The Third Construction CPM Conference is now history. Mardi Gras 2013 and Super Bowl XLVII are now history. Oracle’s First Primavera Executive Forum (held in Orlando Florida) is now history.


What have we learned and where are we going?

 

Dick Faris used our New Orleans conference to announce some new direction and road map for Oracle Primavera. And his Town Hall provided a good forum for input from we construction professionals. 


Being a little “behind-the-scene” (but certainly not privy to any non-public information) I suspect we will be seeing some dramatic changes to “not-your-1990s-2000s” P6 in the coming year.

 

We have become not just one but an accumulation of conferences.


In the weekend leading to our event, PMA Netpoint hosted a Third Annual User Meeting, Synchro a Second Annual User Meeting, ASTA a Second Annual Training Clinic, and Acumen a mid-year User Forum.


And as the folks from Disney Imagineering said during their presentation, “[this has become] the one venue where we can go to see all of the new technologies and software being introduced.”

 

But our second keynote, by Andrew Ness, Chair of the ABA Forum on Construction, still noted the problems raised by software too easily manipulated to show a desired result, lamenting why there is not a separate product just for post-project analysis for litigation purposes.


He repeated my longstanding suggestion that, despite contract language specifying a product for project reporting, a separate product may be more suited for project planning and control, and a third for port-mortem analysis for resolution of claims.

 

The validity and interpretation of a contract clause should not resolve on whether it was spell-and-grammar checked by Word or Word Perfect; neither should a claim of delay or disruption be based on whether the initial and updated schedules were administered with P6, P3, Suretrak, Open Plan, ASTA or other software product.


This is especially so if small differences between the calculated results cannot be explained or performed by hand by “expert” screen jockeys. 


We also learned of the convergence and importance of affiliated technologies in the areas of BIM, 4D and 5D modeling, EVM and cost, and the many layers and interpretations of RISK. All of these trends to support the goal stated here in ENR, How To Make CPM Tools Human-Friendly, Truthful, by Erin Joyce (attending our conference in New Orleans).