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SmartPM's Information Architecture

SmartPM is organized into four levels: company, project, model, and milestone. Each level sits inside the one above it, and settings flow down from the top. Understanding these levels helps you know where to make changes and how SmartPM analyzes your schedules.

  • Your company contains all your projects.
  • Each project can have multiple models.
  • Each model can track multiple milestones.

Company Level

The company level is your organization’s SmartPM account. Settings made here apply to every project, so all your projects are measured by the same rules.

At the company level, admins manage:

  • Analysis and presentation settings: How SmartPM handles and displays your schedule data
  • Default quality profile: The profile every new project is assigned when it’s created
  • Metadata: The custom fields you can use to tag projects, like region or project type
  • Custom reports and subscriptions: Reports and subscriptions that appear on every project
  • Users: Everyone with access to SmartPM. Users are always added at the company level first, then assigned to projects.

Note: New projects take on the company settings in place when they’re created. Set up your company settings, default quality profile, and metadata before loading your first project.

Project Level

Each project inherits your company settings, then adds its own details:

  • Plan: The SmartPM plan the project uses, like Controls or Essentials
  • Users: The people assigned to the project
  • Full schedule set: Every schedule uploaded to the project
  • Quality profile: The project’s quality profile, if it’s different from the company default
  • Metadata tags: The values assigned to the project, chosen from the fields created at the company level
  • Custom reports and subscriptions: Reports and subscriptions available only on this project
  • Comments and custom calendars
  • AI-assigned trades: The trade and weather susceptibility SmartPM assigns to each activity. Corrections you make apply only to this project.

Model Level

A model determines which schedules from the project’s full schedule set are included in the analysis. Every project starts with a model that includes all its schedules.

You can create additional models to analyze the project from a different starting point. Common uses include:

  • Re-baselining: Starting the analysis from a later update, for example after a major change order
  • Comparing two schedules: Looking at the baseline and the latest update only
  • Excluding an update: Leaving out an update with data you don’t want included

Models can also adjust how certain metrics are calculated, such as excluding procurement activities from percent complete.

Note: Creating a new model doesn’t replace your existing analysis. When you upload a new schedule, every model in the project updates at the same time.

Milestone Level

By default, SmartPM analyzes your schedule through its final activity. Tracking a milestone focuses the analysis on only the activities that drive that milestone.

For example, if your schedule includes activities after substantial completion, like a warranty period, a delay to substantial completion may not show up in the project’s overall analysis. Tracking substantial completion as a milestone shows that delay.

Note: SmartPM runs a full analysis for each milestone in each model. For example, a project with 4 models tracking 5 milestones each runs 20 analyses every time a schedule is uploaded. Adding more models and milestones increases processing time.