Running with Plan A
BuildingPoint Australia recently added Trimble Tilos to their software portfolio and who better to strike up a partnership with than Plan A, to continue to provide outstanding sales, service, and support to Tilos customers.
Luke Charet, Managing Director at Plan A started his business in 2019 after recognising the value in offering project planning support exclusively with Tilos. With over twenty years of experience in project planning and management, Luke has been adapting and implementing the most current and updated techniques on the market, giving him an edge with some of the biggest names in construction and projects across Australia with Tilos outputs.
Now an authorised Tilos Reseller, we caught up with Luke recently to find out more about Plan A and what they can offer.
Give us a brief history lesson on how the company got started.
In my role with various construction companies, I found Tilos is the best way to communicate a program, so much so I base my business around it.
I think project planning at times can be over complicated, but Tilos makes it very clear and simple to see and understand so I decided to start my own business to use this method to help companies achieve great results.
What have been the milestones in growth that have occurred?
We’ve met growth milestones regularly with new clients, large construction companies, Tiers 1, 2, and 3. Anytime we get a new client we haven’t worked with before leads to future growth by repeat business, mainly because they are so happy with results achieved with Plan A.
Additionally, now Plan A is a reseller for Tilos Software, and we can now provide the software we love as well as the training, it brings another new growth milestone for Plan A Project Planning as a company.
Geographically, what market do you serve?
Plan A serves all of Australia and has great plans to enter New Zealand and other overseas markets in the future.
What are the key services you sell?
These are some of the things Plan A can deliver:
P6 to Tilos conversions – includes analysis, improvements, presentation
Tender Construction from scratch and delivery in Tilos (dynamic planning)
End of month status updates (Tilos à P6 output)
Training in Tilos (beginner to advanced – group/ one-on-one)
Tilos Licence sales and distribution
What is the percentage makeup of your business currently?
We work with some of the biggest construction companies throughout Australia, and I would say our major involvement is with both Roads and Rail, each having approximately 30% share in our current workload, although there’s also a mix of 30% ongoing within the mines and dam markets too. The last 10% would be electrification projects.
Do you consider yourself a big, medium, or small consultant?
We’re currently a small business but with new opportunities with the Tilos reseller agreement, and with current expansion planned soon we are working towards building our Team under the Plan A banner
What are some significant projects Plan A has worked on?
Plan A has worked on many projects over the years, and some of the most recent are:
Copper String 2.0 in northern QLD
Gold Coast Light rail
Inland Rail
Coffs Harbour Bypass.
and many more. Visit our website https://Tilosplana.com.au/
What Trimble products do you own and how are they used?
Plan A uses Tilos Software on all projects we work on, roads, rail, civil, dams, etc. For those not familiar, Tilos is a world-class linear infrastructure project management software tool, specifically created to make linear project planning easy. This robust scheduling software combines time and distance into one graphical view, successfully planning large and spread-out civil construction projects.
Why did you decide to buy Tilos?
I started using Tilos 12 years ago and found the ease of communication was needed and appreciated in my business for managers, engineers, project managers, project schedulers, and project owners, as well as all the people on the ground so they can understand the program and critical path.
How does Tilos help with cost and time savings?
Tilos allows me to quickly present a program or an idea or strategy to show, for example, the indicative direction of construction – what end are we starting on and what impacts will affect programs – weather, soil, etc., so by the ease of Tilos we can identify these issues quickly and prevent this from happening and have a plan in place.
What would a job be like without Tilos?
What’s been done forever are P6 and Gant charts which take over many pages to convey a message. Tilos is a true time chainage software tool, not only does it present time location charts but there are some serious tools to help planning. My favourite is the ability to easily produce a mass haul program. With Tilos, this is all done within the one software solution – a one-stop-shop for your planning and scheduling workflow.
How has your Trimble Dealer supported your success?
The best thing about our Tilos dealer is the quick turnaround in the resolutions of issues. Great communication is the key even if the issue isn’t a quick fix, and I’m informed of a time and turnaround to help me work around this to ensure I can still deliver my programs on time to my clients.
What three things do you remember when a project is complete?
For me, it’s the introduction of Tilos software to a broader audience and seeing the client’s ability to understand and recognise our critical paths so quickly and easily. I get great satisfaction as I have been lucky enough to work on a diverse range of large nation-building projects. And most importantly finishing a project ahead of time and everyone is excited to see what the Tilos output looks like.
If you would like more information on how Plan A can help you achieve success when it comes to project planning, call Luke on 0411 367 279 or visit their website tilosplana.com.au
