InEight, a leading developer of construction project management software, is again advancing technology solutions for capital projects. Today, the company announced that it acquired BASIS, a company that develops an artificial intelligence (AI) planning software tool. Built specifically for capital projects, BASIS takes the guesswork out of building a project plan by using knowledge-driven machine learning to create more realistic and achievable project schedules. As a part of the acquisition, BASIS Founder and CEO Dr. Dan Patterson will join the InEight executive leadership team as chief design officer.
BASIS was founded on Patterson’s vision to provide a tool that helps more accurately forecast large, complex capital projects. Designed to complement existing critical path method (CPM) scheduling tools, BASIS uses AI to assist and guide planners through the process of building a project plan. The software can capture insights and learnings from prior projects and use the stored knowledge to make informed suggestions during the planning process. BASIS also allows project team members to give their expert opinion through a very simple-to-use scorecard. With BASIS, planners can spend up to 40 percent less time building plans and reduce the amount of time used in gathering team member feedback by up to 75 percent.
“Our customers have been asking us to help them transform the planning and scheduling process since it has such a direct impact on their ability to deliver capital projects on time and on budget,” said InEight CEO Jake Macholtz. “The addition of BASIS gives our customers a powerful new tool to take advantage of everything they’ve learned on past projects and decades of knowledge from their own experts. This allows them to create the best project plan possible and a schedule that their teams can actually meet.”
BASIS’ customers understand the power of incorporating this information into their processes. For example, Aker BP, one of the largest independently-listed oil companies in Europe, uses BASIS to enhance its project planning.
“For Aker BP, implementing BASIS was a no-brainer,” said Chris Westland, planning manager – projects, Aker BP. “As we ‘teach’ the tool over time, we expect that leveraging the use of our extensive historical data will enable us to build realistic schedules for offshore oil & gas development projects much earlier than we would normally, with much fewer iterations. We see that this could enable us to bring more projects through the decision process as we will have much more confidence in the possible schedule outcomes at that early stage. Through the close, collaborative relationship that we have with the BASIS team, we are completely engaged with them to ensure the continual development and improvement of the tool. Going forward, we see BASIS as a key component of our digital road map to improve project planning and execution in our business.”
Purpose-built for construction, BASIS will become the flagship offering of InEight’s planning and scheduling solutions and be renamed InEight BASIS in the coming months. The addition of BASIS aligns with InEight’s portfolio strategy to provide solutions for every stage of capital projects from pre-construction to operations.
BASIS creator will continue to innovate with InEight
In his new role as InEight’s chief design officer, Patterson will continue to innovate and develop BASIS software, expanding on his vision of creating an effective planning and scheduling software solution for the construction industry.
Patterson has more than two decades of experience revolutionizing how the construction industry uses technology to solve problems on large-scale capital projects. He has a proven track record of designing and developing innovative planning, scheduling and risk analytics software for project management. Patterson previously created and sold two companies that were predecessors to BASIS’ technology and are widely used on capital projects today.
“When people think of big projects, they usually think of them as being behind schedule and over budget. That’s exactly the challenge we set out to solve with BASIS,” Patterson said. “I like to say that you get one shot at execution — but when you’re planning, you have unlimited chances to get it right. My long-term vision is to change the way we plan projects, so that the frequency of project failure is massively reduced. With the acquisition by InEight, we are now able to accelerate that vision.”
Acquisition furthers InEight goal of end-to-end project management solutions
The acquisition of BASIS comes on the heels of InEight’s acquisition in April of QA Software —including its flagship product, TeamBinder, a comprehensive document management and collaboration solution. Now with the addition of BASIS, InEight will be able to provide key project stakeholders, including contractors, owners and engineers, with end-to-end project management solutions purpose-built by experts who understand construction and the complexity of capital projects.
Additional information about InEight’s acquisition of BASIS can be found at https://ineight.com/basis-acquisition.