Software development company focused on building software for the project environment including portfolio management, program management and project management capability.
UniPhi has had a "Mail Merge"type functionality for some time now. We call the mail merge fields template variables. Template variables are queries on the UniPhi database that return text, tables, paragraphs etc into a rich text box that can then be rendered to PDF as a letter or report. The key use of template variables has been in the addressing of forms and populate of paragraphs of text with specific project information like budgets, due dates etc. This significantly reduces transpose errors when issuing consulting reports.
However, again due to the requirements of a new client, we have enhanced this feature to be able to generate numerous documents in a single merge. This new functionality draws on either a selected resource list of contracts list to insert dynamic information into one document per selected resource/contract as per the screenshot below:
Mail Merge Wizard Form
The end output is a single PDF with all relevant documents combined and ready to print as well as an individual PDF per contact. This functionality will greatly reduce the administration burden of property sales for developers come settlement time.
In UniPhi 12, a new resource type (Assets) was added to support our property development clients. When we were scoping this new type, we decided that the best way to support the unique field requirements that was going to be requested from client to client was to create an advanced and sophisticated custom field capability. Once scoped, this was designed and implemented by our dynamic interface guru +Gunawan Herman who has delivered what I believe is the most significant enhancement in the release.
Asset details with custom fields displayed from "Legal Registry Details" down.
UniPhi has always worked hard to provide methodology components that allows each client to configure the system to their own particular nuances and needs. We believe that this is why even though the focus of our software is the construction industry, we have clients ranging from software developers through to child protection agents!
The resource custom field functionality adds to this capability in a significant way. Firstly, you can categorise the custom fields and add any type of field necessary. Our consultant on large projects +Simon Day has utilised this categorisation instantly for a client to workflow how they update an assets details over time. Each asset has a collection of common fields that need updating at the same time, so by categorising the assets to these stages, an end user is able to filter for these fields and for the necessary assets that need updating and then bulk update the data in one screen in minutes.
Bulk update for a filtered list of assets
Of course, capturing data efficiently is only half the battle. The next key is to provide capability to display this data in a variety of ways. Our template variable functionality is key to being able to do this so we have now added a "Resources custom field" tab to the template variable screen. This provides powerful capability to end users and when combined with the new mail merge functionality, this means that managing the sales and settlement of a apartment block is massively reduced.
We will be extending this capability into the compilation of standard government forms further reducing the time taken to manage sales in the property sector.
A really cool feature in UniPhi 12 is the ability for system admins to create their own cost metrics either element by element or for the project as a whole. Common elemental metrics in construction include:
$/m2 of GFA
$/m2 of FECA
$/m2 of floors
$/bed
$/hotel room or key
etc
On a whole of project basis, the above metrics are interesting in addition to benchmark ratios, functional units and sense checks. Examples for these are:
Wall to floor ratios,
Number of beds
Number of car parking spaces
Number of basement floors
Number of floors
etc
Much of this was covered in our benchmarking series but what excites me about the capability of calculated metrics is that its applicability is limitless and will fit any industry using UniPhi. You can check out the video on how to do it here.
In my net present value post I mentioned how some of our early goals for developing the UniPhi software platform back in 2005 were put on hold by our success at selling into the construction industry and our need to support specific requirements of clients in this industry. Another factor that changed the focus of our product was the creation in 2004 of the templates system. Our systems architect +Murray Stiles showed his true genius when as a graduate software developer he came up with the idea and structure for UniPhi documents. What the UniPhi template system does is it enables end users to build their own PDF based reports that integrate text commentary with graphs, data tables, registers, uploaded files, version control, work flow for sign off and many many other factors.
Leveraging this functionality, and the adding of calculated cost metrics, benchmark reports and integration with cost estimating tools, cost managers can now generate cost plan reports on the fly. The reduction in time taken to transpose data from multiple sources into a consolidated report plus the elimination of transpose errors is a game change for cost managers. When combined with the template controls that unlock the data stored in the system, a cost manager can now offer significantly more value to these reports as time freed up is used to provide nuance commentary and analysis of the latest plan.
Some of the controls that unlock this value and are new or expanded in UniPhi 12 are:
Template variables to provide sub elements of the plan throughout commentary'
The ability for the end user to insert a template variable at document compile time.
We expect that customers using our software and maximising their capability in the areas listed above will truly define themselves as market leaders in their industry.
When I hired my first software developer back in 2003, one of my main goals was to build a web based application that could replicate the financial models I was building at the time as part of the management consultancy (mbh consulting) that I was running. Key to this was the ability to build NPV (net present value) models. Opportunities in the construction sector meant that this feature was put on hold.....for 13 years! But finally, UniPhi 12 includes the ability to generate both NPV and IRR calcs for any type of investment.
Utilising the revenue/benefits/fees and the costs modules enhanced cash flow phasing method and adding a panel on the project summary for the discount rate, users can now get up to the minute NPV outcomes.
One of the most exciting aspects of this is the fact that the NPV re-calculates every time actuals are authorised and costs to complete updated. This means that sunk costs are always excluded from the calc (one of my pet hates for poor investment decision making) and the executive can now know what investment is currently the most valuable, which is usually the most recently completed as all its costs are sunk and all its benefits remain to be harvested.
Hopefully, this new feature can bring back the push mbh consulting had years ago for much more focus on benefits management and will drive investment decision making around leveraging previous investments over new ones and exercising those call options that these investments represent!
Our new cost management 4 part series follows on from our four part benchmarking series published in Feb-April of this year. For those that missed the series, each blog entry can be found below:
As usual, the target versus actual of 3 x 4 part series to be published over Feb-May didn't quite occur but I hope that the 4 entries on benchmarking have proven useful to newcomers of our software. Of course, +Graham Eldridge has been maintaining the rage with his posts on specific features to be released Friday when UniPhi 12 goes live, but time has finally allowed me to get back to my goal of a 4 part cost management series. Like the benchmarking series, this blog series will focus on the challenges people face when managing costs and will link this to some of the ways software can help. Unlike specific feature blogs, its aim is to create a conversation around what are the challenges, what is best practice and how may best practice be disrupted to be even better practice.
Anyone who's been on a project management course will have been introduce to the dreaded iron triangle of time cost and scope. Sacrificing one allows for expansion of the other two.
Source:http://ygraph.com/chart/2092
Of course the field of project management has evolved well past this simple management philosophy (as an example, the adding of quality in the middle provides a first broadening of a PM's scope of work) but it still isn't a bad place to start when discussing some of the key cost management challenges. In this blog series we will look at 4 key challenges cost consultants and project managers face when managing expenditure on projects. The four challenges are:
Adding value to the value management conversation
Managing change
Estimates at completion and earned value
Cash flow
Over the next month or so I will be publishing detailed entries for each of the four points above. Stay tuned and lets hope one month doesn't become three!
The focus on UniPhi 12 has been to make it as feature rich and attractive to those in the Cost Management industry and developers managing cash flows on new property developments. We've developed a raft of new features which allow for more detailed data analysis, and to generally simplify tasks of building estimates or capturing them from other systems. Our aim in developing these new features is to remove admin burden for cost managers and development managers and we believe that the Budget Derivatives calculation feature lives up to that goal.
This blog, and tutorial YouTube clip explains how the budget derivatives features works to enable you to automatically derive the the cost of an item, or multiple items, based on its relationship to another item. A simple example of this concepts use would be deriving the tax payable on a land purchase, or cost of preliminaries as a percentage of the construction costs or contingency as a % of project costs.
On its own, this is a very handy and useful feature, but when coupled with other UniPhi 12 features such as :
..with more features still to come driving home the efficiency gains targeted.
In the lead up to the official release of UniPhi 12, we are seeking feedback from clients who would like to get in early and upgrade ahead of the scheduled July 1 launch. Your valuable feedback will assist us in further refining and enhancing the features. The benefits for you will be that you can have direct input to the final release of UniPhi, and as an early adopter you will reap the efficiency benefits sooner.
As with most of the features and enhancements in UniPhi, it is our community of users who recommend or suggest ways to improve the product that continues to drive our innovation. Why not visit our forum and propose your own ideas for our consideration into the next release of UniPhi
The ability to instantly create reliable cash flows from your cost budget phased according to the anticipated project duration is a great feature of UniPhi 12. At the press of a button, cost managers can know and actually see with a high degree of certainty the expected rate at which their project will draw down on their funds or earn their value. As per this blog post, we have even built an algorithm which phases your costs in an s-curve manner according to the earned value profile of your closed projects.
But what happens when there are date changes that impact the commencement, or which occur during the construction phase of your project? Well, it just so happens that we have solved that little issue too with the release of UniPhi 12.
Introducing the project cost auto phasing Adjust Start option.
As its name suggests, this feature allows you to push out, or draw back the phased cash flow for your projects. Key here is the cash flow profile stays the same, just its start and end date change. Although as a feature this is not as revolutionary as some of the other recent features that are targeted at those in the construction and cost management industry, it IS an improvement that just makes life easier.
It's worth mentioning that this enhancement was made possible due to the feedback that we have received from you, our clients. As you know our intention is to always build on the success and innovative features of UniPhi so that it is increasing efficiency, and making life easier for our user community. We develop our software in an iterative manner (sprints would be the latest term for it but having been using this method since 2003, we'll use iterations - kind of like how we still call it hosted instead of cloud). This method allows us to incrementally improve our product and occasionally, a small change like the one above leads to something big....Watch this space!
On that note, if you have a process that is causing you or your company inconvenience, or that you think down right annoying, why not raise a new topic in our Forum.
UniPhi's exciting major product release, UniPhi 12 is set to change the way cost management functions in the construction industry. Significant new features and enhancements to the cost module will not only greatly reduce the time taken for cost managers to complete mundane tasks but will unlock the intellectual property stored in their estimates and post contract services. UniPhi 12 shifts the focus of cost managers from simply producing cost plans, to enabling "big data" analysis at the click of a button. The new and efficient cost management features outlined in our recent 4 part blog series on benchmarking allow cost managers to reduce time to compile reports and provides access to previously buried data allowing the cost manager to offer more nuanced consulting advice. It's an innovative change and has the potential to cause a massive disruption across the construction industry. Are you ready?
The majority of new features included in UniPhi 12 are targeted squarely at those in the construction cost management industry. Over the coming weeks we will be writing individual blogs which explain and demonstrate the key features which are set to transform the construction industry. Those features include.The key features driving this change are:
3rd party integration with leading cost planning tools
In addition to these key disruptive features are features aimed at improving efficiencies including of a cost managers services bread an butter services including
Expanded report writing capability for cost plan reports and post contract reporting
Enhanced provision sums and EOT tracking
Enhanced cash flow management capability
Derivatives for budget items and for bank guarantees
In the lead up to the official release, we are seeking feedback from clients who would like to get in early and upgrade ahead of the scheduled July 1 launch. Your valuable feedback will assist us in further refining and enhancing the features. The benefits for you will be that you can have direct input to the final release of UniPhi, and as an early adopter you will reap the efficiency benefits sooner.
The process for upgrading your deployment is straight forward - just get in touch with us at (info@uniphi.com.au) and specify a date and time that works for your organisation and we will take care of the rest. The upgrade to your deployment will require an outage period which can occur at any time that suits you including outside of work hours.
What are the issues around cost management that caused the greatest angst, or where the most amount of time is spent? Let us know by commenting on this blog, or start a discussion in our forum. We're interested to hear your hurdles, and will gladly explain how our new features can simplify things for you and your cost mangers.
The third post in the Benchmark series looked at outputs that can be achieved once robust and quality assured data is being captured into a system that has been designed to consolidate and present the learnings from this information. It is possible, however, to do more than just re-purpose benchmark information for sense checking and comparative explanation. It is possible to generate new information. Two game changing possibilities in using benchmark information are in the generation of new estimates in project costs and in the phasing of these costs over time.
The goal of building parametric models that use benchmark averages and key design parameters to generate estimates is in providing decision makers with quick turnaround information that drives investment decision making. Property developers looking at new greenfield sites or the re-development or refurbishment of brownfield sites and get a quick cost comparison between these ideas or opportunities. And by quick we're talking minutes.
Our involvement on the Global Unite project at AECOM has demonstrated that the use of large data sets to drive robust averages can lead to remarkably accurate early stage estimates (plus or minus 10%). To clarify, large data sets are those greater than 100 projects with cost data that has been verified. The way these models work is that there is a key driver for each element within the estimate (typically floor rate but it could be elemental rate for some elements based off benchmark ratios for quantities). In this way, entering the likely floor area of the development and then tweaking certain elements for the design parameters of the site (e.g. substructure complexity, hydraulics and electrical requirements etc), a knowledgeable cost manager can quickly provide a project cost estimate in minutes instead of weeks.
Critical success factors to this parametric model are:
1) A large enough data set to generate a true benchmark average. Many estimators worry about the outliers of a data set but it is the outliers that make an average a true average, cancelling out each other and providing the standard deviation that assists in tweaking the estimate to the specific vagaries as they are known at the time of estimating.
2) A data set that includes elemental quantities and hence benchmark ratios for things like wall to floor or windows to floor.
3) Meta data classification that allows the end user to reduce the global data set to a sample of similar projects that fit the current characteristics of the early stage investment idea. These down have to be too specific but at least include the sector, project type, asset type work type, location and estimate date
4) Solid indexing data to translate cost information relating to one location and at a certain point in time to a different location at a future point in time
These four things are where cost consultancies can differentiate as their past experience and knowledge drive their capabilities to provide parametric estimates.
The same requirements exist for the other key new knowledge gained from benchmarking, that of cash flow phasing. Utilising the cost phasing profiles of projects that have actually happen is key to getting an accurate estimate of how funds will need to be drawn down on a new investment.
A significant advantage in the cash flow phasing capability is that the value of past projects is irrelevant (hence no need to index costs), what we're interested in is the way funds were spent (i.e. what % of total project cost was spent in each month from start to finish). This profile will be accurate again for like investments and again, providing a pool of 100 projects or more evens out the poor performing with the good to give an accurate benchmarked phasing profile.The simplicity and elegance of this solution is so strong, it is surprising that no-one (to our knowledge) is utilising it in the market to date.
More on cash flow phasing using benchmarked data can be found on our recent blog and in the demonstration of using this feature in UniPhi's product suite demonstrated at our recent Webinar on the topic above.
