As the holidays quickly approach, it’s easy to get caught up in all the festivities, parties and other end-of-year celebrations. Without proper planning, it’s especially easy to lose track of some of your activities. While it might not help with your holiday planning, this month’s first three articles provide the information you need to successfully keep track of your critical and non-critical construction activities as well as how to list them in Primavera. If improving internal processes all at once seems an overwhelming task, take the advice in John Jurewicz’s article—tackle each process individually. John starts with setting up an Extranet communication strategy. As always, check out the new digests at the end of this month’s issue of Construction Project Controls. If your firm releases a new product or achieves an award, we want to hear about it. E-mail us at editor@WPL.net.

By Larry True
With so many tracking systems on any given project, it’s easy to get lost in the data. Larry True breaks down the reasons why contractors should track time and costs together.

By Marco Ferrante and John Kimon Yiasemides
Every construction project involves more than just the brick and mortar aspects. When scheduling critical activities, Marco Ferrante and John Kimon Yiasemides instruct the contractor to also schedule the non-construction activities that affect the project’s overall outcome.

By John Jurewicz
When in comes to improving internal processes, don’t tackle everything at once. John Jurewicz suggests that you work on each process, one at a time. Here, he guides you through Extranet communication strategies in a project management system.

By Gordon H. Aronson
Instead of listing each individual detail as an activity on your project, Primavera expert Gordon Aronson recommends using the Steps feature, which allows you to group bullet-point items as part of a larger activity. The benefit — you keep better track of the progress of each activity while reducing the number of activities in the schedule.

This week's updates include new Constructware installations, a Sage Timberline press release and report of software usage in European countries.