In the commercial construction industry, project delays, cost overruns, and disputes are often seen as unavoidable challenges. However, Michael Pink, CEO of SmartPM Technologies, believes these issues can be mitigated—if companies start looking in the right place. According to Pink, the key to improving project outcomes lies within schedule data, an often overlooked but incredibly valuable resource.
“There’s gold in them thar hills when it comes to schedule data,” Pink said in a recent interview. “When you study it deeply, it answers 90 percent of the questions about a construction project. It tells you whether the project is going well, what’s impacting it, and what problems may arise down the road.”
SmartPM Technologies, the company Pink founded in 2017, is a data analytics platform that specializes in automating the analysis of construction schedule data. The platform helps companies identify risks, improve efficiency, and prevent costly disputes before they occur.
Finding Opportunity in Construction Delays
Pink’s journey into the world of construction analytics began nearly two decades ago. After graduating from Georgia Tech with a degree in industrial engineering, he sought a consulting job in New York City and landed at KPMG, where he worked in the firm’s construction consulting and dispute resolution practice. It was there that he realized that every construction project—no matter how large or small—depended on the same fundamental component: its schedule.
“Whenever I needed to understand what was happening on a job site, I turned to the schedule,” Pink said. “It was the most unbiased source of truth. It could tell me if a project was in trouble, why delays were happening, and whether cost overruns were inevitable.”
But analyzing schedules was a time-consuming and complex task. Most companies lacked the resources or expertise to extract meaningful insights from their project timelines. Recognizing this gap, Pink set out to develop software that could automate the process and provide real-time insights to project managers, contractors, and owners.
