Today our customer spotlight features a project management software solution SAR 24 for the construction industry based on DHTMLX Gantt. It is being developed by the team of Cem Turnagöl, civil engineer and project manager from Turkey.
Hello Cem, we are very glad to have you as our guest today. Thank you for agreeing to participate in our interview and sharing your DHTMLX use case. Could you please tell us about yourself, your project, and why you need DHTMLX Gantt in it?
I’m a project manager with 25 years of experience in the construction sector. Our company is based in Turkey, but right now I’m talking to you from our construction site in Baghdad, Iraq. I decided to develop software related to the construction sector. We will use it for collecting various kinds of data from construction sites, especially data on scheduled activities, to see what tasks each person has to complete, follow the overall progress, and be able to monitor that activities on sites are going according to our plan.
There are some software solutions for the construction industry available on the market. However, I want to create my own software, because I want to use it not only for our projects but also to sell this software to other companies.
Collaboration is very important, especially in the construction business. A construction project can have many stakeholders from different countries: for example, your designer could be located in the USA, your company’s head office could be in Istanbul, Turkey, and your construction area could be Baghdad, Iraq. Communication and reporting between these parties involved in the project are very important. So, we are using DHTMLX Gantt in our application in combination with other powerful tools.
The name of our project is SAR (Site Activity Report) 24. Our aim is to collect data from the site daily and check the progress of scheduled activities. Scheduling activities, checking their status, and updating baselines and critical paths are very important for us.
Our project is not completed yet, so we continue developing this program. I’m not a coder, I’m just an engineer, but I’m a founder of this company. I hope that at the end of 2021 we will be able to finalize this project. I’m sure that it will be very powerful and useful because it is developed in accordance with all construction site requirements.
Your Gantt is very powerful, very easy and, most importantly for us, user-friendly, because construction workers do not always have high computer skills. We are very excited and hope that all development stages will be completed successfully.
You have mentioned that you plan to sell your software product. Where would you like to sell it?
Initially, we plan to test and use the application in the residential buildings project in Baghdad. After that, we want to publish our product. It will be a SaaS application. First of all, we will try it in this region with multi-language support, including English, Turkish, Russian, and Arabic versions. I suppose that we will start testing the app in 3 or 4 months.
Why did you choose DHTMLX Gantt over other solutions on the market?
First of all, your product is easy-to-use and includes many important features such as the calculation of the critical path and progress percentage, baselines, and resource management. Export and import features are also available in your Gantt. Primavera and MS Project are two famous project management programs, which we are also using in different projects. When the planning department creates a schedule, we can easily import Gantt on sites so that tasks can be shared on the web to see which activities are delayed. In general, we’ve chosen DHTMLX Gantt because it has everything that we need.
I also know that you are working on some new features such as the multipage PDF export and PERT diagram. With these novelties completed, your Gantt will be even more powerful.
Do you have any recommendations on how we can improve DHTMLX Gantt?
For example, the resource analysis in DHTMLX Gantt may be well suited for other industries but does not meet all the needs of construction projects. We do not need to calculate working hours for employees in the resource section but rather a total сost of construction activities. We have not completed our project yet and I am not sure if we can do it or not.
Right now, our technical team is focused on the data report section in our app. Our software is not just about Gantt charts, it also includes daily reports. Other features of our application will be document sharing and archiving. You can take pictures at sites, assign tasks to workers, define deadlines, and perform task management. After completing these functionalities, we will proceed with Gantt.
We will be happy to help you if any questions arise. Could you tell us please about other technologies and components that are used for creating your application?
The application is web-based and our coders use PHP and JavaScript. We also use some small JavaScript components. For instance, we use a tool for creating PDF files out of pictures taken on sites.
Thank you very much for sharing your story! We would be glad to contribute to the success of your project by providing technical assistance and guidance if needed. Good luck, Cem!
The customer spotlight section tells the stories of web developers, team leaders, CEOs, and project managers from all over the world about their experience with DHTMLX.
You can learn more about JavaScript/HTML5 Gantt chart featured in this customer spotlight. If you would like to become the next guest on the interview, just drop us a line.