Modern Contractor Solutions January 2025 - 24

software solutions
SCHEDULING
Better Analysis
solid schedule analytics platform at STO
By Art Sesnovich
B
randon Howell, vice president of
scheduling for Layton Construction
Company, LLC, has been fascinated by
schedule analytics for a long time. " I've always
had this draw to schedule analytics, probably
back to my time at Intel, " says Howell, whose
company joined STO Building Group in 2019.
" Over time, I realized that there are almost
limitless insights you can extract from the
schedule. It's so much more than just a
reporting tool. "
Howell knew what he was talking about.
Even before Layton had any kind of schedule
analytics tools, he was using Excel to produce
customized analytics and dashboards. In
fact, Howell had created some very detailed
spreadsheets that would allow him to
dump data from his scheduling platform,
automatically populating the metrics he
had built. Unfortunately, it was very timeconsuming
to create the desired metrics, as
they had to manually export the data dump
and paste it into Excel-along with several
other steps-to make the spreadsheet work.
At some point, however, Layton invested
in a business analytics (BA) tool that Howell
discovered would integrate directly with
their scheduling program. Howell figured he
could automatically extract the data from
the scheduling program and build custom
dashboards-something he had envisioned
for some time.
DISAPPOINTING DASHBOARDS
While a great idea in theory, the execution was
clunky. In fact, it became almost impossible
to create the dashboards he had seen in his
mind's eye. " I would work with our in-house
data analysts for hours and hours trying
to generate these dashboards, " he recalls.
" There were a number of technical issues.
The primary problem, however, was that the
connection between the two programs was
unstable; the data coming into the BA tool
was not always reliable, so our people stopped
trusting it. In the end, we were doing all this
work, and the dashboards weren't even
being used. "
Howell began the search for an alternative
in early 2022, one that was more " plug
and play. " While attending a scheduling
conference, he was introduced to SmartPM, a
cloud-based, schedule-analysis program.
" We ended up purchasing 10 slots to pilot
it on a handful of projects, " Howell notes.
" We played with those projects for about
six months before we decided that this was
something we wanted to make available for all
our projects. "
JUMP IN LICENSES
Based on their satisfaction with the platform,
the company eventually made an exponential
jump from 10 licenses to 250. Now, Howell
manages and oversees the scheduling efforts
not only for Layton Construction but for the
entire STO West division.
According to Howell, company schedulers
use the program most frequently; for the
three companies in STO West, that represents
a total of 32 schedulers. They're the ones
who pull the schedule updates into SmartPM
and review/interpret the analytics for their
project teams. But interest in the platform
is spreading to other personnel as well. " We
have a number of superintendents, project
managers, even a few executives who have
shown interest in the platform, " he says.
" We've given them access to log in and view
the metrics. I've shown a few of the more
metric-driven executives how to get onto
the project dashboard and filter it for their
individual business units. "
When Howell first introduced the platform
internally, there was a lot of focus on the
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JANUARY 2025
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Modern Contractor Solutions January 2025

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