How Technology is Changing the Project Manager Role in Heavy Civil Construction
- 15 September 2022
Most Project Managers (PMs) in heavy civil construction do not actually manage projects. The PM role is often relegated to job costing and billing which are necessary tasks for sure but really just a tabulation of yesterday’s results – a little late for management! It’s like being an emergency room medical doctor versus being a mortician.
Project Management is management through making proactive adjustments to optimize a project’s efficiency and profitability. This requires an intimate knowledge of upcoming events in order to identify omissions, conflicts, and challenges, long before they ever happen.
The reason that PMs do not have a clear picture of upcoming events is inherent in the communication complexity within construction companies. Multiple divisions, subcontractors, and suppliers are all impacting the same sites and resources, and this means many different people are impacted by single events. To keep everyone in the loop who needs to know using a telephone is not realistic. With Vizzn, every division of a construction company collects dispatches and schedules events through the app on their phone. Simply by using the app, instead of phone calls, it automatically keeps everyone impacted by those dispatches and events in the know and all A DAY IN ADVANCE! This information is then sorted and filtered and calendarized based on every user’s individual needs. All this foresight is literally revolutionizing project management and making it a very proactive role. In fact, most Supers and PMs in Vizzn enabled companies are entirely focused on tomorrow by 1pm today.