When you are looking to complete a project, do you just jump in headfirst or do you take a look at what needs to be done to achieve your goal? Believe it or not, some people figure things out as they go but that leaves your project open to finishing late, over budget and with things missing from the initial idea.
By completing proper project planning you are giving yourself the best chance of success over the course of the task at hand. If you add in a great Business Intelligence planning tool, you are giving yourself even more of a headstand to great results.
Efficient Time Management
One of the most important parts of planning its time. This isn’t just the time that is allocated to the project to be completed, but this is the time it takes to put the correct steps and measures in place to ensure that everything is completed to as high a standard as possible.
By leveraging the power of Business Intelligence, applications (such as Rail BI) can help you plan a project more efficiently and effectively by utilising features such as a data warehouse to get all of your information from one place.
Prepare For Uncertainty
No plan is always going to be perfect, but by looking at several different outcomes you can try and look at what options you have available to you. What if the cost of a part changes? What if the lead time of a material is longer than expected and it holds up another part of your work?
Using simulation methods (such as a Monte Carlo simulation), you can look at several different options for one project. By changing a couple of variables (such as completing the work over 1 year vs 2 years, upgrading vs replacing equipment), you can see what cost estimates look like over the course of your planning project.
Look To The Future With Project Planning
Planning doesn’t only help in the now, it can help in the future too.
When you are looking to plan your project, you may have an idea in mind of what you want to complete but what if that wasn’t the best way forward?
Using its data warehouse, the Rail BI platform can show you what the cost to repair your assets over the next 10 years would be. Not only that, but it can show you a comparison of what it would cost you to upgrade those assets (known as an intervention) and how those changes to your plan may even save you money over the longer term.
Using business intelligence tools (such as our rail planning software platform) gives you the confidence to make better decisions, view asset and technology relationships in real time and enhance productivity and efficiency. We can help you get the best results and the correct information every time when producing your business plan and planning forecast.
For more information about our product and to see how using business intelligence can significantly improve your planning for rail maintenance, upgrades and more, contact one of our team today for a demo of our rail planning platform.