It’s time to rethink the Iron Triangle as latest technologies help project managers better balance the three competing priorities of time, cost and quality, says Procore.
There’s a future beyond the Iron Triangle – and it’s found in how products and programs work together in one place.
According to Procore, the applications most project managers know and use every day are merely “single point” solutions – meaning they typically perform only one type of task.
Most project managers lose count of how many times they open a program, only to copy-and-paste its contents into another program. People often juggle multiple business-related software applications: one for estimating, one for billing and so on.
There are plenty of drawbacks of this approach, which is time-consuming, encourages inconsistent data entry and large, incompatible data sets.
To address this, many companies invest in multi-functional enterprise resource planning, or ERP, systems. But off-the-shelf programs often lack customisation and add-on options, and new applications aren’t always built to connect with existing systems.
The result? Productivity and profitability are at risk.
United they stand, but divided these applications fall. With all the problems that come with single-point solutions, technology has turned to cloud platform technology, or platform-as-a-service (PaaS).
PaaS is a cloud computing model that delivers applications over the Internet. In a PaaS model, a cloud provider delivers hardware and software tools to its users as a service. A PaaS provider then hosts the hardware and software on its own infrastructure.
As a result, PaaS frees users from having to install in-house hardware and software to develop or run a new application.
By allowing separate software solutions to work together on the one interface, PaaS reduces training and support costs, cuts data entry time, all while eliminating transcription errors and facilitating enterprise-wide use of data and knowledge.
In the construction industry, PaaS can be used to integrate varied solutions like project management, tendering and estimation, quantity calculations and accounting.
When all project information – drawing sets, tenders, hours, subcontractor fees, project milestones, defect lists, variations and the like – lives in one place, project managers can prepare for massive efficiency gains and cost savings.
With the addition of quality control and inspection tools, best-in-class cloud-based construction management platform solutions are balancing the three corners of the Iron Triangle like never before.
These are just some of the insights in e-book: Break free from the Iron Triangle. Download your copy today.