Taking Control of Construction Schedules 

Podcast Transcript 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Hello there and welcome to the Construction Revolution Podcast. My name is Steven Rossi and here on the show we explore the latest trends, technologies, people, and organizations that are revolutionizing or disrupting the construction industry and are changing what the industry will look like tomorrow. Today we welcome Mike Pink, founder and CEO of SmartPM Technologies. With over 20 years of experience in project controls, risk management, and delay analysis, Mike has dedicated his career to solving one of construction’s most persistent challenges, schedule mismanagement. SmartPM is a powerful analytics platform that transforms raw scheduling data into real-time insights, helping project teams stay on time, on budget, and reduce risk. Join us as we explore how SmartPM is using AI and automation to bring clarity, accountability, and smarter decision-making to construction scheduling. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Hi Michael, welcome to the Construction Revolution Podcast. How’s it going today? 

Mike Pink 
It’s going well. How about yourself? 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Doing good, doing good. Glad we’re able to connect and learn more about you and SmartPM. 

Mike Pink 
Me as well. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Yeah, so let’s jump right in. Can you tell me the story of how SmartPM was founded and where you got the idea for the company? 

Mike Pink 
Yeah, I had worked in construction consulting for many years right out of college. As a construction consultant, we’re not actually building things day to day. We’re getting involved in projects, and most of the time when people want to call a consultant it’s when they have problems, whether the project’s late and over budget or it’s headed down a bad path, or some organizations just want to do an assignment where you can come in and help them set themselves up for success. But most of the time you’re getting called when there’s problems. And in a lot of cases those are disputes, projects that are late and over budget. So I spent a lot of my time wrapping my head around what happened on a job that led to a point where it was months, if not years, later, tens of millions of dollars over budget, because that’s the point where people are needing to get answers to figure out who owes who what. And I just saw that so many times that I started to see patterns through data. I also recognized that for the work that I did, if I needed to understand thoroughly what went on on a project to lead to this place, I saw a pattern where schedule data was very meaningful to me. It was probably the most effective data set that I could get my hands on to understand a project and understand it to a point where people who actually lived it didn’t even have that much insight that I did. So that started to tell me something, that there is some very meaningful data here that will help people understand things that they generally don’t have understanding of without studying this data. The data is not readily available to be studied anyway in construction. And that’s really where we start to see problems happening: people not spending time focusing in the right areas, people not understanding the trajectory that they’re on. And that was just very evident. Having done that as many times as I did, I realized that there’s only one way to solve this problem that seems pretty rampant in construction, which is to enable people to understand this data. So we set out to inform through data that people already had, namely the schedule data as our foundational data set, but it needed to be done in real time and it needed to be volumes more than just the schedule file itself. So that’s really what set me on my path for SmartPM. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Yeah, that’s great. Thanks for the insight. I’m sure being a consultant you must have seen some pretty crazy things. 

Mike Pink 
Yeah, well it’s not actually crazy. It seems as though it’s a very normal thing in construction. You sign up for something and things don’t go as planned, and it ends up costing money and people have to make a lot of concessions. Either that or they have to get into a dispute. And really what’s happening all along is the plan is going off course. It needs to be corrected. And I believe that you can get there through the data you have. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Right. So speaking of that data, you mentioned the scheduling data. Before SmartPM it exists, it can be in spreadsheets, I imagine, or even just on paper in the trailer. Can you tell me a little bit about the traditional manual scheduling process and then how SmartPM differs to that? 

Mike Pink 
Yeah, first of all SmartPM is not a scheduling platform. People use scheduling platforms to manage jobs. They use things like Primavera or Microsoft Project. It’s what’s called critical path method technology. It’s a tool where people can lay out everything that needs to get done on a project, assign logic, and then it creates a plan. That plan is extrapolated over a calendar so you can see all the things that need to be happening over time. That’s a process that exists. It’s just very complex, right? So if you think about a typical commercial project, it could be anywhere between 2,000 and 3,000 activities, sometimes more, sometimes 1,000 activities, but that usually gets printed out on paper and handed to somebody in the field to understand what work needs to come in what order. And it’s not like three sheets. It’s like 50 to 100 sheets of paper that people are flipping through to understand. It’s great at making sure you know what to do over the next month, but then there’s a whole story about how this thing is going to unfold over the next two years. And generally speaking, it’s good at that, good at setting up a plan, but tracking performance against that plan and understanding what deviations from the plan are occurring and why they’re happening and what the long-term effect of those issues are and whether or not the schedule is even feasible. Those are all things that don’t exist. And that’s really what SmartPM does: analyze that data and put it into terms that people can understand, performance and risk for what it is, as well as understanding issues that are impacting the job now and what that means for the future of the job. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying that. So in terms of the challenges from traditional processes, what would you say is the biggest challenge you’ve seen in scheduling and schedule management, and how does SmartPM address that? 

Mike Pink 
Sure. Well, number one, one of the biggest problems that exists in schedule management is the level of education to build and manage a schedule well. Quality of the data is not very good. Best practices were never really taught to the broader industry. Now there’s a series of about 35 different things that you want to be tracking or could be tracking to ensure that the schedule is built well enough to manage a job. And that’s really at the foundation of what we do. The tip of the iceberg is making sure that the schedule process is being built well enough to manage a job, and then people are following best practices in the updating cycle. Schedules get updated periodically to understand where the project’s at and what’s ahead and what needs to happen to manage to the end date. That process is kind of broken too. People delay the job, right the ship through changes. They don’t test whether or not the changes are feasible, whether or not the schedule is still built well enough to manage a job. And I would say that if that problem’s not solved, there’s no good analytics that you could get to actually understand performance for what it is and really identify the key areas of risk that you really need to be on top of. So people lose sight of how to spend their time day in and day out, putting out fires that exist. They end up putting out all fires and not focusing on the key ones that drive the job. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Yeah, OK. So from a SmartPM side, obviously you guys have a lot of data now that you’ve collected from so many different projects. Are you able to recognize patterns, and how do you present those potential issues, like you mentioned, in terms of changes or initial scheduling to customers? 

Mike Pink 
Well, we have to bring it to a level that’s digestible. So we do have a lot of trends: progress trends, change trends, delay trends, schedule quality trends, hit rates. All of that stuff plays together. Compression. Being able to look at all of these things together starts to build a story of whether or not the project’s going well or if it’s not going well, or if it’s veering off course, and catching that course correction at the right time is imperative to success. By and large in the industry, people make decisions that are creating an already aggressive thing to be even more aggressive and more aggressive and more aggressive, and they’re not understanding the underlying problems that live behind the schedule on the day-to-day stuff like RFI changes, delivery issues, labor issues, and identifying those as problems that, if extrapolated, mean we’re headed down this path. So we want to bring that all to life here, and we want to put it into terms that overcome the over-optimism bias that does exist in construction in general. So those are some of the things that we show. The other things that we show are how the subcontractors are performing together, which subcontractors are doing well, and which ones are going to be causing problems today and down the road so that you can really key in and focus on which subs require the most support and or guidance to overcome the obstacles that we will see pan out on this job. We’re also looking at changes in RFIs and material procurement and review submittal processes that will ultimately guide you to a better outcome as well and starting to prioritize those things so you know how to handle your time day to day as a PM. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Right, so I know SmartPM, you have users on the GC side, the PM side, but also owners and developers. So I’m curious: is it often the GC that’s your customer and then the PM driving that, or do you have owners and developers as your customer as well, and they kind of share it with the GC? How does that work? 

Mike Pink 
We work with both. So when it comes to a construction company, there’s two groups that we generally will work with or more than that actually. The site teams get benefit from the tool itself, but operations needs to understand this data as well. The way that one of these companies works is they’ve got a headquarters somewhere and they’ve got a lot of projects out there going on, and nobody really has visibility into performance on those jobs or any issues that are budding that would detract that project from a successful completion. Project managers need to know that on their specific job, but the operations folks and executives need to have visibility on where their good projects are and where their poor projects are, and really hone in on making sure that the site teams that are struggling with performance have the support they need to right the ship and deliver. That’s what we sell to contractors: visibility, accountability, and insights into performance at the site level so that the site teams have what they need to be successful. But on the flip side, an owner is sort of in the dark. They hire a contractor. The contractor agrees to do something over a certain amount of time and for a certain budget, and time is extremely important to owners to get a timely completion. And usually what happens is projects don’t progress as planned. There’s a lot of different things happening, a lot of different uncertainties that are occurring. And to feel comfortable with that, to know that the delivery will still be on time, the owner does need some insight into that, and they have access to the same data. So just by simply capturing that and loading it in, they get objective opinion about performance and risk that they can leverage to have meaningful conversations. One thing that is very true is projects veer off course probably around the 30 to 50 percent range, continue off course until the 75 percent range, and then there’s a big kick save at the end. What we’re trying to do with both sides of the equation is see the pattern, see the writing on the wall before it’s too late, so that good decisions can be made and good solutions can be created to overcome the obstacles that have accumulated over time to date. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I touched on it a little bit. Obviously the GC and the owner and developers, the needs that they have are often competing. So how do you balance those different needs and the fact that, at the end of the day, things can lead to disputes? 

Mike Pink 
Well, one thing is for sure: both organizations want the same thing. Both of them want to get the project done on time. Both of them want to get the project done on budget. Both of them don’t want to be stressed throughout the whole process. So I think that they have very similar needs and wants, but they do have competing interests on the job. Contractors would generally want to get done on time to alleviate the risk of having to fund for additional extra months, because when a construction company is involved, they’re taking on risk by even assuming the contract and saying, I’ll get this thing done in 20 months for $30 million. Each month that it’s late, the contractor’s technically on the hook to pay for the people and all the equipment and all the trailers and whatnot for that extra month, unless of course they can prove to the owner that the delays that have happened on this job are not my fault, they’re your fault, which is really the big question. Owners, on the other hand, want to receive that asset timely because they have a business model behind it. It’s supposed to generate revenue in some way or form, whether it’s an office building, manufacturing facility, whatever it may be. There’s some sort of business use case there. So timeliness is important to achieve the revenue generation goals of the owner. But one of them is losing revenue while the other is spending more money. So if you think about a project that’s late, the contractor is funding that delay. They’re going to want that money back from the owner. The owner is losing revenue, and they don’t believe that they’re the ones building the building, and how could they have caused that delay? So it’s actually double. Both of them are going in opposite directions of losing money, and both of them want to be compensated for that. So it’s not just the additional costs or the additional time. It’s all about the loss of revenue. Even the contractor is losing revenue on their next job. So it becomes a very muddy area where there’s a lot of disagreement in terms of who owes who what, who was impacted more, and who is ultimately responsible, which is why we see a lot of this getting ironed out in the mediation, arbitration, litigation world, which is where no one wants to be. And I think that’s the last piece: both sides don’t want to end up there either. So to me the answer is, let’s get ahead of the curve here. Let’s understand that construction is not easy and there’s a lot of uncertainty. But let’s also know that we have data that can tell us a lot about these things, that if we collectively look at it and we discuss it and we collaborate upon it, both of us could be happy at the end of the job and get that thing delivered on time or on budget, and none of us will be arguing about it. And that’s really what I believe, having lived in my consulting world, where a lot of people weren’t focused on that data as soon as they should be and have it in real time to get to that place where both sides are in lockstep trying to accomplish the same goal. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Yeah, that’s a great explanation of both sides. Speaking of all the data, SmartPM integrates with some broader project management software like Procore and stuff like that. How does real-time access to the scheduling analytics and the trend we’re seeing toward connected jobs evolve, and what’s the importance of integrating with tools like that? 

Mike Pink 
Well, first of all, I think all data should be integrated. Just going back to my experience of trying to understand a construction project, there were three levels of information, or more than that actually, that I would need to get into to truly understand performance on a job and understand impacts and be able to do this short and long term. The schedule is more of my calculation engine, where I would be able to study that data and know performance, what areas are causing problems, what does that mean today, what does that mean in the future, what needs to happen to overcome those challenges. But that would be generally based on locations or trades in a project. But I couldn’t understand why it was happening. Once you get into the PM data, you’re able to look at changes. You’re able to look at RFIs. You’re able to look at delivery dates and material deliveries, and you’re able to look at weather and all those kinds of things. Those are all the issues that would result in impacts. So once I understood where all the impacts are happening and what the short and long-term effects of those impacts are, I’d be able to go back to the PM system and understand what are the issues that are causing these. Is it more related to design? Is it more related to performance? Is it more related to RFIs? Is it not enough resources? Is it weather issues? Is it change issues? Is it procurement issues? You are able to get that information through the PM system because it’s generally outlined in a lot of the correspondence. And then the last piece was cost: how much is it going to cost? And that really needs to layer in from the cost system. And then that cost system helps you better understand resource needs, not only resources showing up but resource needs, as well as where inefficiencies are occurring that are resulting in impacts. So all of those three worlds need to be merged together, and they need to be merged together very well if you truly want to document and understand performance and risk on your jobs. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Yeah, for sure. Looking ahead, how do you see SmartPM evolving over the next five plus years, and even shorter term? Is there anything exciting that you’re working on that you could share? 

Mike Pink 
Yeah, I mean the first thing that we can share is we just got approved for FedRAMP, which was very important to us. We can start working with the federal government instead of just the private industry, so that’s really cool. But we’re really taking advantage of what’s going on with AI right now. We’ve got a lot of different data, a lot of data related to project performance based on hundreds of thousands of schedules. A lot of that schedule data needed to be understood, and a lot of the data integrity issues needed to be understood so that we can still get good analytics from that. So we’re now at a place where we can understand projects thoroughly and what constitutes good outcomes, what drives good outcomes. But we also created an ability for AI to really look at trade interaction on projects of different types and sizes and locations, so we can start to detect patterns that constructively influence outcomes versus detract them from success based on how the subs are interacting, which we’re now using to assist in giving recommendations in terms of trade flow and how to link the trades together successfully on different project types of different sizes. The other thing that we’ve spent some time doing is mapping RFI data, change data, as well as procurement data into the schedule, because the schedule is an ever-evolving thing with a lot of changes that are happening, which, if you think about how people spend their time in construction on those things, they don’t really have visibility on which RFI is the most critical and which change order is going to cause the most disruption if delayed or which procurement issue we’re starting to see a problem on in their delivery that’s going to cause an effect down the road. By mapping all that data into the schedule directly and tying it in from those PM systems, we can start to provide value to the people that are working day to day to know where to spend their time and energy. All technology out there today is about streamlining processes and being more efficient, but there’s not really a technology out there other than SmartPM that enables companies to really know what high-priority activities there are versus activities that have room for float, really, so that they can push off what they don’t have time for today and really key in on the most important pieces. Right now that really doesn’t exist. It’s really done by gut. And generally speaking, the quality of the schedule directly relates to how you use that information and determine those things. So we’re attacking that problem from all different angles, and we’re also looking at how you did in all regards, in terms of time management and focus on areas that should have been focused on, to manage to a successful completion. So that is really what we’re working on today. Soon we’re going to be pulling in cost and resource data to help people make decisions on resource needs and know it with certainty, know which trades are going to be driving the job, whether the schedule says it or not, based on all of our experience in this data set. So a lot of different things that are happening today, but ultimately I view SmartPM as being probably the first and only tool of record where you have all of your data feeding into one place relevant to your project and your portfolio, providing visibility and reports around to the right people at the right time to ensure success on your jobs and do it systematically. But it is an effort of getting all that data pulled together the right way, understood in the right place at the right time, so that we can continue to evolve and optimize this industry. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Yeah, for sure. Sounds like that’s an exciting future, and I imagine you and your team are very busy working on all of that. And also congratulations on the approval. That’s big, that you can get on more projects like that. 

Mike Pink 
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
So stepping away from SmartPM for a second, you touched on how AI is changing everything. I’m curious, through your work with SmartPM, but also in consulting, what sort of other innovations are you seeing in the industry apart from schedule management? And are there any that really excite you? 

Mike Pink 
Yeah, I’m seeing a lot more access to information a lot quicker. That is one area that I saw people spending a lot of time on, how to find good information and how to get to answers quicker. I mean, we have our own lane of that in knowing how to prioritize your time, but there’s also getting information, understanding that information, and doing it quickly. I’m seeing more and more of that being brought forth through a lot of these LLM-type technologies. So I see that happening all over. I’m excited about that. I’m also excited about that in our own tool. We have a project controls agent now that starts to guide you to making better decisions along the way and understanding the things on your job. But seeing that in more and more tools is pretty exciting to me. I think it’s going to make many people’s lives easier, and getting that right information into the hands of the right people at the right time. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Right. Nice. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think real-time data and the insight that comes from that is something we’re seeing throughout the construction industry, which can only help things. 

Mike Pink 
Absolutely. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
To wrap up here then, for companies who are interested in learning more about SmartPM, where should they go and what does that initial process look like in getting onboarded? 

Mike Pink 
Yeah, obviously you go to our website, www.smartpm.com. Our goal is generally to meet a customer where they’re at with the information that they have. Usually it starts with the schedule data, and it could be different for many different company types. A large construction organization that has project controls teams and scheduling specialists generally gets caught up in trying to do this at scale. Sometimes they try to build their own processes, but it’s very difficult to do that and to do it well. What we do is we enable you to scale your abilities across the entire value chain and really start to cut the time down by about 90 percent to achieve what you need to achieve, which obviously gives scale and breadth for an organization. Smaller companies that generally don’t have a project controls team and maybe aren’t that strong in the scheduling side of things, we usually meet them earlier. I call it the project controls journey. We introduce them to that journey and we start solving the schedule quality problem, and we move into the analytics, and then we get into the more reporting and communication side of things. And then on the flip side, with owners, it really depends: what data do they have, how do we leverage that data, and how do we train them to have good meaningful conversations to protect their own risk? So it’s really a matter of where the company is in their lifecycle when it comes to analytics and project controls, and how do we bolster that up correctly over what period of time. But all we really need is schedule data to get started. 

Steven Rossi-Zalmons 
Perfect. Well, thanks so much for your time, Michael, and I’m excited to see how SmartPM continues to grow and change schedule management. 

Mike Pink 
Absolutely, and thank you for your time Steven.