Project Management Software Maker InEight Picks Up a Smart Scheduler
InEight, a developer of construction project management software, has acquired BASIS, a planning-assist tool built for capital projects that complements and enhances critical path method scheduling. BASIS uses artificial intelligence to guide planners to improved project plans.
BASIS analyzes schedules from a user’s prior projects and applies knowledge-driven machine learning to find patterns that can increase risk. Then, as planners start developing new schedules, it acts as a stand-beside advisor to offer guidance based on what it has learned about previous work. It is compatible with Oracle Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project.
It also has a project team member feedback function for knowledge capture. The company claims that with the tool, planners can spend up to 40% less time developing plans and reduce the amount of time spent gathering team member feedback by up to 75%.
Co-founder and CEO Daniel Patterson says BASIS is not an acronym. “It comes from ‘basis of estimate’ and what you are putting together as a plan.” Patterson will join InEight as chief design officer.
Patterson has more than two decades of experience designing and developing planning, scheduling and risk-analytics software for project management. He was a co-founder of PertMaster NA in 2004, followed by the project analytics solution Acumen, which he founded in 2008. Today those products are part of Oracle Primavera’s and Deltek’s solutions, respectively. Patterson subsequently founded BASIS in 2016.
“We didn’t really plan for us becoming part of a larger organization this early on,” Patterson says. “We were focused on R&D and AI.” But, he says, “almost by chance,” he bumped into InEight and was impressed by the company’s marketing, position in the industry, thought leadership and industry knowledge. “We bring a very strong scheduling legacy to the table, and now we are getting their horsepower and resources,” he says.
BASIS is “very specific to the organization” using it, Patterson adds. It learns from that organization’s work to sharpen its planning insights—and, he says, “it’s a very aggressive learner.”
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“There is a definitely pent-up want for tools that can enhance those scheduling tools,” adds InEight COO Dan Hicks.
“Dan Patterson wasn’t looking to be acquired or become part of an organization, [but] we are very excited about having that team on board. And we just got a heck of a lot smarter by having those folks joining our team,” Hicks says.
