Is MS-Project good for an Architectural Environment

[CADDMiami]

Hi,
We are a Mid size Architectural firm wondering if there is a community that
can recommend a good, practical and A/E oriented project management software
for our office. We have MS-Project in mind but we will like to hear
MS-Project users applying it in arch. office environment.

Are there advantages to using the Professional Version or Standard is
enough? What kind of limitations have you experienced? Are there special
requirements needed to run the Pro version that one should know before
committing to either or the versions?

Ernesto

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Ernesto,

I don't have any experience With Architectural firms but I can already
situate the factual question on Standard and Pro.
You have to know that there is another Product called Project Server, aiming
at providing consolidated views on all projects in a company, managing
company resource pools, allowing time registration and more of the like.
Again, this is different product from the desktop Standard and
Professional.
This being sais, the ONLY difference between Standard and Pro is that
Professional connects to Server, and Standard does not.
In other words, if you decide not to use Project Server, Professional has no
advantage s compared to Standard.
Hope this Helps.

 

[Haixiang]

MS-Project is a general schedule software, you can you use it on any kind of
project to manage time and resource(cost). but for a project,you also need to
manage documents, contract issues, quality..., Microsoft provide other
softwares to do with them.
But i don't know if they are the best.
Another choice I know is Primavera, it provides a set of softwares for
project management, and is widely used all over the world,especially in civil
engineering

 

[davegb]

While I've never seen Project used specifically used in an A/E
environment, I used it, and other scheduling software, in a
construction engineering environment for many years, which is very
simliar. Since Critical Path Scheduling (what Project and the other
high end software packages do) was first developed in the construction
industry, it works extremely well there. It's much trickier to
implement in "soft" projects, like marketing and software development,
though I have applied it in those areas as well.
As for Primavera, it's really intended for very high end scheduling,
like DOD, big public projects, airports, highway systems, etc. I don't
know how much it's changed since I last looked at it quite a few years
ago, but back then, it took months, by the sales reps own admission, to
become good at, and years to become proficient. Primarvera also makes a
younger brother to P3 (nickname for the big Primavera software) called
SureTrak. It's more along the lines of Project Standard. Stand alone,
reasonably simple, GUI front end. It's probably still better then
Project from a pure scheduler's standpoint, but not nearly as user
friendly.
Of course, there are a number of other scheduling software packages
available, both standalone and online. It's always best when selecting
software of this level of complexity and importance in how your
business operates, to do a simple needs assessment, then pick the
software that best meets those needs. The last place you ever want to
be in your business is where your business processes and practices are
determined by poor software design rather than what works best in the
rest of your world. I've seen it too many times where an organization's
growth and success were limited by a simple bad choice of a software
application. The software you choose now will certainly influence how
you do Project Management, and how your easily you can implement it in
the software. There is more to this decision that just which ones can
schedule A/E projects. They pretty much all will do that.
Best of luck in your decision.

David G. Bellamy
Bellamy Consulting