TILOS is time-location planning software

Hi Charlie and Vlad,



I have sent the Pdf’s, let me know if you have received them.



Regards,



Philip

Hi Guys,



I am here to share knowledge and experience, ie trying to help whomever needs it and trying to gain some experience from others who have had simular experiences. The reason I have not been such a good participant as in the past is all the bull, moderators, getting the name calling like sycopancy. Is this necessary, we are professionals andthere is no room for this.



This discussion is about Tilos and should remain as such, it is about improving the way we present our planning, and thinking lateraly, for other people to understand what we are trying to show them. It is about sharing ideas and improving the planning function.



Let’s think along these lines, and advance ourselves and our profession, instead of in-fighting.



Regards



Philip

Hello Clive,



Let just be me.



This is one thing I love PP, I can be me. We can be whatever...



You dont have to react to my post, no need. I’m only a small fish in PP with 21 years ++ experience, not much compared to the big league, big guys, big time, big money, Im really nothing.



Anyway, whatever we post here will be under the watchful eyes of the moderator. The best we can do is to respect the decision of the moderators. If the post is really detrimental to the whole PP in general and specific individual PP member, there are mechanism to remove the post.



With respect to sycophancy, What I told Philip comes deep in my heart with all honesty. I always feel young, eager to learn if there is something new to me and relevanat to my work, in this case TILOS.



For the record, I prepared March Charts, Chemin de fer, Graphical Charts etc. using excel.



Cheers,



Charlie

Hi Philip,

welcome back.

I am also interested in your PDF’s, for me it is interesting to compare them with Spider Project linear diagrams. If it is not hard send them to spider@mail.cnt.ru

Thank you,

Vladimir

Hi Charlie,



Will send you those PDF’s, not example, but the real thing.



Regards,



Philip



PS and no more sycophancy :-)

Hi Guys,



Clive,



Your LOB, obviously stands for ’length of building’, which is horizontal planning turned on it’s side, ie 90 degrees. The problem is how do you reflect this on a project which is 85km (50miles) in length, when the greatest difference in height is probably less than 300m (350 yards). You are trying to show a view of the overal program, so you show these vertical structures as vertical stacked bars, if you have a solution, I would greatly appreciate it, but words like sycophantic rush definitely does not belong here. The simple way to present these vertical structures, is obviously LOB, but that means presenting each one on their own schematic diagram, which is simple, but can only be done as seperate diagram, to reflect the structure. Hope you have some better answer. By the way my project transcends some 4 cities, and is definitely not ’Greenfield’.

Philip,



You are always brilliant, perhaps the greatest to me with regards to planning, project management, etc. It showed in your post. I think you have 36 ++ years of experience. I’m very junior to you since I only have 23++ years of experience.



Since you address “Hi Guys” so that includes me.



I want to let you know I’m very much interested in “If you are interested, I can send you some examples in pdf format, to show you the impact of the tool, in terms of presentation.”



Please include me in your preference to send pdf format.



I really need the sample since I’m now involved with Light Rails Transit.



My e-mail address is: charlieorbe@gmail.com.



I thank you in advance for you kindness and I believe you when you said “I can send you some examples in pdf format,”.





Cheers and best regards,



Charlie

Hi Guys and Irem,



I would would like to enter the fray here, after having been absent for a while, due to some time due to pressure.



To set the record straight, I spent some 20 years in projects, and used to do my planning myself on the drawing board, after this I spent another 16 years in planning, so I suppose I qualify as an old time planner. I have been using Tilos for about 16 months, and have found it one of the best visual tools to present the project in terms of planning, and also an excellent tool for checking the schedule (Primavera) for clashes and/or correctness. I am using Primavera PM v5, and am experiencing a lot of problems, but that is for another forum.



The way I have set it up to produce the Tilos time/distance diagram, was to run a hammock project in PM5 to minimise the number of activities in Tilos. The main reason for this is that the PM5 schedule contains some 35000 activities, a lot of which is related to design/procurement etc, ie non-construcion activities. further some of the construction activities are non-linear, ie such as shafts an buildings which happen over a limited horizontal distance, and are vertical (the projects spans a distance of 85km) so something that is even as much as 250m long shows as a vertical activities(In terms of time). The numberof activities I am running in Tilos is some 1300, and I show the baseline and forecasts, so I have some 2600 items on the diagram, excluding non-activity items and other objects. So Charlie, do not talk about 30 activities and other limitations until you have experienced it.



The main advantage is the fact that for the purposes of presentation, the diagrams produced can be understood by most people including laymen, and as such by far beats bar charts and the rest of the planning derivitives, such as histograms and s-curves etc. If you are interested, I can send you some examples in pdf format, to show you the impact of the tool, in terms of presentation.



I know you can do a time distance diagram on excel or cad, but what you want to see is what you are doing in your planning program, without the hassle.



Regards,



Philip

Hi Charlie,



I will be pleased to philosophise about TILOS with you.



Andi

Hello Andreas,



I think I will have a chance to glimps TILOS.



Our EPC / Main Contractor will use TILOS.



I let you know any development.



Cheers,



Charlie

Whoww Charlie,



please accept my apology, I never want to scare you!

To award of misstakes let me point out:



1. We are talking about linear schedule, so a time-distance diagram is needed.

2. We are talking about doing projectmanagement rather than creating a "simple" schedule.



In this two cases I keep my opinion "...making a schedule without TILOS is dangerous...". Why?

Very easy, I don’t know any other software tool that gives me the functions I need to satisfy my requests.



If you like to know more about TILOS the easiest way is to visit there webpage www.tilos.org.

Here you also could request a demo version and ask for a web presentation.



enjoy,



Andi

Hello Andi,



You scared me. I have been in planning projects for most of my time after university, and here you are telling our very own planning planet



"Finally, in my opinion, making a schedule without TILOS is dangerous."



Of course, our planning planet is unique because we can always say our opinion.



Is there a sample for tilos, let say, good for 30 activities. how to contact tilos?



Cheers,



Charlie

Hi Charlie,



well, I will try my very best to enlight you ;-)))



First, I work with TILOS since 1998, so that was Version 1. After several years of not good experiances the developers decide to program TILOS complete new, so Version 2 was born. I went out with this version to lots of customers from the construction side and (mostly) all of them found TILOS helpfull, but strange in handling. My collegues any I collect lots of opinions to make the software easier and more powerfull and I would say since TILOS Version 5 the developers and the strategics found the "right way".

So two things inside TILOS maks me (as consultant and user) very happy with this software:

1. If I (or any other customer) has an idea to make the software better or more clearer you could go to the developers, talk to them and a few versions later you found your idea in the software. So TILOS is a real customer tool!

2. Most software visualize your thoughts, either in kind of a barchart or as timedistance drawing. But me as user have to tell the software how I like to have my schedule. As projects gets more and more complex, cost sensitive and time critical this doesn’t really help me, I have to think about all possibilities. TILOS could assist you while your schedule. You could e.g. create links between tasks that automaticly check that no clashing (on the distance) occur . So changing the work rate of my task change the duration and TILOS make sure that my schedule still works. THATS helpfull (in my opinion).



These are only some examples, there are lots more inside the software.



Finally, in my opinion, making a schedule without TILOS is dangerous.



Could you follow my mind???





Regards



Andi

Andreas,



Since I belong to the young "once", im history.



Perhaps you can enlighthen us on your opinion regarding TILOS.



A good enlightenment may start with:



a.) how long you used tilos (actually, a colleague of mine want to market a new branded software name "TULO")



b.) explain further why??? A simple "I think TILOS do so" is not enough.



Please take your time. Remember, you can always come in go in PP, no hard feeling.



Cheers,



charlie

Hi Charlie,



interesting opinion.

Are you talking about drawing a plan or making projectmanagement? In the second case you will fail with manual drawing. You will start again and again and nobody will warn you making misstakes.



Generally, a good software guide a user through the steps and helps him while generating. I think TILOS do so!



regards



Andi

Hi Irem,



The best you can get from generation before us is manual planning. how it was done before the advent of planning software.



If you enter the electronics age of planning, it is dynamic and always young.



Take for example Primavera. How many times the software morph or upgraded that even your previous knowledge is not realiable already, meaning you have to start all over again to grasp the newer version.



Cheers,



Charlie,

Hello everyone



I just finished reading everything on TILOS and I saw nothing on its limitations. Not even success or failure stories. I think the topic some how went into maybe an even deeper topic. I am a young person and even I observe younger generation and sometimes think we were better(and there is not much gap btw us). But I am dead wrong... I think it is a matter of being different and not better. Software is not everything(I hope it is not because they are extremly easy to learn) but it sure gives you more time to truly analyze what you are doing. The most important thing is to take all we can from the generation before us and try to add our new tools to support them.

Hi Andrew,



Maybe I did not answer your question, about making the news.



The point is that if the contract your are involved in is newsworthy enough, there will be factions trying to disrupt it, some trying to stop it and others that are all for it. I am working at present on such a high profile project, that is reported on, on a daily basis in and on most of the media. There is environmental issues, personal issues, etc, all of which affects the public in general, and the most interesting part of all of this, is the predictions, by the various media presenters, of whether the project has the chance of being successful. You can study all the hype, and it ends up, that most of the media presenters prefer to go the negative route, as in their view "bad news" is "good news", ie if you rebel against something new, at least your are thinking. So the general opinion amongst journalists is shoot it down, and if it loses you are succesful. If on the other hand it is succesful, you just drop the topic and pursue another issue, so you were wrong, sorry, everybody makes mistakes.

Journalists love issues, and they are probably right in one out of ten, but this is how they make their reputation, by telling people "I told you so" , even if they have only a 10% hit rate, people have short memories, and only remeber the journalist, for being right once, even if it is once in a hundred times. What is our job? Proving them wrong yhe 99 times.

No! we are the good or bad contractors

Philip,



How true that is. Only failure in construction makes the news.

You obviously forget the project that are successful and on time, They probably outweigh the failures by far, the only problem is they are ignored, for the simple fact that good news is no news.

But isn’t communicating the "Plan", engaging the team and gaining commitment to it what we are about - not the paper & pencils, post-it notes, spreadsheet, planning software, presentations, videos. The plan is theirs not ours - you have to "sell" it to them however you can and that’s what we get paid for.

Hi guys,

I agree with most of you, on most points. The first point being that if you want to be a half decent planner you have to be able to plan on paper. After almost twenty years in the industry, where I planned manually, not as dedicated planners but as site managers/RE’s etc, suddenly there was software available on the market that could take the grind out of the job. Suddenly there was a market for people who could operate software. Then came the dedicated planners. They did not have the neccessary planning skills, but could operate the programs.

Projects became larger, and the detail became more intensive. You could now run huge projects and plan in detail down to the hour. The military caught on and instead of lenghty battle plans written by hand, the computor became the tool of choice, as planning software could plan by the minute or multiples thereof, and if necessary you could go to seconds. So the problem came up of how do you present all this information in a legible form? Simple, barcharts, s-curves, etc. The problem is not everybody can understand grapic representations in a two dimesional form, they want a more holistic picture. Some wanted spreadsheets with dates, others wanted other variations. Experienced individuals can read a Ghantt chart like a book, especially if the schedule is structured correctly, but you have to cater to the wider world. And, here we are talking mainly of linear projects, whether horizontally or vertically. The object is to present the project in as simple visual representation as possible, so that the safety people, IR, HR, QA, Procurement, Designers, etc, have a single picture to look at that they understand and makes sense to them. Tilos lends itself excellently to projects such as overland pipelines, motorways etc, but what about projects with non-linear activities in between, like booster pumpstations and interchanges. Here is where you have to start figuring it out for yourself.



The point is at this moment in time, I am locked into Primavera, and use Tilos as primerially a presentation tool. It works sometimes, and sometimes not. These tools, are written by programmers, without the input of planners.



This is probably not the right forum, but as a point of interest, Primavera P3 could produce s-curves with percentage progress, and the latest Primavera PM V5, cannot do this,ie % progress. It is called retrogression.



It is time for planners to stand up and demand the tools we want, and not to ripped of by software companies.



If any of you guys want to see the type of graphics tilos is capable of, I have an excellent representation, but no thanks to Tilos or primavera, we had to figure it out by ourselves.



Regards



Philip

there are a number of time-chainage software products around. Railway & pipeline sectors use them all the time.

It can be invaluable where multiple projects are working on the same railway for instance to give an overview of clashes between work sites



see QEI for instance

Richard,



As much as I’d like to think we never made mistakes or were in anyway inefficient in the good old days, I don’t think I’d go as far as to claim that. Hicups etc are inherent in construction projects due to thier complexity however good we think we are.



I agree that Tilos does no more than you can with a piece of paper and pen as far as determining the overall plan, a line on a screen tells you no more than a line on a piece of paper. But that line when combined with all the backgound data that can apply to it - progress, resources, outputs, quantities, costs, etc, etc - can be changed or updated somewhat quicker on screen than with a pen and the affect of the change on all that background data known at the click of a button. Speed and less prone to calculation mistakes is the advantage of computer software - at the end of the day this applies to any software, Tilos, PowerProject, P3 or whatever - I learn’t how to do CPM analysis manually before computers were around, it was invented along time before I knew it existed, but that doesn’t mean I want to go back to doing it manually and throw away P3 etc. Non of them do what couldn’t be done manually, they just do it quicker, more reliably and save alot of brain ache.

Hello Guys,



I know these discussions of the good old days to well. I have to listen to those stories on sites, told by elderly Site-Manager all the time.

Forget about those days - they are over.



What we need now are good tools to manage our work. And for time chainage schedules there were no good tools on the market yet. I even had to develope a tool in Excel with xy-Graph in the past.

I think Tilos is such a good tool. As it is developed in my home-town I have the possibility to visit the company. And I have the experience, that every call, every e-mail is answered. Problems are solved, errors corrected and suggestions included in the next version. My question about WMF-Format was answered in a peronal mail. Who ever called or e-mailed Primavera knows what this means.

Although I did not use resources and costs in Tilos yet, it is important, as clients not just pay worse, they also ask for more.

Richard,



Somehow we managed in days long gone by walking out on site, having a look, marking up a piece of paper on the wall and making decisions - it was the best we could do at the time and it worked, but in those days we seem to have had time to do what we needed to do - and somewhat larger profit margins than we work on today. Then came the recession in the early nineties, profit margins dissapeared (to negative numbers in some cases) and the world got that much tougher. I’ve never seen a job priced since with a profit margin of 20 - 25% as may have been the case pre recession times. We had big enough margins then to make up for the inefficiencies, the cock up’s, the work done twice, the non productive Friday afternoons down the pub.... ....the good old days are long gone.



These days every client wants to have his project finished yesterday, the contractors still want to make their margin or more and if abit of software can take some of the guess work out of the decision making and do it at the click of a buttom then I’m afraid I’m all for it - anything that helps. Phillips quite right though, never take blindly the information that a computer tells you, gut feeling and experience still plays a part in the decision making process, but as I said, if it can help save some time scribbling on paper and pushing buttons on a calculator, then I’m all for it.

Hi richard,

They did not understand the era prior to computors, they are all born late, however, Computors are tools, and not the be all and end all.

Thereis still some room for the human mind

Richard,



Sorry, don’t quite stretch back to the sixties workwise but I can remember doing it just as you say - A0 drawing board, set square and a long metal ruler always came in handy!



The only difference today is you can resource load the programme, cost it, etc and the software will give you useful answers at the click of a button. The ideas or methods are the same but some of the answers just come quicker! Oh, and the ink doesn’t smudge.

Hi Guys,

Lets talk about the tecnicalities, and how the program performs, rather than semantics

Hi Andrew,



That’s expensive.



No need for me to tell my boss. But i think my boss know about this software.



I will settle for exceel worksheet.



But this time, ill try to link using formula cost and resources in my time chainage.



cheers,



Charlie

Hi guys,



Yes, TILOS is a really perfect tool for time distance planning and it was developed by Asta Development Germany, not byAsta Development UK.

You could check this on www.TILOS.org.

Charleston,



Last time they tried to sell it to me they wanted £1900.



Have tried a demo version and it looks very good but at that price I’ll wait until I’ve got the work to justfy buying it.

Thanks Andrew,



I’ll try to talk to my boss if it will be feasible to get hold of this software.



cheers,



charlie

Charleston,



TILOS is produced by Asta Development in the UK



http://www.astadev.com

Hello to everyone,



how to get hold of TILOS.



Our time chainage use excel.



Please let me know.



Thanks



charlie

Hi Guys,



I use Tilos, and it should be of great interest to people who work on linear projects. A bit of discussion would be interesting, and would help to clear peoples minds on Time vs chainage, or line of balance. I am no way associated with the product, but have used it successfully. It can be interfaced with most planning packages, and as such is a handy add-on.