Tim Mather
COO, PMA Technologies

 

Successful projects begin when proper planning and procedures are implemented systematically.

An effective project management plan is supported by project control processes that monitor work and identify whether the work is proceeding according to plan. To make that determination, project controls personnel assess data and determine actions that prevent or correct issues. We ensure essential stakeholder participation and conceptual project timeline buy-in via an interactive planning session and workshop at the project's onset.

 

Breakthrough innovations in project scheduling and risk management software

PMA leverages the power of its graphical path method (GPM), an innovation on the critical path method (CPM), and NetPoint, its scheduling application, to facilitate collaborative planning in an entirely different way. NetPoint’s highly visual nature allows project teams to plan and schedule a project together in real-time without duplicating effort; the outcome is a mutually agreed-upon project plan. The design and ability of NetPoint produce a schedule that the entire project team can clearly understand and effectively communicate to other stakeholders.

 

NetPoint®, NetRisk™, Project Summit™

PMA has been investing in developing new knowledge and software to further our vision of advancing the practice of project controls. Currently, PMA Technologies offers three software applications – NetPoint®, NetRisk™, and Project Summit™

NetPoint®– highly visual and intuitive planning and scheduling application renders essential project information, notably the critical path, easy to convey to stakeholders at all levels of expertise. Unlike CPM Gantt chart-based tools, NetPoint® allows multiple activities to be placed on the same horizontal row. This allows more schedule information to fit into a single page, ideal for levels 1-2 management levels and executive-level schedule representations. NetPoint® is highly interactive with drag and drop features, real-time logic, and duration updates. This makes it especially effective in planning sessions where schedule changes are made live before a group of stakeholders.

SUMMARY SCHEDULE

To understand the issues in a complex schedule, your stakeholders must first understand the plan. By design, P6 may have multiple activities linked on several pages, whereas NetPoint® can summarize a multi-page schedule into a single page. First, NetPoint® identifies the project's critical and near-critical paths and summarizes them without omitting essential activities. These activities may include significant milestones, primary interfaces, high-duration activities, significant scope items, or problematic activities in previous projects. Second, NetPoint® condenses the activities with a different grouping approach, color coding, fading of non-critical activities, or a waterfall approach. This provides stakeholders the ability to follow the logic in minimal time.

NetRisk™ – enables the scheduler to perform qualitative and quantitative risk analysis. Harnessing the combined power of GPM and NetRisk, provides an inherent integration with the planning process, enhanced schedule modeling capabilities, and cost functionality. NetRisk delivers a strategy for identifying and controlling project or program risk and allows risk professionals to bring risk management into the future of project planning.

Project Summit™ - Project Summit is the ultimate tool for performing and visualizing a what-if scenario analysis for owners who have difficulty understanding a contractor's detailed schedule. Unlike Gantt chart software, summary activities are created automatically and with precedence relationships (US patent No. 17737191 & 11487415), enabling owners to trace logic, spot errors, try-out alternatives, and compare baselines at any level of detail while maintaining full vertical integration. Thanks to the Graphical Path Method (GPM), activities can be moved around without date constraints (US Patent No. 8249906), and the schedule recalculates while the mouse is moving (US Patent No. 8249906). This flexibility and real-time feedback make what-if scenario analysis more intuitive, interactive and engaging for the entire project team.

Commitment to Innovation

PMA has innovation ingrained in our culture. Since our formation, we have been working to innovate the project management and control field. We formally created our innovation group in early 2000. Since then, our group has grown to ten full-time staff members. Our first patent for innovation was awarded in 2012. We have received seven patents and filed applications for eleven additional innovations. We currently have three commercially available software products intended to improve projects' planning and scheduling process.

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Engage the whole project management team! NetPoint project scheduling software transforms scheduling into an interactive, planning-centric experience that ensures communication and team collaboration.

With NetPoint’s intuitive representation of activities and relationships, all stakeholders can come together in a seamless process that produces a CPM/GPM® logic-driven schedule from the same tool used for planning.

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