D2 Presents at Salford University on the benefits of project management tools in construction

Last week, Neeraj Ajit Sukumaran form our Project Controls team attended a Teams call with Salford University to present to MSc Construction Management and Building Information Modelling  students. The presentation focused on the benefits of project management tools in construction using Power BI as a reporting tool.

The first half of the presentation gave an introduction to the basics of Power BI. Using examples from project experience, Neeraj shared a recent case study from the TRU West Alliance to show how our project controls team migrated from manual excel reports, to dynamic and automated reports in Power BI.

The Second part of the presentation formed a workshop in which Neeraj demonstrated to the students how to create a simple dashboard in Power BI  “Dashboard in a day”. Whilst also providing the students with guided learning documentation.

­We all live in a data culture where business decisions are based on facts, not opinions. We need data to help us make these decisions. Power BI is an application that lets you gather, transform, and visualize your data. Power BI desktop helps you to create your reports and dashboards while Power BI Service helps you to publish them for others to consume. The software is used widely in construction to track progress, schedules and budget. It helps companies gain better insights into their contracting, forecasting, and workforce management levels. You can access Power BI dashboards from anywhere and spot trends or anomalies and dashboards can instantly be shared in a Realtime view.

At D2 Rail innovation and collaboration are part of our Core Values and at the heart of what we do. Our Project Controls team highly recommend the use of Power BI within projects and businesses. Power BI is a great reporting and collaboration tool that can help save time and money in the industry. Users can collaborate with co-workers to create interactive reports and dashboards in workspaces. They can also compile dashboards and reports into apps and can publish them to a larger audience. Championing innovation and looking at how we can work smarter is part of our D2 Rail culture, and sharing our experience and knowledge with our local universities is an important part of what we do as a business in upskilling the industry.

‘Many thanks for a wonderful presentation and hands on demonstration, that created a great deal of interest. There were around 35 students in live session. Plus, number of our students are distance learners joining from places such as Australia and they usually listen to recordings. Thus, around 50 students benefitted from the presentation.’

Professor Zeeshan Aziz, BEng, MSc, Ph.D,

If you would like to here more about the benefits of Power BI please contact our Project Controls team on Projectcontrols@D2Rail.co.uk for further details.