Why Planning Always Pays Off – Even For Small Projects

It goes without saying that the large construction and infrastructure projects have professional and detailed time and resource plans, and the planning tool is in this context an important aid for steering the projects to their goals.

On smaller projects, however, much less energy is often spent on planning, which leads to negative consequences during implementation. A few hours of extra planning work at an early stage will pay off many times over once the project is underway.

We’ve jotted down a number of benefits and reasons for implementing a proper plan ahead of the commencement of each construction project, no matter how small.

Visualisation of the project

The most important thing is not the plan itself, but the process that starts in your head when you sit down and start sketching a schedule of all the activities of a project.

When everything has to go down in a plan, you are forced to visualise the execution of the construction step by step, which inevitably brings certain questions, insights and issues. It’s quite common to make a mental note, or write a reminder down on a piece of paper, only to forget or lose them later on. One benefit of using a digital planner is that you can jot down any concerns, questions in real time. Anyone who has ever been in charge of a construction project can attest to the fact that problems identified and dealt with at an early stage are worth their weight in gold compared to the realisation when two annoyed plumbers are standing on the doorstep wondering how to get there further.

Resources, purchases and machines must also be planned

The activities of the master schedule, in combination with calculated times, can determine tell how much in the way of resources – time, equipment, materials and personnel – must be committed to the project. In addition, a digital planner can also provide a good picture of the purchasing/delivery plan and equipment plan. If you give yourself time to plan and carry out your purchases in peace and quiet, you avoid expensive panic purchases and at the same time get an opportunity to optimise deliveries and logistics.

The same applies to machines and equipment, the sooner you have the machine list and the corresponding schedule ready, the better. Both the purchase/delivery plan and the machine plan work well in a Gantt chart as it gives a very quick and good overview of upcoming deliveries and machines/equipment that are coming in.

All in all, the various plans are also an invaluable tool for work preparation and other briefings with staff.

A professional schedule signals order and order

In addition to the purely practical advantages of well-developed schedules, they also send the message: “On this project, order and order apply”, which gives clear signals to both UE and client. In its extension, it promotes the management of the UE but at the same time builds a brand with the client where you appear as a structured builder.

If you want to share the timetables externally, it is superior to use a cloud-based timetable tool as you can easily share a link and thus avoid the work of saving and emailing PDFs. At the same time, you know that all actors always have access to the latest version of the schedule in real time. And for those who want to be able to print the timetable, it should be easy to print in different paper sizes with a few clicks.

Next Planning for Seamless Project Management:

Next offers the construction industry’s fastest and most flexible planning tool.

The dream would be if all digital tools were so simple that you could both start, test and get started on your own. In the case of Next Planning, that is exactly the case.

• Powerful cloud-based tool for both time and resource planning
• Cloud service makes it easy to share the schedule with UE and client
• Supports printing in all formats, A0 to A4

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