According to CII, a company must establish processes, procedures, and tools for work packaging before implementing a software solution. While a company does not require technology to implement work packaging, it has been proven to significantly enhance work packaging and ultimately making it easier on a planner to develop and monitor the status and progress of packages.
The advantages of using a software platform to facilitate Advanced Work Packaging come in the form of real-time reporting and analysis. For example, Installation Work Packages (IWPs) can be developed and managed virtually to allow work items to easily move from one package to another. Details on the package are updated automatically, and information becomes immediately available. Work package templates can be templatized and duplicated easily and constraints can be automatically created by work package type or discipline specific work.
Paper-based work packaging can be successful, but has a higher likelihood of becoming cumbersome on a large project or across a portfolio of small projectts. Virtual packaging reduces the time required for designing and compiling IWPs as the project information is linked and easily accessible.
Work packages require a significant amount of project information; therefore, an integrated database and workflow drastically increases the success for work packaging systems. Collecting information in one central database, in addition to project controls, engineering, materials management and other functions, would support digital workface planning.
It’s been proven that aggregating data in one digital location simplifies the planning process and maintenance of IWPs. This cuts time drastically in order to maintain and update systems.
O3 is the only tool designed specifically to measure the health and adoption of the AWP best practice and supports leading indicators for real-time insights into project performance. O3 offers an automated AWP approach that leverages existing best of breed tools to remove the need for human intervention in the data collection and analysis process.
Some items to consider when looking for a tool to digitize your work package process:
- Does the tool provide leading performance indicators that support Advanced Work Packaging? Do those indicators take into account your corporate objectives, AWP best practices, and project-specific metrics?
- Does it include role-specific dashboards and scorecards for all project stakeholders (not just the workface planner?
- Is task management and automated notifications (in-app alerts, emails, and text messages for high priority items) included out of the box?
- Does the tool have the ability to easily consume work package data from multiple systems based on pre-defined data requirements?
- Can the tool provide a view of all the information needed to course-correct and optimize AWP outcomes as needed?
- Does the tool incorporate documented AWP practices based on the research published by the Construction Industry Institute?
To learn more about O3’s solutions for digital and automated work packaging, Contact Us today!