Democratizing Schedules: Be On Time with Up-to-Date Schedule Communication

THOMAS KORUGA: Welcome, everybody, at Autodesk University talk democratizing schedules. Me and David will take you on a journey through our schedule-creating processes and through this schedule tool in Autodesk Construction Cloud. I'm Thomas. I'm working for a hospital in Austria. David is working for Autodesk, working on this amazing tool. And we'll take you on this journey today. Let's start.

DAVID KADYSHEWICH: Yeah, just a second. Before we start, just the safe harbor-- a small thing. Just to keep in mind that we will share here around schedule tool, both things that are already available in production and you can play with and work with, but also some strategic thoughts-- things that we might work on or will work on. Please keep in mind those are still things that are under research. Don't take any purchase or development decision due to them. Talk with us before this. And let's continue. Thomas, stage is yours.

THOMAS KORUGA: Thank you, David. So we'll start out with the traditional journey of a schedule in our health care construction industry. The first step of the journey is the creation of the schedule. The schedule gets created by a project team, by a couple of people working in the design phase of the project. And we have quite an advanced schedule-creation workflow with approvals in multiple stages.

We are creating a master schedule. We're doing a couple of updates in this initial schedule-creating process. And in the end, the project lead approves the first version for publication. And after the project lead approves the first version of the schedule for publication, this schedule is out and is getting used in the project.

So after that, the design team gets the schedule. The design team provides initial feedback on the first version of the schedule. And the feedback loop is pretty slow. We are still using email. We are still using snail mail. We are still using telephone for providing this feedback to the project lead, to the project team, by the design team.

This slow feedback loop is a bit ancient. We are still stuck with it, and we are working with it. It does work, but it is pretty slow. After gathering this feedback, we have a update workflow for these schedules. We are updating the schedules with the information from our design teams, from our stakeholders in the project. And we're updating it with all the comments and all the issues that have been found. We are sending these updates by mail or phone, again, so it's still the same old communication workflow.

Afterwards, the schedule needs to be communicated to the field. And that happens by huge paper printouts, which are static and mostly out-of-date. Yesterday, I was just visiting a construction site, and I found, actually, two projects schedules which were both out of date for this construction site.

After that, we update something again. Something changes on the construction side. We need to do more updates. And as you can see, also these updates are shared again by mail, by phone. So we are stuck with our old processes.

A huge issue with this process is the task of identifying the differences in new schedules. Sure, somebody communicates something while sharing the new version of the schedule.

But this communication attached to the new version gets lost in translation, gets lost while printing the schedule. And most people then have the impossible task of identifying differences between two scheduled versions, mostly printed out in paper side by side. It does work, but it's quite a job.

Yeah, updates need to be reprinted, and reprinted, and reprinted. And we have to repeat this process till our project has completed. Usually there are something around five to 10 big picture scheduled updates in our construction project. And we have to go through this process for all of them, gathering approvals, sharing updates, giving people a task to identify what has changed, and many, many more. Not very amazing things.

So to sum up our current way, consumption, communication, and versions. Consumption is manual. We are printing a huge amount of things which we don't want to do in the future anymore. We are communicating by a very outdated technology. And we are working with a versioning system which is broken and leads to the wrong version of the schedule being on the construction slide at all times that we can ensure today.

So David, can you show us or tell us how Autodesk can help with our issues?

DAVID KADYSHEWICH: Yeah. So actually, in Autodesk, we heard this a lot. We heard this inside, the broken way that schedule works all around the world. And we created the Schedule Tool, which is already available in production inside Autodesk Build.

And inside Schedule Tool. We're trying to create value in four pillars. One is the single source of truth, making sure you get to one place and see what is updated. Secondly is the consumption, making sure you can get the information you need from the schedule, from the year's schedule that you just see in front of your eyes.

The third one is communication, the ability to communicate, both on just talks and updates on site-- on those schedules. And the fourth one is linked to project. Because we don't work-- we work inside a huge system. For construction, we want to make sure that everything is linked and schedules are not siloed outside of the project.

So this is what we built. Let's go one by one along the values that we're talking about, the single source of truth. Inside Schedule Tool, you can bring in information from any other authoring tool. We're talking P6, MSP, Asta, or there are long tail of other scheduling tool.

You can bring all of them. Because they all work with MSP and with the Export to MSP and Asta. You just choose your schedule. They can import choosing your schedule. We will take it from there. And we'll show you the schedule in few seconds.

Once you have it there, you can see here, it's just a grant. Nothing special. If you work with MSP, we work with P6. This is familiar to you. And you can start working for this. And we'll talk about consumption in a second.

But in the single source of truth thread, it's important to say that you can choose who will see the schedule. So some schedules are for all project members to see and some schedule are restricted because it's only between you and the owner. So you can just do it.

And it's not just the permission for all the schedule. You can also play with what attributes you are allowing people to see. Because we know summary view, the schedule, the heavy schedules of the world, work with dependencies and with Slack, free Slack, and you don't want other. You don't want sometimes the sub to see the Slack. So you cannot share it with them.

But now you can. You can input the schedule inside Schedule Tool. And you can choose not to show the Slack or the flow, not to show the dependency, or not to show any other activity calls that related to monies that you don't want to share with the world. It's up to you.

So phase is out. Department is out. And that's it. And now, you can update the schedule. Any time you can go back inside the schedule and update it with a new version. So uploading, updating happens both manually if you choose. Or for MSP and Asta also automatically. And we'll talk about it in a second.

Once you have the schedule, and this is MSP. If you're working with MSP, you can just go. You save the schedule inside MSP. And if you're walking without one of the integration into our dock system. So MSP is actually pushed all the way to Docs and we take it from there.

So for you as a schedule or a Schedule Manager it's just one click. You hit Save and we update it automatically. It works for MSP and Asta It doesn't currently work for P6. It will maybe later. And once you have this schedule, you can share it. You can copy the link. You can send it to any email participants. You can add any message you want.

And those people that will get the link that you can send even in WhatsApp will have one place to go to click and see this specific schedule, always the most updated schedule, because you auto-updated or manually updated for the new version.

And there is no, ah, I didn't see the schedule. I don't know-- this link is the most updated schedule. No more questions. So this is around the single source of truth. You can see here, I'm sending it to the sub. And this driver sub will not tell me that he don't have the most updated schedule.

Now let's talk about consumption. We know, like Thomas shared, that they are printed on huge screens inside the trailer. Now you as a subcontractor or project manager or whatever, you need to understand what's in it for me. You can have thousands of activities inside of Schedule. What information is important to me?

So inside our grant-- and you can also say just in the list or just in a grant if you want, but inside this list, grant, popular view, you can, of course, change to quarter, and the timeline weeks, et cetera. You can dig, dive into specific activity.

And seeing also the predecessor successful jumping between dependencies, which is an easy way, intuitive way to walk around the schedule, making sure you see the one writing that you want to see, configuring the grant to see dependencies or percent complete, or remove some activity names if it's too much information for you. You can really do it the way you want to make sure that you have the view that you want.

But that's not it. Because you can also start searching and filtering the schedule. So let's say I want to see only the roofing information. So I can search for roofing and get only this information. But I can choose also to filter. So I filter by labels, only those subcontractors. So this is information only for those subcontractors and only on the critical path.

So I choose the critical path. And this view-- and now I want to see only the six weeks look ahead view. What I created here is a six weeks look ahead view for those subcontractor, only critical path activities, that I can now share with everyone. And they go back to it and see this specific view six weeks will always be six weeks ahead, and the most updated schedule.

So this is something for everyone to bookmark and go back to in order to understand, in order to see the information they want to see. They don't need to go with the marker on huge the PDF and see what's in it for me.

Another cool thing that we have here is also the grouping functionality. So you can group on any attribute. We bring in also the activity codes that you create and P6 and everything. We bring it in, you can work with them, filter by them, and also group by them. And once you do it, of course, as in all schedule, you can choose to include active filters, to share it, and everyone gets the information they need in [INAUDIBLE] click.

And the third pillar is communication. And inside communication, we split it to comments, which are the unstructured, and suggestions that we'll talk about in a second. In comments, you can now start to have discussions around specific activity inside this activity.

And like Thomas told us, this is a really big time saver. Instead all those emails, and WhatsApp, around the same information, now this thread is available to everyone that have access to this specific schedule. So I can mention email.

And once I'm mentioning and tell him, please have a look here. He will get this email and tell him that David mentioned you. There is something happened. Please go back to him. Because we have an answer to give. Once you click it, he will go back and saw this activity and see the comments. So this is where I'm going back and I see the comments. I see enough reaction.

What's cool about it, this is also can happen in the mobile. And it's actually an important consumption note that all everything inside schedule tool is also on the mobile. So you have all the activities, all the schedules, all the activities.

And you can search. You can filter. You can go into specific activity. These is how I go into the comments. And I mentioned him inside the mobile. And the information moves around.

It's important to say that Schedule two is not only for one schedule. I'm not sure if I said it before. You can have multiple schedule, as many schedules as you want. So you can have a lot of thread of communication in different activities, in different schedules, if you have schedule for a master schedule, and then you have a different one for the phase one, phase two, or for the gardening. You can handle all of them inside schedule tool.

So this is the unstructured way of communication, the comments. But we also understand that when it comes to updates, there are a bit more structured way that most of the companies do it. Because when you get-- bap, bap, sorry.

So this is suggestion. When you get to Comments, when you get to updates, sorry, when you get to updates, information should be more structured, sometimes more documented. Because if subcontractors said that is 50% complete, maybe this is something you should approve, because it might be money-related.

Or if there is a delay, that someone is telling you that there is a delay. This is something that you want a thread of information that is with you for the life of the project.

So this is what we build here. Inside schedule, you can go into viewing and switch into suggestion mode. While in suggestion mode, you can now start editing the schedule. It's not really editing. It's just suggesting.

But here, I filter for this subcontractor. I will see this information for maybe a few weeks ahead. So those are all the activities that I'm concerned about if I'm starting the-- suggesting a session.

And I can say, OK, this one, the actual, I want to update the actual for this one, and also the percent complete. Because this one is working OK. But the second one is actually I have a delay. And I also want to tell everyone that this is a delay.

So I click the impact, the delay impact. That is this red symbol. I can also say this is-- have a cost impact. I can say what root cause is it with a list of root causes that we have. And to add some kind of a node.

So really, give all the information around this update that I'm requesting, or just saying, this is the truth. This is what happened on the side. But if you want to update the schedule accordingly, this is the information that you need to have. And I can have a very full session. I can have a lot of suggestion in one session. And then I just click here, review that everything is correct, and now I submit to the manager.

Once I speak to the manager, and now we're moving to the manager view. Of course, the manager will be prompted via email and will get to the tool. He will see it. And he will have a list of all the suggestions coming from everyone on the side. So if subcontractor is doing it, they will have-- he have a full list of all the subcontractors who are sending him.

You can see exactly what change in this specific update or what is the update that you requested. So you can see, 1% complete rise from zero to 20. You can see here you have a delay really quickly clearly. And whoever submitted it says there is also a cost impact. And you can go one by one and approve them or disapprove them.

So this one is allowed. This one is actually mitigated because I have another way. And I can add a note. And once I finish to answer those, I save the response. And they are here forever inside, da, da, da, here, inside the resolve. You have a thread of all the information, documentation, of all the suggestions that came, and all the replies of the Schedule Manager.

So this is the most structured communication that is actually completing the on structure communication around comments. So you can start there and move it into suggestion in order to make sure you have all the information around the schedule. And it's happening inside the schedule tool. No more emails. No more PDFs marked with updates.

And last but not least is connection to the system, ba, ba, ba, just sorry, connection to the system. We understand that actually we live inside a very robust system that have a lot of other functionalities. And we want to make sure that we treat it that way.

This is where you can go into specific schedule and filter for specific activity. Let's say, this one is around HVAC. And I can reference it to other places in the system. Let's say submittal. I choose a few submittals, and add the items.

And now I have those submittals here always even when I update the information in schedule, the reference will be here. This is true also about comments. If I have any comments and I update the schedule, they will be there forever as long as you don't delete the activity.

So I can add reference to actually almost anything inside the system. Also asset is something that people like a lot. And once you have this-- another cool thing is that you actually can also reference to another schedule.

So let's say this is my main building master schedule. And I go to the finishes activity. And I reference it to the finishes phase schedule. Because I have it in another schedule that the subcontractor send me. And it's just another system.

But now I can filter it. I can see the interior finishes from there. And I can add it to my schedule. And everything-- every time that I go into my schedule and look at the finishes, I can see also the activity from his schedule and what exactly the percent complete and what's going out with it.

And once you have all the reference ready, you can filter by reference, show me only activities that have issued reference. You can put on the reference column to hover it, see exactly what reference you have, what is the status, and of course, navigate really, really easily into the place where you have them.

So Thomas, this is what we build. We believe, and we think, that those four pillars of value create a solution for some of the difficulties that you talked about in the traditional way of the way schedule working. I know that you until started working with this. And I would love to hear your thoughts.

THOMAS KORUGA: Yes. So first I would thank you very much for this amazing tool. We have actually been using it quite a while, just to give you a short overview of our company over Tirol Kliniken. So over the environment, we have been using your tool.

And we are a company of four multi-regional hospitals in Austria. That we have a bit over 8,400 employees who work for us. Around 7,500 hospital beds, which we manage every day, and around 700,000 square meters gross floor. And we are under management by our hospital company.

We as are the building department are managing projects as big as $50 million and euros per year. So we have quite a few construction sites going on at our company. While using schedule, we have figured out we have saved and will save in the future more than 1,000 hours of our time, of our very important time, since we have implemented the tool.

Where are these savings coming from? So a big one is filtering and searching. As you have already showed us, there is a huge amount of filtering and search possibilities in this schedule tool. We are using it quite extensively because schedules are a huge part in many of our meetings.

And we're talking about schedules quite a lot. And being able to work with these schedules inside of our meetings and inside of discussions around scheduling, around the construction site, and want progress on the construction site, is very useful and is way easier than in the past. So all the examples you gave us were true for our company.

The other thing we are saving quite a lot of time with is commenting and mentioning. So we are adding a huge amount of transparency by using the commenting and mentioning functionality.

Up until now, our feedback process and our feedback loop was very intransparent. Everybody provided feedback to the schedule manager by email, or by telephone, one on one meetings, by paper.

And these scheduled updates were gathered by the manager. Other people were not able to see what other design team members thought of the schedules. Commenting was not possible. So we were stuck with our old processes and were not able to gain any kind of transparency into our communication regarding schedules. So this is amazing.

The other thing helping us quite a lot, as you mentioned, commenting is a pretty unstructured way of talking, talking about activities, talking about schedules. We are using this suggestion mode for improving schedules and working around obstacles on our construction sites.

Actually, we have quite a lot of issues with our supply chains, as you can imagine. And these supply chain issues are impacting our construction sites quite heavily. And we need to work around these supply chain issues by moving a huge amount of activities in our schedules basically all the time. So we are moving schedules very much.

And the suggestions help out very much. They provide a possibility for all important people to be able to provide structured feedback. And that's the important thing for our structured feedback for the schedule and for any changes.

And then, the possibility to be able to accept, or decline, or mitigate these suggestions is very useful for us. And we are using it in multiple of our projects.

You mentioned version management. We are very happy to solve the issue of where is the most up to date version. So basically, the single source of truth has been established. When people ask us where is the most up to date version of the schedule, the answer is very simple for us today. It wasn't very simple six months ago.

So we are making huge steps, like you see. In this topic, we can always point to the most up to date version. People with mobile devices, people with tablets are able to access it at all times, in all meetings. They don't need to be at a construction site or have their project folder in paper with them. So that's a huge step ahead for us.

Yeah, as I've already told you, we are currently identifying the single source of truth. And that's amazing. We always know what's the most up to date version is. But one issue we are having, David, is we have this huge warehouse. And we now do know what's the most up to date version is but David, can you tell us what has changed since the last version.

DAVID KADYSHEWICH: Yeah. So Thomas, actually, this is something, this versioning thing of-- yeah. I have-- I know what is the one place of truth, like you said. But I have tons of version before it.

And sometimes I need to go back and to understand how this activity was few months ago. Because something happened, and I just need this information legally what. And also, of course, what have changed between this version and the master schedule, this version and the one before it? This is a very big issue. We hear it a lot since the day we released the tool.

And actually, I'm happy to say that we are doing something about it. And we're not just doing, actually, this is now available in production for everyone that is working with a schedule tool. And this is true for only five days. So this is really, really, really new. No one really had a chance to really work with this.

But I'll show you everything that I'm showing you now is already available. And Thomas, I know that you didn't have the chance to work with it because it's very new. But I hope that what you see now will solve maybe some of the issues around the version management that you guys have to work with.

So the first thing that we did, we created a new update flow. So we talked about the fact that once you update you can update both automatically and manually for MSP, Asta, P6, any other authoring tool. Now when you click the Update Schedule, and you choose a new version, you have this model where you can choose which version is it.

You can see, this is version five. I can change the name, just to say this is approved version. I can choose who will get notified around this version, only those subcontractors, only this hall, only this company, only this user, and only those that I choose will get an email-- and we'll see it in a second-- get an email of there is a new update.

So no need to let everyone know. And no need to keep it to yourself. You can choose exactly who are the people. So we know that a lot of people just send the updates via email with a PDF.

So you don't need to do this anymore. You can put those people from the email inside the distribution list and send it to them. And we know that a lot of schedulers and schedule managers love to have a short narrative, they call it, an update summary of what change in the schedule. So you can just fill it here.

And a lot of the time, the owner requesting you to have a very specific form of what change in the schedule. So you can choose a file if you have a PDF form that you have been requested to, you can choose it, you can have it here, and you can update the schedule. And, those people will get the mail I think we're going to see a those. Yeah. This is the email that people are getting.

And I want to show something interesting. They're getting notified that you have an update. They have the summary, they have the summary file, and they also have a very interesting link here on what's changed in this specific version. And we'll get to it in a second.

So this is the new update flow that allows distribution list and narrative. And what we're doing with those versions is we created the version log. So you can go inside the version log. You can see, there are five versions. You can see exactly what is the narrative here, the update summary the way we call it. You can also go back in time.

So this is the January update. You can see this is not current. And you can play with it, you can filter it, you can do whatever you want with it and just consume the information from past schedule.

And if you have an auto update-- this is interesting. This is an interesting scenario. Because a lot of the time when you are working with MSP, the way we look at it, we saw it in users, a lot of people are hitting a lot of time control save, just afraid that something will not save. And computer crash or something, so they think a lot of control save.

Actually, the way they integration into the cloud works is that every control save is a version. We don't have a way to know this is important. It's all versions to us. So we don't want you to get a version log with 1,000 version just because you hit a lot of controls save.

The way we deal with it is we created versions per day. So if you're working with this kind of automatic update like you are, Thomas, with MSP and Integration into Docs, you can see that this April version-- sorry, I think this is-- ba, ba, ba, just jump through time, just a second. This is the auto update. And if you control save here, you can see that you have a version six and you can see, there are two more views recorded.

So what it means that I have in the same day few control save in my MSP. So we actually gather we group all the versions from the same day that came from automatically in one version to make sure that you don't bombarded yourself with versions and you have really, really clean sheet of which version I have in each day.

So this is the way we're dealing with the automatic versions. And that's it about the version mechanism and the version log. And once we now have all the version information, you can go into specific activity and you have the version history.

So this lab's activity had two updates, or it was updated in version one, in version two. And even though in version five it didn't change, I can see it didn't change. And I can click here to see-- I don't see-- I can see start, finish, percent complete.

But maybe here, I have also change in actual start. And I can click it and see exactly how it changed with actual start. And I can go to this milestone and see that actually it had a lot of change between version one and version five. And I can hover to see exactly what is the change.

So this is the version history that allows us to deep dive into specific activity. But sometimes need to have the big look. You need to understand what is the difference between this old version and this old version. This is the time when you get a new link and just want to understand what has changed for me.

Because a lot of time, what has changed for me is different from what have changed for manager, or executive. They want to look at the milestone. I want to look at the nitty gritty activities that I'm assigned to. What have changed?

So you remember this link that we talked about getting the email? It will allow you to do this. Because we created a new compare mode. You can get to the compare mode in various ways. I'm just showing one way. You can go into the most updated version and click, what's new. It's the same what's new button that you had on the email. And this will get you into this magical place.

So this is the compare mode. You can see that I have version four and version three turned on. And I am filtered on all changes. So everything that I see on the screen is just activities that change-- will change between version four and version three. We visually stack them up against each other. So you can see the purple one for version three. And you can see inside the percent complete.

Can easily see it, intuitively see, that it's pretty positive. You can see a lot of percent complete going up, a changing on this activity for 36 to 42. I can see also something happening on the finishes. All those grays means there's nothing. But here, I can see something happening. I can see it's green and going down, which means it was advanced. So this is also pretty positive for me.

So this version, I'm just looking at, yeah, nothing really special. It's kind of look good. But maybe I want to check what changed between version one and the contractual baseline. So version one and version four.

And maybe I want to look at what happened only on the critical path. So I put the critical path filter because I have all the filters that I used to have also inside the compare mode. And going here, I can see also a lot of green, a lot of things advanced. This is pretty OK. So nothing really special with my critical path.

But I also have this subcontractor that I have always a flag around this specific subcontractor. I want to see how he is doing. What changed between those versions for this specific subcontractor. And here also, here I can see that the red flag in the finishes. You see on the first line? So it means I have a delay.

Really intuitively I can see there is delay. So I can filter to see only delayed finishes. I have a hint that I have only one activity that is like it. And I can see exactly what happened there. And I can open it. And I can tell everyone that I want people to look in here because something happened.

You can also control the variants. I don't have in the video. But you control the variants. I want to see only delayed finishes that are more than five days, or more than 30 days. If you have a few years project, you want to see only the delays that are more than 30 days, and you don't care about the one day delay. So you can also do it too.

We're not limiting only for two versions. Maybe you want to see what changed between version one, version two, and version four. And this is where it gets interesting. I can see a lot of activities. And I am going straight to delayed start.

And I can see this milestone. And you can really, really see how this milestone is getting delayed, and delayed, and delayed. Something is happening there. I'm going-- I'm lagging. And I can start investigating this now. And also, I can see this activity that change a lot and start investigating what's happening here.

So this compared tool actually allows you to do everything with comparing. You can filter. You can create a specific views for yourself. And once I have this view, I can share it. I can share any schedule view. So I can click the Share button here.

And whenever I want to have this view, we'll have this specific-- and will click the link. I will get right inside this view comparing version one, version two, version four, only delayed start. And can really understand what's going on with this project.

So Thomas, this is what we have currently on the version. And I hope it will mitigate at least some of the version issues that you have been struggling with.

THOMAS KORUGA: Yes. These things sound very, very useful. Thank you. We will try it out and see what happens. And I'm sure me and the other customers will come back to you with feedback on how things are going.

Regarding things that are going, so we have talked about how we did it in the past. We have talked about how we use the schedule tool in the past. We have now seen that the schedule tool has made amazing progress. And now, let's take a look into the future together.

So we have gathered a few topics we want to talk about. They are the topics regarding your future and regarding far-fetched things. So it's nothing that me or David can promise you guys.

But I think we both agree on the importance of these few topics. And I'm sure that the future will bring us functionality in regards to some of these topics. Let's start out with the first one, David. Do you want to start with schedule editing for us?

DAVID KADYSHEWICH: Yeah. Sorry. Schedule editing creation. So currently, schedule tool is not a scheduling authoring tool, as we said.

One of the strategic direction that we are thinking of is how we get it there, how we start making sure that you can add edit the schedule inside the scheduling tool. That if you have a suggestion, like we saw, that being approved by the manager, so now it's automatically get inside your schedule.

There are a lot of issues here, how do we still create one place of truth when you can do something inside schedule tool and it doesn't happen inside MSP? There are a lot of things, a lot of thoughts around it. But we totally think this is something strategic for us.

We also think about how can you go into specific activity inside schedule tool and start a new schedule from it. Maybe a new work plan from this specific activity. So all of those things are in our mind. And we believe we'll start tackling them pretty soon.

It will take time. But we're heading this direction. How do we take schedule tool from being schedule communication, [? 1% ?] of consumption, et cetera, into a schedule editing and creation tool.

THOMAS KORUGA: That would be amazing, actually. That was my first thought when I was starting out with suggestions. I was like, oh, amazing, I have this suggestion here. They're going to accept it. And then I was waiting for the schedule to update. And I was like, oh, it isn't updating. And yeah, that was my first request regarding the schedule tool.

Yeah, it would be amazing. So we are, as I've already told you working quite heavily with suggestions and the possibility to be able to-- they don't have to be major changes, but the possibility to make changes in schedules right inside of the Construction Cloud, maybe even on tablets or on phones would be amazing.

Because when I talk to somebody, and when I agree on some change in the schedule, I want to be able to inform everybody of this change and not have to go back to my computer in my office to make the changes and to share the new schedule.

Creation sounds also like an amazing possibility for the future. I think creating new schedules, and I think we can agree, we're not talking about the biggest, most complex dependence schedules. We know we're talking about easy five, or 10, or 20 line schedules, where things are simple.

And creating these schedules inside of the Construction Cloud would be very useful for us, especially for smaller projects where we don't have a huge design team working on everything, where we don't have huge administration or support, where we don't have people working on schedules day to day. So these kinds of possibilities would be very useful, especially for a huge amount of our smaller projects we are having.

Let's look at another topic for the future, David. The connection to the system. Tell us something, David.

DAVID KADYSHEWICH: Yeah. So when we talked about enhanced connection to the system, so currently we saw that there are some reference. And we can add submittals. But the connection is kind of consumption connection. Because you can have a specific activity. And you can see submittals, and other files, and assets, and issues. But they are not really connected deep inside the schedule. And schedule updates don't really connect deep to the issues or to the submittals.

We want to change this. And one of the strategic things-- and it's a heavy lifting, but one of the strategical things that we-- direction that we're thinking of is connecting them really deeply. And if you have submittal, pull in inside. So maybe you can do something with the schedule around it. And when you have the scheduling information changed, maybe it should pushed into the submittal.

And if the activity start is coming but submittal is not there yet, is not finished yet, so it should raise some kind of a risk. If you have an open issue, or an open RFI question on a specific activity that is starting in two days, you should have an automatic flag telling you, man, this is not going to happen. There are a ton of open stuff here. So do something.

Actually, I can share a really-- and again, those are-- and like Thomas said, this is not something that we can promise on. These are thoughts. But you can see, we are thinking about it. So this is a sketch from our designer showing the way we think about it. So it's just a mockup.

But you can see that inside a specific activity I have all the references. But now I'm showing them on the grant. And I have a color coding around the status.

So this RFI, the due date is here, and it's everything is OK, because it's closed. But this one is open. And it's going to start in a second. So what's happening here? So I would want to have a flag raised here. So this is the way we think about it.

And another important thing we understand that currently, in order to create those references, you need to sit on your computer and reference, just referencing. And although we're trying to do this as easy as possible, this is still hard work.

So actually, we are having researchers around machine learning that will try to connect those automatically. Can we look at activity codes or any other cost codes and connect between submittal and activities automatically?

Can we understand from the words you have inside the activity and the words you have around inside the issue that they are actually connected? Can we create a place where you get into schedule tool and we automatically pop up to you, man, this issue might be connected to this schedule activity. Do you want to connect them? Yes.

And to create a scenario where all of your schedule is connected pretty much automatically or with not a lot of labor into all the other project. Make sure all this magic can happen, information can run around, and risk notification can jump into email when you need them. So this is another strategic direction that we have, Thomas.

THOMAS KORUGA: Like the other one, sounds amazing. So this is actually something my colleagues have been waiting for and wishing for quite a while. They didn't know that it's going to be in this place. And they didn't know what the actual technical implementation would be. But the questions around this topic is something which has bothered us for the last few years.

So the main question we are getting is, OK, something is happening in the project. We know it because it's in a schedule. And there are issues regarding this activity or these activities. And how can now the project lead figure out, OK, what are now my important issues?

Sure, it works when you're setting up the due date with issues quite nicely. But as we've already seen, we're moving schedules around quite much. And after moving a schedule, adapting due dates, there can be things which are not updated correctly.

So this would enable us to get a completely new insight into our projects, to be able to exactly say, OK, for this activity, which is starting tomorrow, we need to finish these 10 tasks today. Otherwise this activity will not be starting.