The construction of photovoltaic power plants is no walk in the park, at least not in the Czech Republic. The extremely demanding administrative process requires 35 partial steps carried out with perfect continuity. Because of this, the processing of one contract/project (power plant) does not take 7 days (technical complexity), but up to 5 months. The combination of impatient investors, careful clerks and the effort to finish everything before the original deadline holds a great potential for complications. A small error or momentary inattention can have deep and unpleasant consequences.
Martin was looking for a tool that would be able to keep track of all work in progress, other follow-up steps, and the process of their solution. It was clear that adding more work to already overburdened employees in the form of assignments and more complex reporting would bring legitimate protests and further productivity losses.
Therefore, the possibility of employing a new qualified member of the team - a project manager – has been considered. The estimated volume of work indicated the need of a part-time or a full-time job for a person with a specific qualification. It would be hard to find the right manager, as well as for the manager to get familiar with company processes, and then there was of course the possible risk of the manager’s failure. The total cost of such a position did not match the required final effect.
Instead of a real project manager, Martin decided to try the APU - Virtual Project Manager. It creates individual work schedules for employees while taking into account the priorities of the entire company. It assigns individual tasks to people so that their working hours are fully utilized, there are no downtimes and no delays (the period of waiting for the approval of documentation on one project can be used differently and effectively).
It constantly monitors the status of projects and changes in their processing. And it adjusts every new input according to the plan.
