Scheduling
Lets talk about Scheduling. What are your pain points. What are your positive points. What works and what does not.
Pain: Weather and promising dates....Weather is out of ones control. Committing and promising on dates will just repeatedly create heartburn. Easier to just be a little vague when letting the client know when you expect to be there than commit to a date. Had a client once call and ask why we didn't show up on a specific date and do his survey.....That day we had a hurricane and the client was still bent out of shape over it.
Pro: Get a good scheduling software with a graphic editable calendar (We use Asana)...You can try to use outlook calendars and such, but software specifically designed for scheduling works better. I run a construction staking group with 6 crews and a 48 hour response time to work requests goal....Having the software, spending the time to learning, and getting everyone on the same page will save tons of issues and make you more productive.
If we're spitballing here?
I want something that can take office locations (or more likely field crew locations, since they are almost all working remote these days), and then let me plug in project locations, projected field crew time on site, and drop-dead due date for fieldwork, and then come up with the most efficient schedule to get as many projects as possible completed by their deadlines, with any projects that will likely not get done in time flagged for my review. Bonus points for a priority system for additional weighting of projects.
Ideally myself or the crews could input hours worked each day, and we could adjust remaining hours to completion if needed, and recompute the schedule as necessary.
That would eliminate 90% of the time spent on phone tag, mass email chains, and seventeen-directional text conversations.
So you want to add logistics to the equation and process. I will say that what you need to do is hire a
Marine Logistics officer.
A GIS Guru. (Set up a dash board) flow the gps positions from the rigs trucks etc. place the project site address and other info aka attributes with task etc. dates drop dead dates. Use survey 123 for any forms you currently have for field information to pass. Direct Trimble connect switch so it triggers the dash board. Then whatever project planning software you have smartsheets etc cut down to the BLUF bottom line up front information. Host the dashboard yourself if company is larger. Give log ins to clients. Have the dashboard where only internal people can see what is needed ie field work is done. Field work survey tech has completed X. Cad tech has it all can be tracked everyone can see what is needed dashboard can have details for those that need it and hire her ups broad percent of project completed. Through the clients end as you or whoever signs off makes comments for review they can see read. Make comments or update schedule themselves so you can see the change of when conc is showing up etc. up sale this service. They as they plan can add notes comments that you need to know about or your team. Email has outlived its value in some respects. The dashboard can be a simple set of charts that when say red shows up vs green blue you can dive in. As you know sending field files and such by email and deliverables things get lost at times. In the dashboard you can set alarms if a message or file was uploaded and has not been acknowledged. Adding the logistics portion in with the GIS dashboard gives you a click or two away from redirecting a crew keep it simple . Crew chiefs have time sheets truck inventories equipment maintenance accident reports safety training PPE plus there day jobs. All the forms and protocols can be streamlined on a app on the dc or phone. GIS is not perfect but it is one of the best tools to solve a problem with. Field maps is another useful app program for surveyors. You may not need this if still running the Trimble stance connect thing but might be a good service to provide for clients. The dashboard can be a click away from viewing sites big picture viewing where crews are on the map all of this can be done in near realtime in cloud.
Sounds a bit overcomplicated. He already have GPS tracking capabilities in our trucks in the event that a crew needs to be rerouted to another higher priority job. We also use a proprietary software routine that tracks the status of every project as it moves through the processes and our clients get an email every time the status of their project changes. Updating job status and scheduling is handled by our administrative staff and takes very little away from their other responsibilities.
It doesn't make financial sense to hire a GIS/Logistics Specialist to handle those duties, nor does it make sense to add high-end software and equipment. Doing so would add significantly to overhead.
We were thinking of getting T-Mobiles fleet Hub system which did a lot of what rover was discussing. Not all, but a lot...One of the demo's was to show a technicians schedule that day and how the routing would work automatically. It was pretty neat honestly, but a little big brother. We were in the final steps of purchasing when we cancelled due to another management change caused concern on how the field crews would react to the possibility of such micro-management.
So you have seperate software that handles different task. Scheduling project tracking. Then fleet management and gos tracking. I would bet my paycheck that I could eliminate that and come out cheaper and have a more streamlined system. The whole USMC logistics officer thing was somewhat sarcastic. I just know they are top notch. Lots of training. The GIS person or team. Could be paying for themselves along with maintaining the dashboard and geodatabases. But I am not the brightest pea in the patch. We don’t use the system I suggest here. I know of a couple of places that do. We use a lot of different tools here that could be streamlined for sure. Most people or firms are already navigating to a cloud type structure. I would be willing to bet project tracking you could almost mimic it so not a huge learning curve but also eliminate the unnecessary portions and add what you want customized. Same with the gps tracking. No need to log into a web browser to see where crews are it would feed the dashboard so dashboard is all you have up besides production software. Email teams etc. but most of the emails for sending and receiving would be cut way down. No I didn’t get that email lost in cyberspace. The dashboard is just the interface. The survey 123 is how you design the forms. You want to utilize. Etc.
Thank you all for the engaging discussion. Your insights have given me much to consider.
The weather is an unpredictable factor that significantly affects scheduling. While we can’t control the weather, having a robust solution in place that manages the chaos well allows us to persevere.
I’ve noticed some people use Outlook to schedule field crews. While it’s effective and can work, it isn’t the best solution, as terminus-pc mentioned. Dedicated scheduling software can definitely help streamline the process.
rover83, the idea of scheduling software that could essentially handle the scheduling for us is intriguing. We could input all the parameters and let it develop the most efficient schedule, with some tweaks, of course. Implementing some kind of AI might be necessary for this, which is indeed a topic for another day!
Integrating some sort of fleet tracking to know where the crews are could be quite beneficial, especially if it tied into an automated scheduling system. However, I understand the concerns about the ‘big brother’ aspect. Yet, if it leads to greater efficiency and a better bottom line, it could make everyone happier.
Thank you for your input, everyone! Your contributions are invaluable, and I look forward to continuing this conversation.
Hello. Great read on pros and pains. We share much of the same so I won't rehash that. We have between 5 and 10 crews per office with supporting project surveyors in 4 states and are all trying to get on the same page with how we do scheduling and "possibly" share resources either in the field or office, and some equipment. In one office we are exporting from an accounting software sql database to Excel and post an office and field schedule daily to remote crews, another office is doing pen and paper and folks start from that main address, another just emailing their folks, and last one is using a home brew Access file. We would like to find a more graphical drag and drop calendar tool from a central database of work requests. We experimented with a big company solution but found the product a bit too rigid for our specific needs. There has to be something from a similar industry out there that dispatches crews and needs to post information and receive results back from them. I'm curious what are you all using today to complete your scheduling, uploading and downloading of information?
Good morning....We use Asana business level subscription...It is a web based scheduling tool with a ton of customization ability in the higher subscription areas.....It will do exactly what you are asking with out a problem Plus let you get to interact with field crews through it. My group has grown from 5 people to 17 over a few years all from outside companies....They all basically had a hard time with using Asana to start but within about 3 months are hooked on it. It can basically become a hub for everything you do (including time sheets if your company is using an accounting software tool with integrations) and the best part in my mind.....a PM can set it up how they want a project to run and another PM can do it their way and it will still keep on working. In our office geomatics group there is 4 PLS running projects all differently....yet it works seamless when we collaborate.
