In an industry marked by slim margins and complex project timelines, efficient construction planning is more important than ever. With profit margins for commercial general contractors averaging just 4%, there is little room for mistakes and unplanned costs. A staggering 77% of projects face delays of 40% or more due to inadequate preparation, further highlighting the urgent need for effective planning.
Touchplan is a collaborative production planning platform that provides general and specialty contractors with planning tools that help prevent schedule and budget slippage and reduce the likelihood of errors and omissions that can lead to safety incidents. It also gives owners critical project data such as schedule variances and constraints to help monitor progress in real time and anticipate potential problems.
Here are three key ways that Touchplan helps improve operations to help projects stay on budget and on time.
- Lets Teams Spend More Time in the Field
“Trade partners can literally log into Touchplan themselves, do their tickets, and have their scope of work ready to go before the meeting even starts. This has helped us shorten our 6-month phase planning meetings from 4-6 hours down to 2 hours and our weekly meetings from 2 hours down to approximately 30 minutes.”
– Justin Spafford, Senior Project Manager – Flintco, LLC
Thanks to Touchplan, team members can receive project updates in real time rather than waiting for meetings. This makes meetings more efficient and less time-consuming. According to Touchplan’s report on The Return on Investment of Construction Planning Software, users reported a 50% reduction in meeting times since adopting the platform.
With Touchplan’s collaborative software, teams can create detailed schedules for the day, week, and month, allowing them to prepare effectively before meetings. The platform’s Mobile Ticket List feature provides real-time status updates directly from the field, which keeps team members continually updated. As a result, meetings can focus on upcoming tasks and moving the project forward, allowing team members to spend more time in the field than in a meeting room.
- Provides Accessible Data to Drive Informed Decisions and Continuous Improvement
Touchplan simplifies aggregating and analyzing plans, which reduces time-consuming manual updates that often lead to errors. With real-time visibility of project metrics displayed on Touchplan’s analytics dashboards, the platform achieves an 85% reduction in time spent on plan updates as noted in the Touchplan report.
Here are three areas where Touchplan analytics provide value in real-time:
- Risk Identification: Teams can proactively identify bottlenecks for early informed decision-making.
- Transparency Across Projects: Touchplan analytics offers a comprehensive dashboard view, ensuring all details are visible. Real-time data analysis promotes collaboration and accountability in monitoring project performance.
- Management Analytics: Delivers actionable insights into construction planning by analyzing past trends, current project status, and future resource needs. Management Analytics aligns customers’ analytics dashboards into three easy-to-use formats, providing relevant information for executives, managers, and field leaders. This supports data-driven, collaborative decision-making through Project Analytics, Portfolio Analytics, and Company Analytics.
- Exceptional KPI Management: Touchplan analytics enhances visibility with an intuitive interface featuring charts and trend reports, simplifying KPI tracking and enabling accurate decision-making for project success.
By automating updates and providing real-time insights, teams can swiftly address issues and allocate resources more effectively.
- Minimizes Errors and Keeps Projects on Track
Touchplan also plays an important role in reducing rework rates, which refer to the need to redo tasks due to poor planning or out-of-sequence work. The platform’s Variance Identification feature helps teams spot schedule deviations as they happen, improving workflow predictability and minimizing errors. If a subcontractor falls behind on a task, the team is alerted immediately allowing them to adjust timelines or reallocate resources. This proactive management of constraints has led to a significant 20% reduction in rework among Touchplan adopters.
A MOCA Systems, Inc. study analyzed data from Touchplan, finding that schedule variances related to handoffs, staffing issues, material/equipment challenges, design changes, and weather were major causes of delays. With real-time notifications to help promptly address these variances and take necessary action, Touchplan users can reduce disruptions and keep projects on budget and schedule.
Touchplan also offers a Visual Lookahead Schedule, providing a clear and comprehensive view of the plan. Instead of manually combing through the master schedule during Owner-Architect-Contractor meetings, teams can refer to the platform to quickly understand construction progress. This clarity helps reduce rework and delays, ensuring projects stay on track and that they remain aligned with their goals.
By utilizing pull planning to determine the necessary tasks and then organizing them within the lookahead schedule, teams can proactively address potential issues early. This approach minimizes the risk of out-of-sequence work, enhancing coordination and collaboration among stakeholders. By keeping teams aligned, construction teams can avoid the pitfalls of rework and keep projects moving forward.
The Operational Advantage of Touchplan
As a digital planning solution, Touchplan improves efficiency by enabling teams to recover time that is typically lost to manual planning. By focusing on forward-looking tasks, teams can hold more productive meetings. With real-time updates, Touchplan enables users to quickly identify issues, allocate resources effectively, and improve workflows, while its analytics deliver actionable data for informed decision-making.
The result is successful project delivery that meets budget and schedule requirements.
To learn more about how Touchplan can drive success in your projects, schedule a demonstration today.
