Written by LetsBuild
Last updated October 18, 2023
In a nutshell
For people who run more than one project at a time and who want to know what’s going on, our latest Portfolio Overview feature allows you to get a full overview of all your different projects in a single programme Gantt, like a “project of projects”.
Get control of your project portfolio with a real-time overview of what’s happening over multiple projects and share this with stakeholders and team members who are accountable.
A consistent, shared overview of all your projects saves everyone time and money and facilitates better, transparent communication. Be better organized so you can react quickly if problems occur.
Why do you need this feature?
One problem that all construction managers, contractors and professional construction clients have to deal with is getting a full, realistic overview of a construction project without spending a lot of time chasing all the information.
When you start constructing a major building, like a tower, airport or hospital, several small building tasks are going on at once. This is something that can cause big headaches if everything is not under control and kept track of. Similarly, if you are a construction company or a professional construction client, you will have multiple projects running at any given time.
As everyone has these headaches some of our existing users asked if using GenieBelt could solve these problems for them. So we had a look and created the Portfolio Overview.
Connecting all your projects into one master project can help put the headaches back under your control. Doing this in GenieBelt also allows you to give an overview to stakeholders and everyone else in the team who is responsible or accountable. For example, your managing director can also see across all the projects and teams. Thanks to this, reporting is becoming automatic and simple.
Why are we so crazy in love with Portfolio Overview?
GenieBelt right now is already a really powerful tool for updating progress for one project. A key selling point is that we make it simple for on-site reporting into a live construction programme or schedule presented as a Gantt chart (connecting the site/field to the office or vice versa).
What makes Portfolio Overview really exciting is that we take this existing simplicity and with one small addition we give you superpowers. You can now use GenieBelt to view your whole construction portfolio. You can use the information to easily manage all the projects you are responsible for.
Project Overview becomes really powerful with simple field reporting
What can you use it for?
There are many ways you can use our Portfolio Overview feature:
-Create a single company project portfolio which receives automatical updates.
-Allowing the helicopter view across thousands of tasks. Showing clearly why delays and problems are appearing.
-Gather all reporting, communication and learning across your projects in one place.
Three reasons for you to use Profile Overview
1. Transparency
Get transparency on what is going on, everywhere. You get a full overview of your portfolio and all the on-going sub-projects. Nothing is hidden away or forgotten. Lose the frustration you get from constantly being on the phone or answering emails from workers or project managers because they already have the answers in GenieBelt.
2. Better organization
Locate major problems, or predict them before they occur, and the person responsible so you can make important changes and instantly share these with decision makers. Solve issues quicker and save yourselves money.
3. Flexibility
GenieBelt integrates with existing programs like Excel, MS Project or your favourite scheduling tool. In that way, you can manage project schedules from different sources all in one place. A big step for saving time and streamlining your communication. Once in GenieBelt, this allows for simple project reporting via mobile, so you end up with not only a connected project portfolio but also an easy way to update progress direct from the construction site.
How it works
In our diagram at the beginning of this article, there are three projects reporting into a master programme. With Sub Projects also below that reporting upwards. Some of these projects may have been originally planned in Excel or MS Project. But all are easily imported into GenieBelt.
By adding each project as a task you can create one portfolio overview for the whole company. This portfolio overview gives a view of the progress on every single sub-project. Everything on the portfolio is automatically updated in real time, as project managers or workers on site report updates on their tasks.
This provides the company’s managing director, the project managers and anyone that has access to an updated and shared picture on construction progress across the whole company. Something, which can also be used for staff meetings, internal or external communication, or simply for budget planning and follow-up.
Case study
Slagelse Municipality / Council
Slagelse municipality has started using the Portfolio Overview to combine construction projects from three departments to monitor progress, from the initial project idea to stakeholder approval right through to design and build. By sharing a live view of this process across departments the project managers have been able to develop a general template. This has allowed not only progress and reporting to be viewed but knowledge to be shared for future work.
