Nitin Bhandari is the co-founder and CEO of Planera.

Statistics about the construction industry vary depending on what’s defined as construction vs. services, but sources such as McKinsey and the World Economic Forum say it accounts for about 13 percent of global GDP, making it the world’s largest industry. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, construction spending in the U.S. alone in 2020 was $1.43 trillion and has been increasing since then.

Bhandari notes that although the industry, which has long been notorious for slow technology adoption, has been making great strides in the last couple decades to adopt modern design and construction tools, but in terms of planning and scheduling software, the industry is still using very old technology that’s poor to react to uncertainty and change.

“If we can just make the entire sector a few percentage points more efficient, that’s tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars that can go back into the economy to do other productive things,” he explains. “Imagine the greater good we can do for society by saving tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. That’s what gets me excited personally about modernizing construction.”

Charting a New Path

According to Bhandari, many large construction companies still use Oracle Primavera P6 software for scheduling. It’s an effective tool, but it’s very complex and few people in any organization can use it properly, leading to projects where many provide input, but the schedule is then “translated” by the one or two experts into a plan that’s difficult to adjust for unexpected risk that’s always a factor.

“Not enough people touch the schedule, and they should, because they know how to build the job,” adds Bhandari. New scheduling tools, such as Planera’s, are hoping to further “democratize” the process. “We need to empower the whole project team to be able to interact with the schedule to be able to optimize the schedule without dumbing it down.”

A key to Planera’s tool is the critical path method (CPM), a rare piece of jargon he likes to use because it’s otherwise difficult to understand the process. He explains that in creating software tools, for example, planning can be very agile because there are few physical constraints. In construction, however, there are many barriers based on physical parameters that must be taken into account, often in a specific order, before the next piece can be developed. This is the basis of CPM.

“In the schedule there might be many paths, so to speak—things that are happening in parallel,” explains Bhandari. “One of them is what’s called the critical path. While everything is important, the critical path of a schedule is a lot more important than other paths as all the critical elements affect the end date.”

Advice for Engineers

According to Bhandari, engineers and project managers know the importance of scheduling, but they’re not yet aware they have viable alternatives to the “old ways of doing things.” He also points out that there are massive improvements that can be made in terms of cost/time savings, safety and sustainability.

“Our customers report to us that better scheduling results in better safety,” adds Bhandari. “With bad scheduling, everything gets compressed and there’s just so much stress on the backend. You might not have enough safety inspectors because you’re suddenly spiking in terms of your crew size. You’re starting to cut corners and take chances.”

He also advises all construction professionals to look not only past the old tools they’re likely still using, but to examine all the new scheduling software becoming available to do the job better and easier.

“Look around—not just Planera—there’s other people who are trying to modernize this space as well,” he says. “It’s time for them to think about modernizing scheduling and planning just because how important it is to their bottom line, safety and environmental impact.”