Cleopatra Enterprise at the AACE Region 5 Symposium 2017

The AACE Region 5 Symposium, held in The Woodlands, TX, was a big success thanks to its insightful speakers, exceptional planning, and execution. The integrated project controls solution of Cleopatra Enterprise and how our software Cleopatra Enterprise can serve as an integrated solution drew a great deal of interest among project controllers.

This year, we saw many more attendees joining the Symposium compared to 2016 despite the fallout of hurricane Harvey. 160 professionals discussed the latest project control tools and techniques, while there were 120 practitioners in 2016’s event.

On the 3^rd of November, the first day of the event, Cleopatra Enterprise was ready to welcome the project controls professionals with a nice booth with banners, brochures, and goodies we had prepared for them.

The Symposium started with technical presentations from a variety of industry sectors and perspectives. After the lunch break, there was the fascinating session of the keynote presenter, Matt Sellers from Kiewit, one of the largest construction and mining organizations in North America.

In his presentation, Matt Sellers mentioned that he was looking forward to seeing the presentation of Cleopatra Enterprise based on the interesting abstract he had read.

The Future of Project Controls: An integrated solution

Vice President Business of Cleopatra Enterprise, Stefan Bakker, was finishing the final preparations for his presentation ‘The Future of Project Controls: An integrated solution’ when the crowd began to gather. The attendees filled the room to its capacity, some even had to stand in the back of the room to see the presentation.

With his presentation, Stefan wanted to create an awareness regarding the need for integrated project controls. This started by asking a question to the crowd: ‘Why is it important to see project controls as an integrated approach, instead of a collection of individual disciplines?’

The presentation was very well received leading to fruitful discussions on the most common pitfalls in integrating estimating, planning, cost management and benchmarking and how to avoid them. Also, the curious eyes and arising questions showed that the project controllers were very interested in learning about the Integrated Project Controls Matrix (IPC Matrix).

The integrated project controls matrix

To apply an integrated project controls approach, it is crucial to determine where your organization stands now and to understand in which areas you could improve your project controlling process. For this purpose, The IPC Matrix could be used as it shows the integration maturity levels based on categories such as work process, IT solutions and culture. It could help organizations know their current level of IPC maturity and focus on the appropriate steps to improve integration.

Improving integration using project cost management tool

After this part of the presentation, most of the attendees wanted to know what different levels of integration they could achieve, the benefits they can get from them and how Cleopatra Enterprise can add to that. Our recommendation was that they should assess their organizations’ IPC maturity and make use of today’s technology and software tools such as Cleopatra Enterprise to take the appropriate actions towards the complete integration.

Significant improvements could be achieved by using Cleopatra as the software offers an integrated project cost management solution through the entire project life cycle in one system by including cost estimating, scheduling, cost management, and benchmarking. With Cleopatra, more accurate and reliable (early phase) estimates could be performed with ease leaving more time to focus on the data analysis and to close the loop between the cost management and cost estimate. This leads to increased profitability on projects through less overrun and more efficient work process.

So, it is safe to say this year the AACE Symposium was a huge success and for us, it was great to see everyone’s enthusiasm for integrated project controls. We are looking forward to meeting all of you again next year.

Also, we would like to especially thank Natalia Urquiaga, the Vice President Business America of Cleopatra Enterprise, for her contribution to bringing this great event to life as the Marketing and PR Coordinator of the Symposium.

If you have not had the chance to visit the Symposium or if you would like to know more, we invite you to ask your questions regarding the IPC or Cleopatra Enterprise through our contact form or request a personalized demo.