Tools of a Scheduler

Last time we spoke about the paths to blast you past $100K and move into mid- and top-tier levels of scheduling.

Well, no soldier can do battle without a weapon.

And the weapons of scheduling are software packages.

In this newsletter we’ll discuss the range of software that schedulers can leverage to grow and impress.

Basic you-just-need-to-know software

In your $70K entry job you’ll learn these.

Oracle Primavera P6.

Maybe Microsoft Project.

Maybe Asta Powerproject.

If you just learn Primavera you’ll be fine for 95% of the jobs out there.

These are your databases. The software you create your plans on.

They are all historically on your computer (so you’d have to email files, or save them in a shared drive to use them), but they are slowly moving to the cloud (so you and your team can work on them in real time).

Don’t worry about getting to know these now - we’re going to put videos together of how to use them in a little bit.

Getting Dirty on the Ground

If you want to be a delivery planner, you’ll need to know how to send information to the people who need it. This is crucial for entry level schedulers.

It’s simple.

Paper.

PDF.

Excel.

Smartsheets.

Or Aphex.

The people onsite delivering projects typically don’t want to see your Primavera Gantt Chart.

It’s like being “that guy” who shows you YouTube videos he likes.

Don’t be that guy.

Instead, people just want to know what they have to do that day, week or month.

Historically, a planner would just print this out and stick it to a wall - hence the Paper, PDF and Excel.

Nowadays, people can use iPads and computers to play with it wherever they are.

Being next-level clever and looking good

As you go from your $70K entry job, past $100K and towards $250K, no matter what specialty you choose, you’ll need software that does the sums and other calculations.

Historically you’d buy:

Acumen Fuse

Primavera Risk Analysis

Safran Risk

And you’d do all the analysis yourself, on your computer, manually, and email files back and forth with your team.

But nowadays you can get Artificial Intelligence and Machine Robots to help you with all this, collaboratively with your team, on the cloud.

These machines can automate about 30% of your grunt work, make your analysis as good as someone on $250K per year, and enable the $250K people to do analysis worth $MILLIONS in minutes.

The analysis is complex, but because modern software is so good it's super simple to use.

Nodes & Links is one of the best here.

Big volume reporting

All planners need to produce reports.

In the beginning there was PowerPoint and Excel.

Then, in the second age of man, came PowerBI and Tableau.

These make up 95% of reporting today.

But in the third age will be Artificial Intelligence and Automation.

ChatGPT for Scheduling and Controls.

Nodes & Links has this with a number of planners today, and will make it available to everyone by the middle of 2023.

So what do we use?

We use Primavera P6, Smartsheets, Aphex and Nodes & Links.

Again, for all of the above software - don’t worry. We’ll be putting together videos of how to get access and start using them.

Action!

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Until next time,

Greg & Micah