7:30 am Registration & Networking Breakfast
8:00 am Chair’s Opening Remarks
Getting Ahead of Supply Chain Threats
8:10 am Mitigating & Communicating Supply Chain Delays to Ensure Full Transparency Across All Project Partners
Synopsis
- Ensuring open communication with manufacturers and vendors to identify and mitigate against potential procurement delays early on
- Setting up a procurement database to facilitate transparency of the big-picture project view and recognize trends
- How do you effectively communicate preventative schedule changes due to potential supply chain challenges to the owner?
8:50 am Unleashing the Power of Automation and AI for Enhanced Planning & Scheduling Efficiency
Synopsis
- To bridge the gap from lean plans to Master Schedules, we must bring your schedule to the field.
- Is AI taking a scheduler’s job? No, but the way they work will change, and for the better!
- How can AI, automation and emerging technologies reliably assist the Plan/Schedule?
9:20 am Panel: Identifying Upcoming Procurement & Supply Chain Trends to Future-Proof Your Projects & Organization
Synopsis
- Highlighting the main ongoing bottlenecks to be cautious about and how you can prepare ahead of time
- Reflecting on price volatilities and how to gain common agreement to place orders in time while keeping costs down
- How can you best identify and implement temporary solutions to avoid substantial project implications or hard stops
10:00 am Morning Refreshments
Track 1: Departmental Strategy
Implementing Lean Strategies
10:40 am Case Study: How We Deployed Lean Practices in a Mid-Size General Contractor to Advance Planning & Scheduling Workflows
Synopsis
- Educating our internal team and external partners on the benefits of lean in eliminating waste from schedules and recognizing roadblocks ahead of time
- Identifying the internal process and methodology changes that needed to be actioned to integrate lean within our organization and across all our projects
- Examining why software isn’t always the answer and how we made the most of our existing resources to deliver efficiency gains
11:20 am Panel: Revealing the Culture Change Required to Effectively Integrate Lean Practices Within the Fabric of Your Organization
Synopsis
- Exploring common objections that scheduling leaders find themselves up against when integrating lean
- Discovering the art of selling lean both internally, to your schedulers, and externally, to your project partners
- How can you effectively reflect the lean culture within contractual relationships?
Track 2: Process Innovation
Maximizing Resources
10:40 am Rethinking Your Resource Planning Strategy to Enhance Evaluation of Durations & Optimize Projections
Synopsis
- Evaluating whether the use of historical data for resource planning is still relevant in current project scenarios
- Addressing the need to avoid stacking to meet expedited timelines and how to deal with tightening schedules by collaborating with your trade partners
- Discussing how to track and validate the accuracy of your projections and adapting them when and where needed in a timely manner
11:20 am Optimizing Cost Loaded Schedules to Increase the Accuracy of Cash Flow Projections
Synopsis
- Understanding how cost integration benefits your schedule performance and determining the optimal level of effort that should be invested in its development
- How do you track cost loaded schedules vs. schedule performance and cost performance?
- Discussing how lean can facilitate the development of cost loaded schedules in a more timely manner
12:00 pm Automating Delay Analysis in Software
Synopsis
- The unique challenges that automating a forensic delay analysis in software presented to the Steelray team
- Stories from Steelray’s five year journey developing the technology
- What the technology looks like and how it can be applied to problems that many schedulers and schedule analysts face
12:10 pm Networking Lunch
Advancing the Discipline Through People Investment
1:10 pm Advancing Your Learning & Development Program to Keep Up With Scheduling Workforce Demand
Synopsis
- Addressing the evolution of the scheduling discipline and the training it needs as a result, combining both construction and software-specific knowledge
- Exploring different training methods and when they are most suitable: from individual learning, to group or 1-on-1 training, to coaching
- Developing and maximizing your learning management system to track your program performance and facilitate training improvement
1:50 pm Audience Discussion: Improving Your Team’s Brand Within Your Organization to Better Attract & Retain Talent
Synopsis
- Moving away from hiring externally to developing internship programs and growing talent internally
- Revealing the impact that the discipline has at both a project and organizational level to prospective and new schedulers
- Incentivizing retention by creating clearer and more formalized internal career paths for planners and schedulers
2:30 pm Panel: Redefining Planning & Scheduling as a Discipline to Strengthen Its Position & Importance Within the Industry
Synopsis
- Addressing the current innovation pressures on planners and schedulers and how that's changing the role
- Discussing the evolution of 'soft skills' required and how schedulers are effectively managing relationships and providing support on a project team level
- How can you and your organization help the industry define and integrate scheduling roles better?