning....

When I was little, my brother used to call it the "Time Magazine of the construction industry". Of course, he was talking about Engineering News-Record. A civil engineer, he would always have copies of the publication laying around.

Not until 1995, when I started my company, did I really begin to pay attention to it. I remember reading it every week looking for anything related to web based project management, my passion to this very day. Suddenly, it struck without warning! There it was......the first article in ENR about the web. It was written by Judy Schriener, a person whom I have learned so much from. She tells the story best in her blog called "In the Beginning...."

Excel - A Blessing or a Curse?

Technology has sure come a long way since I started visiting with companies back in 1995. Unfortunately, the process by which projects are managed hasn't changed much.

Let's focus on the owner/developer for a moment. Perhaps the most widely used tool by this group is Microsoft Excel. Name any department, any process, and Excel will usually find its way into the picture. Need to organize projects in your development pipeline, track the open action items during the entitlement process, manage the budget, commitments, and actuals - Excel can facilitate these processes to a certain degree. However, Excel can have its downsides and the most common complaints I hear from Directors of Construction/Program Managers are listed below:

1. Multiple people cannot easily update the Excel file simultaneously.


2. There is no audit trail of numbers that have been changed - this is even more problematic for those have linked spreadsheets.


3. The person who created the semi-automated spreadsheet is no longer there, making it hard to troubleshoot when macros or links become corrupt.


4. Takes too much time to roll-up the spreadsheets from multiple project managers, especially if there are variations in the templates.


5. No ability to easily link backup documents (such as contracts of invoices) to numbers found in the spreadsheet.


6. No real-time visibility into critical information, i.e. Contingency, such that dollars can be moved around more effectively to alleviate the problem.

I have seen these Excel based systems being replaced by Web-Based Project Management and Collaborative Solutions at an increasing pace. Apparently, the word has been getting around. Just recently, I attended a Healthcare Conference where at least 15% of the Directors were using some type of web based system. Not a high number, but compared to 2 years ago, it's a marked increase. Perhaps 2008 will be the banner year?