Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback about ALICE! We have been listening and working to build the best generative construction simulation solution. Here are the improvements that have been completed in August:

New features

• Milestone Constraints: Users can now set constraint dates for any milestone. This means that you can set a deadline to finish by which scope should be completed, as well as dates before which a scope cannot be started (for example procurement and delivery dates). ALICE will make sure to optimize your simulations while satisfying those requirements.

• Limit on-site workforce: Maybe you are concerned about social distancing or your site facilities (hoist, man lift, kitchen, porter potties, etc.) and cannot support more people on site than a certain capacity. You can now set a workforce limit that will solve all those problems for every simulation you run.

• Use Selected WBS in P6 Export: ALICE to P6 exports will now have a WBS that matches the one selected in ALICE at the time of the export. This allows users to start with a WBS that better fits their projects and is easier to customize in P6.

• Add resource loading options to P6 export: You can now choose how your ALICE export will be resource loaded in P6! You can export those as activity codes and determine who’s working on what, also you can load them as resources which will give you the exact hours and quantities spent on each task for every resource, generate utilization graphs and be able to use the leveler. The choice is yours!

• Add cost-options to P6 export: You can now also load cost into your ALICE P6 exports. You can do that from the resources mentioned above, or as separate expenses in case you opted for no resource loading. Everything is broken down by labor/material/equipment. Please note that P6 doesn’t support idle cost calculations, hence the idle cost is not exported.

Improvements

• Allow non-numerical UDF's in P6 export: Text UDF's created in ALICE can now be exported to P6, which unlocks the ability to quickly create a custom WBS in P6 that is based on the ALICE UDF's. 

• Add progress columns to CSV export: “Actual Start, Actual Finish, and Hours Remaining” columns have been added to the CSV export. This will be useful for users who either want to track progress in excel, or even import progress from other sources.

• Add Crew Size as a parameter in Operation Formulas: Since construction production rates are sometimes expressed per crew and other times per person, we have made the crew size parameter available for duration formulas as well as equipment and material utilization. This way if you choose to have a bigger crew, the duration and resource consumption values automatically update.