Why Netpoint?
Engage the whole project management team! NetPoint project scheduling software transforms scheduling into an interactive, planning-centric experience that ensures communication and team collaboration.
With NetPoint’s intuitive representation of activities and relationships, all stakeholders can come together in a seamless process that produces a critical path method and graphical path method (GPM®) logic-driven schedule from the same tool used for planning.
How will NetPoint help me?
A user-friendly experience
NetPoint combines the power of the GPM algorithm with a highly visual, user-friendly interface. The result is a uniquely flexible project management scheduling software. Empower your team members and project managers to plan forward and backward, build schedules faster, and communicate the project timeline more clearly than ever.
Planned Dates
Build a construction project schedule that reflects real-world conditions by placing activities anywhere within their total float range, without constraining float.
Forensic Float
Since GPM doesn’t rely on early & late dates for network calculations, float values are preserved left of the data date – particularly useful in retrospective schedule analysis.
And More
- Toggle date modes (early, planned, late)
- Real-time schedule calculations
- Self-healing network logic
- As-built critical path
Superior graphical interface
The flexibility of NetPoint’s graphical interface makes project planning far more natural and intuitive for project managers and team members. The results are project schedules that stakeholders and the whole project team can understand.
- Draw and link activities right on the canvas
- Position multiple activities on the same line
- Group activities by WBX, by work area, or by business unit
- Customize geometries to clearly represent important network paths
Global Edit Mode
A fast method for optimizing schedule appearance. GEM™ activates all data elements on the canvas for simultaneous positioning and formatting.
PolyTime®
Choose the time unit best suited to your project, from minutes up to years. Depict the appropriate timescale on a summary schedule, or use it for micro-planning time-sensitive turnarounds.
And More
- Multiple activities per line
- Object styles
- Real-time canvas interaction
Dynamic & responsive project planning
Gone are the days of pressing F9 and waiting for the CPM schedule to calculate and update. GPM’s real-time and self-healing rules, dates, durations, logic relationships, and the critical path refresh in real-time, as the schedule is modified. It’s never been easier for project managers to anticipate critical activities, highlight the critical path for everyone to see, and evaluate alternative planning or resource management scenarios on the fly.
Backward Planning
Since activities can be drawn and stretched in either direction, the late-dates mode allows projects to be instinctively planned backward from the project end date.
Visual Resource Modeling
By plotting histogram graphs and curves directly underneath activities, resource-leveling becomes a truly interactive and engaging exercise.
And More
Dynamic critical path analysis
Multiple calendars
Custom non-work days
Weather modeling
Robust tools for schedule maintenance
Use NetPoint to update and maintain the schedule during project execution and produce reports and timelines that convey up-to-date project status to key stakeholders. The visual interface makes it easy to review the schedule network and make adjustments so that a record of the actual work sequence – and even the critical path – can be maintained.
Schedule Updating
Insert a data-date and receive immediate visual feedback on the activities falling behind schedule. Watch the notification counter decrease as activities are actualized or updated to reflect changes in work.
Target Comparisons
Establish a baseline schedule, commit project updates, and compare variances between dates, durations, and float values. Export to Excel for more flexible analysis.
And More
- Constraint flags
- Activity filters
Frequently Asked Questions
Construction scheduling professionals created NetPoint to optimize project management and team collaboration. NetPoint provides a highly interactive experience in which all stakeholders on the project can be actively engaged and contribute to project planning. When task changes occur during project planning or execution, NetPoint helps you move activities and adjust durations effortlessly, instantly propagating all changes to the entire network. All objects and data elements update with any schedule modification in real-time. NetPoint provides all stakeholders with a deeper insight into the activities with the greatest impact on the project schedule and completion.
NetPoint has been used to help ensure success on large construction projects in the following ways: high-level program scheduling, commissioning schedules, owner move-in schedules, issue resolution schedules, master (full-wall scheduling) schedules, subconsultant coordination schedules, and forensic total float analysis.
Not exactly. Gantt charts are subjective vs. rule-based and thus not reliable tools for construction scheduling. GPM is a logic-based project time visualization that replaces Gantt charts as a project schedule demonstrative. NetPoint’s combined timescale and Logic Diagramming Method (LDM) create a much clearer graphical representation of the schedule than other schedule visualization methods/tools or project management systems.
The Graphical Path Method™ (GPM®) is an alternative to the Critical Path Method (CPM) that promotes rapid, collaborative, and informed project planning. GPM® shows the logical relationships of dated objects – such as activities, subtasks, milestones, and benchmarks – in a time-scaled network diagram with high visual impact. GPM® allows schedules to be created more intuitively and introduces innovative concepts that improve schedule optimization and analysis.
NetPoint has been recognized by project management professionals as an outstanding project management tool for real-time project scheduling. NetPoint ensures that upper management can quickly and easily visualize and understand activities on the critical path. Project planning becomes a breeze when project teams can readily focus on critical activities and manage project floats. Schedule changes are updated and tracked in real time, leading to optimal project outcomes.
Integrated Project Scheduling
NetPoint is ideal for Integrated Project Scheduling (IPS) sessions because it helps project stakeholders agree on a plan of action, reach commitment, and align teamwork. This process includes designers, CMs, commissioning agents, and others, who can collaboratively identify milestones in design, construction, and commissioning that can be upheld by the project team. For example, if the design team sets a goal to issue a set of documents by a certain date, but the construction manager needs that information one month prior, the team must agree on an alternate solution. This type of team-wide collaboration allows for greater efficiency and planning for all parties involved and ultimately saves time and money. NetPoint’s intuitive graphical interface and hands-on interaction show the immediate impact and result of every decision.
NetPoint data is easily exported to Microsoft Excel. Moreover, NetPoint® can be used as a planning tool and then exported to Oracle Primavera P6. Or, a schedule can be imported from P6 to visualize activities graphically and perform dynamic resource leveling. NetPoint is currently available as a SaaS product via Citrix, and we are working on developing a native cloud offering for the future.
Since NetPoint is a project planning and scheduling tool rather than a project management information system, it does not offer features like document management, time tracking, or invoicing. Rather, it offers features like critical path calculation, backward planning, resource modeling/leveling, weather modeling, actual vs. planned work management, and variance comparisons, not to mention many features unique to NetPoint, such as the highly visual/interactive interface, real-time calculations, planned dates, and forensic float.
NetPoint is the best construction scheduling software for managing time and resources. NetPoint allows you to define any task lists or resources you need to execute your projects. A resource can take the form of human labor, equipment, capital/costs, or material. Cost-loading tasks is done through the resource functionality. Furthermore, by plotting resource histograms and curves directly underneath activities, resource-leveling in NetPoint becomes a truly interactive and engaging exercise.
NetPoint’s time-scaled logic diagram is itself an excellent reporting tool, because for once, all stakeholders can understand the schedule. But if other types of data and charts are needed (e.g. resource consumption, variance comparisons, etc.) this type of reporting is achieved primarily by exporting data to Excel, where individual charts and tables can be copied to other destinations, such as word documents and presentations.
NetPoint is easy and intuitive to learn and use and can be utilized on a project after watching a demo, reading documentation, or with minimal training. We provide a library of resources online as well as access to scheduling experts to help with your adoption of our project scheduling software. Our publications include a comprehensive user guide, quick-start demonstrations, and case studies.
Facilitators are readily available to help your organization with initial (and ongoing) planning sessions. We also offer extensive training programs. As exclusive providers of GPM® and NetPoint® training programs, we educate all levels of project management practitioners on understanding the fundamentals of GPM®, mastering advanced features of NetPoint®, leading collaborative planning sessions, and more. Seminars typically range from one to three days and include lectures paired with hands-on interaction. Extended NetPoint trial licenses are provided for all attendees during the training period.
PMA Technologies also sponsors an annual conference to showcase new developments of NetPoint and GPM applications, examples and case-studies of how NetPoint and GPM applications are being used in industry, and facilitate interaction amongst users of NetPoint and GPM applications. One of the most popular aspects of these conferences is that subject matter experts from around the world come together present and discuss practical yet cutting-edge solutions to project management challenges.
You can get started for free with our 30-day trial version of NetPoint with videos and comprehensive resources to guide you through the trial period. Click here to start seeing how NetPoint project scheduling software can improve your project results today!