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Re: What Estimating Assumptions Can Hold Projects Back?
This is nothing new - in fact 1979 - This is not fiction
A 1979 study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found that productivity declines with extended overtime
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Re: 🔥 Hot take: “receipts” shouldn’t feel like a part-time job. 😅
From my experience, the biggest time loss happens during work verification — especially for subcontractor PO receipts. That’s usually where the back‑and‑forth, clarifications, and confirmations slow everything down.For material POs, we rarely see issues anymore. With today’s technology and communication platforms, the flow is much smoother and delays are minimal
Re: What Separates a Good Project Manager from a Great One?
In my experience, the project managers who truly stand out are the ones who stay calm under pressure and keep everyone aligned, even when the plan shifts. They communicate clearly, address risks early, and make sure the team understands not just what needs to be done, but why it matters.The best PMs I’ve worked with create trust — they listen, they follow through, and they make coordination feel effortless
Re: What Separates a Good Project Manager from a Great One?
In my experience, the PMs who really stand out are the ones who bring clarity and calm, especially when things get messy. I’ve worked with plenty of strong PMs, but the best ones communicate clearly without overwhelming people, surface risk early and honestly, and keep everyone grounded in the same source of truth. When pressure hits, they help the team reset priorities, talk through tradeoffs, and stay aligned without micromanaging. You can feel it in the room — people trust them, respect them, and genuinely want to follow their lead.
- They Communicate with Intent, Not Noise
- They Build Trust by Owning Reality—Early
- They Keep Teams Aligned When Pressure Is High
- They Lead Through Consistency, Not Control
- They See Themselves as a Representative of Leadership
In short:
Top PMs earn respect by creating clarity, trust, and stability—especially when the project is unstable. That’s what you feel in the room. And it’s why certain PMs don’t just manage projects—they elevate teams.
Exploring the “Create Issue” Button Across InEight Apps
Hi everyone, I’m looking to hear how teams are using the “Create Issue” button in Document, Plan & Progress, and Compliance/Completions. This integration is meant to make it easier to capture issues right when they’re discovered and tie them back to the source, but adoption seems to vary.
I’d love to know:
- Who is actively using this feature today, and what benefits have you seen?
- Who isn’t using it, and what’s holding you back: workflow fit, awareness, duplication concerns, or something else?
If you haven’t tried it yet, it’s a great way to improve traceability and reduce missed follow‑ups. Even using it on a few workflows can make a noticeable difference.
Looking forward to hearing your experiences and insights!
Re: How Have You Leveraged Champions and Leadership to Drive InEight Adoption?
For our InEight rollout, we were very intentional about layering support rather than relying on a single “champion” role. We identified functional SMEs by process area and engaged them early through hands‑on working sessions and targeted SME trainings. These SMEs helped validate real project scenarios, influenced standardization decisions, and acted as credible peer advocates during rollout. In parallel, we had visible executive sponsorship that reinforced expectations, removed roadblocks, and clearly positioned InEight as a core operating tool—not an optional system. Just as importantly, we gave champions air cover — leadership backed standardization decisions even when they required behavior change in the field.
What worked well was treating champions as co‑owners, not just trainers. Scenario‑based engagement and leadership reinforcement helped drive adoption and trust, while clear escalation and feedback loops kept momentum going.
Next time, we would formalize champion roles earlier, expand the bench to reduce reliance on a few key individuals, and introduce structured change management sooner. We’d also more tightly embed adoption metrics into regular leadership routines to sustain momentum post‑go‑live.
Re: How do you keep your teams engaged post "Go Live"?
We have done both ongoing training and internal champions.
We had mid-year refreshers and are beginning to record quick "how-to" video trainings to have in our internal library that are more Orionized based on our refresher trainings and our SOPs.
For our champions, we were able to quickly see who would be that person(s) in each office/area so we were able to lean on them throughout this year. Whether it's enhancements, pain points, updates, etc. we have leveraged those folks where we could. We have since expanded the internal N8 Team and will begin leaning on our Regional Project Controls teams to help with that post go-live momentum. I think InEight does a great job at keeping us on our toes with releases so it is easy to keep folks engaged with each update.
Below is what we have done from a post go-live standpoint on trying to keep up the momentum (Note: we are in our first year of rollout):
Category | Description | Channel | Frequency | Change Driver(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Training | Refreshers | Hosted Live | Annually | Corporate |
Training | Ad-Hoc / New Hire | Hosted Live | On-Demand | Corporate |
Training | Releases | Email, Meetings | Quarterly | Corporate + Regional Champs |
Training | SOP Updates | Email, internal SP site, meetings | Annually | Corporate |
Communication | Status/Issue Updates | Meeting | Weekly | Corporate + Regional Champs |
Communication | Enhancements / Requests | Meeting | Weekly | Executive Stakeholders |
Communication | Bug Fix Updates | Monthly | Corporate + Regional Champs |
Re: What Estimating Assumptions Can Hold Projects Back?
One assumption I think we get wrong is treating productivity as a fixed input instead of a variable outcome. We often rely on historical rates without fully adjusting for site constraints, sequencing, or execution strategy, which quietly turns productivity into one of the biggest hidden risks. Making those assumptions explicit—and tying them to how the job will actually be built—would improve estimate realism.
Re: Utilizing In8 Plan & Progress and other modules for CII Advanced Work Packaging (AWP)
This is an example of the type of stuff I was able to come up with from In8 Plan Work Packaging and Progress data. If we are able to get the field more engaged by making it easier, this will become a powerful tool.
Re: Utilizing In8 Plan & Progress and other modules for CII Advanced Work Packaging (AWP)
So far, we’ve been using Document for Advanced Work Packaging and it has worked very well. The main challenge is that it does not share the same structure as Plan, which results in duplicated effort. With a few targeted enhancements, InEight could be a leader in Work Packaging software:
- Foremen time coding via IWPs (iPad)
- Fix IWP ↔ Document Management link
- Unified constraint management screen
- Ability to print the entire IWP from one location
- AWP app on the iPad
- Excel import/export for work packages
These changes would reduce duplication, improve field adoption, and move InEight much closer to a true execution‑driven AWP solution.
Thoughts?