By Sander Ruissaard, Senior Account Executive
KYP stands for Keep Your Promise. With a mission to help those who want to build more efficiently, KYP Project is a planning and communication tool. In the AECOO industry, one of the most common reasons for project delay and high cost of failure is miscommunication. Everyone knows that a construction schedule is continuously adjusted for whatever reason, which can cause different versions of the schedule to fly around and project partners to show up at the wrong time, or worse, not show up at all.
In KYP Project, there is always only one version of the schedule that is always up-to-date because completed activities can be checked off by superintendents and partners. In addition, KYP Project communicates directly to partners when a change occurs. In this way, everyone is informed immediately, saving time, phone calls, and e-mails.
We envision project teams on the construction site working smarter and more cohesively without hassle — that both contractor and project partner help each other in providing the most up-to-date information. In Europe, where on a daily basis, about 1,000 construction projects are actively shared with project stakeholders, superintendents can save more than 5 hours per week by planning in KYP. This is due to the ease of use when changing the plan, but also due to the automatic communication. Just think what a superintendent could spend these freed up hours on!
Often, a master schedule is created in MS Project or Primavera P6. Then this goes to the construction site and a 6-week look-ahead schedule is created in Excel. However, Excel is a wonderful calculation program, though in essence, it is not a scheduling tool. KYP Project is innovative because it is finally a tool made by and for builders. It is a tool in which about 70% of the functions are invented by the users themselves and this results in a very user-friendly tool. For example, you can fully load an MS Project or P6 file into KYP Project and then further develop your detailed planning.
In addition, working digitally means that wherever you input data, you can get data out of the same place. Various reports can be generated so that very useful information can be extracted from your project. For example, you can see how likely it is that you will meet your delivery date. If this is not adequate for you, then you can immediately see which party is the bottleneck, and what you need to focus on to increase the chance of delivering on time.
Currently, the challenge is that project partners are not yet used to participating in updating the schedule. It happens that project partners find that the measures of transparency become a little too much for them, despite the fact that they have the most up-to-date information at their disposal. However, we are seeing growth in unique accounts logging into the tool every day. Additionally, 1,000 different projects are being planned and shared in KYP Project every day. But the best success is when we get feedback that builders cannot live without us and thank us for making their lives a little easier on the construction site.
We want to help builders in a very clear niche. We have the capacity to help any builder, large or small, implement KYP Project on their projects. If a project team is using Excel on-site as a look-ahead tool then KYP Project is there to replace it. In Western Europe we have helped more than 300 contractors in a few years by successfully implementing KYP. Within 5 years we expect to reach this number in Canada as well. The KYP Project HQ is in The Netherlands, and being already active in 4 countries in Europe it gives us the opportunity to invest in a country as big as Canada. As well, we are in coordination with institutions such as George Brown College and The Canadian Construction Industry, who want to include us in their curriculum. In this way, the future not only learns how to plan & communicate well, but also how to do so efficiently and without hassle.
