One of the important aspects of Digital Production Control is the ability to keep the Project Manager and Foreman up-to-date as far as changes to the budget, percent complete at the site, and payroll usage. To keep all parties current, the Project Manager and Foreman must regularly send and receive project information to each other.
There are three ways to transmit information between Estimator, Project Manager and Foreman:
- Via Project Express (recommended)
- Via e-mail
- Via direct file transfer
On Center recommends using Project Express and we focus on that method for sending/receiving in this User Guide. Project Express is built into Digital Production Control and allows users to send project files directly to another user's On-Screen Takeoff or Digital Production Control application. Instructions for signing up for Project Express are included in the next article.
When sending/receiving files through Project Express, it is important that Project Names do not contain any special characters (no characters other than standard alpha-numeric, English) and that the Project Name be limited to 25 characters or less. See Related articles for more information.
If you are not using Project Express, files can be sent via e-mail or direct file transfer, see Related articles for more information. This User Guide assumes you will use Project Express to communicate between the office and the field.
Regardless of the method you choose to send/receive DPC Changes, the Project Manager must import Change Files in the order they are sent by the Foreman. If you import job updates out of order, the Project Manager and Foreman jobs will be out of sync (they will not show the same percenting or timecard information).
All users who are sharing data back and forth in DPC must be using the same version of On-Screen Takeoff/Digital Production Control. If you try to import a DPC Bid Package into a different version, the process will fail.
Before sending anything out to the field or from the field back to the office, it is important that you take a moment to view the job's Budget Tab to identify Estimated and Earned Hours. You will use these values as sort of a 'double-check' to make sure that the Project Manager and Foreman's jobs are synchronized correctly. See the previous article for information on using the Budget Tab.
There is no need to export Timecards manually, they are included with DPC Change files automatically. You can export timecard information to a CSV file, for import into your Accounting system, if you like. See Related articles for more information on using the Timecard Tab.
Review Budget Tab Prior to Sending Bid to Field