Software for project management

By: Tim Gregorski

Heavy Job/Foreman by HCSS, Houston, is designed to reduce the foreman’s reporting, allowing them to instantly analyze their progress and provide quicker and better job man-agement information. A point-and-click design for Windows simplifies the recording of information. The system enables the user to enter up to 11 cost codes per timecard; differentiate equipment down time into idle, weather and repair, among other choices; record starting and ending equipment meter readings; record major material receipt and usage; and handle overtime hours in several different ways.

Meridian Project Systems, Sacramento, Calif., offers its Prolog Manager 5.0. The product is a full 32-bit project management application that allows companies to manage the entire procurement process and increase cost controlling functionality.

Companies can use the product to maintain a master vendor database and create specific project databases to import detailed scopes of work into its Buyout Items feature. The budget tracking system of the product’s cost control module is designed to handle quantities and time, as well as a powerful forecasting system.

WelcomHome is the first web-based virtual project office to address all areas of project management, including scope, issues and risk, according to its developer, Welcom, Houston. The product provides access to comprehensive project and cost management tools and information, and facilitates collaborative communication between distributed team members.

Designed for today’s complex, multiproject management environments, the product relies on a unique, process-driven approach that improves efficiency and reduces project cycle times by giving structure to management practices.

Launched last fall, Seattle-based Dexter + Chaney’s Forefront construction management software offers more than 200 new features, including a document imaging system and a MegaSearch search capability.

With document imaging, heavy/ highway contractors can store in the software the countless pages of documents that they typically accumulate on jobs. The result is improved office efficiency and reduced office space devoted to file cabinets. Users can scan, file, view and annotate a variety of documents. A user-defined capability provides a virtual "filing cabinet" to store any type of document, whether or not it’s related to Forefront’s job-cost or accounting functions.

Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based Primavera’s comprehensive project and process management software solution, TeamPlay, is designed to enable IT organizations to strengthen their ability to predictably deliver projects and achieve repeatable project successes. It is built on a high-performance, scalable client/server architecture, using either an Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server relational database. With the software, companies can control an unlimited number of projects and resources enterprise-wide, according to its developer.

WinEstimator Inc., Kent, Wash., has developed a specific scheduling integrator for Primavera Project Planner (P3). In addition to estimators developing their own task table and activities, the new WinEst P3 Integrator allows the estimator to import the project plan developed by the scheduler from Primavera into WinEst. This level of flexibility provides a dynamic link between estimating and scheduling using the Labor Rate tables and Job Cost Phase codes from WinEst to automatically populate Primavera’s Resource and Cost Account Dictionaries.

Version 4.0 of Wind2 Software Inc.’s Wind2 FMS for Windows includes over 50 new enhancements to the product, covering every module.

The changes that the company thinks will require the most adjustment for users are in the Accounts Payable module. Entering AP transactions has been improved, and based upon feedback from the company’s beta sites, once users are used to the changes the time savings is said to be substantial.

Following four years of development, Grantlun Corp., Tempe, Ariz., has unleashed an integrated set of systems designed to capture and move management information easily through the bid-build construction cycle. The product is an integrated "system of systems" built specifically for the management of infrastructure construction projects.

ProjectGrid.com, a web-based project management tool, was developed by the technology division at Resource International Inc., Westerville, Ohio. According to the company, the tool dramatically improves communication and collaboration between all team members involved in construction projects. Project owners, architects, construction managers, subcontractors and engineers are improving their revenues and completing projects under budget and ahead of schedule, the company said.