What is a Milestone?
In Visibuild, a milestone is a significant programme event that marks a point of progress or completion.
The most common milestone on your project will probably be "concrete pour" so we will use that as an example in this help article.
The biggest benefit of using milestones on your project is to ensure that Visi completion is keeping up with the project progress.
Here are some key characteristics of milestones in Visibuild:
Visibility and Tracking
They provide visibility into project progress, allowing team members to easily track and understand the significant points in the project timeline.
Linked Visis
Milestones in Visibuild are often linked with the related inspection or task Visis. By linking progress to QA we can understand if milestones have progressed onsite without completing the linked Visis.
Target & Completion Dates
Milestones can have target dates, indicating the timeframe within which they are expected to be achieved. This adds a time-sensitive aspect to project planning.
Each milestone also has a completion date and corresponding status, indicating whether it has been achieved or is still in planning. This status is updated when completion dates are entered.
Adding Milestones to Templates
When adding a milestone to your templates, this will allow you to report on the quality completion against your project progress milestones.
Each milestone that requires Visis to be complete before the critical works proceed onsite should be linked to the related template (or multiple templates)
Simply find the inspection in your template that needs to be 100% complete for the milestone to proceed onsite.
Using the concrete pour milestone example we can associate this with the Pre Pour inspection as we know that this needs to be complete for the concrete pour to proceed onsite.
When you create this Visi in your project, it will either create a milestone at the same time or it will link itself to another milestone if one already exists in the same location. This prevents any double ups which could effect your program reporting.
Do all my milestones need to be linked to a template?
No they do not. The same way in which you create a Visi in your project, is the same way you can create a milestone without any Visis attached. To allow you to report effectively, we know that your milestones will not always have quality assurance needs attached to it. So with or without a template you know you can report on progress confidently.
Creating milestones
Milestones can be created in two different ways. They can either be created when creating a Visi. Or they can be created on their own like any other Visi type. The milestone will create itself to a location only once. This prevents the idea of any double up occuring. If you create a Visi with a linked milestone and that milestone is already at that location, instead of creating another one it will link itself to the current existing one.
Milestone Trackers
A milestone tracker will help you to visually identify the status of key milestones and compare them directly to the status of the linked Visis.
These trackers will be accessible by anyone on your project but only new views can be set up by your project admins.
Creating a Tracker
In Visibuild you have the ability to have multiple milestone trackers running at one time. These allow you the luxury to report on, individual blocks, towers or locations within your project. The trackers will automatically link to milestones currently created or to be created in your project. Follow this guide to create an effective milestone tracker for your project.
Naming your Tracker
Name your tracker to how you wish to track the progress of your project. The tracker will pull in all milestones from the locations you select in the following steps.
The name of your tracker can reflect individual towers or blocks on your project as an example.
Selecting Locations
This step will help you determine the horizontal axis in which your locations will be aggregated up too. Ensure that you only select locations to the highest level you wish to report on. If you wish to track level by level progression only select your overall level locations, do not select any locations lower than those. This will result in a poorly laid out tracker.
Review
Once you have given your tracker a name and selected the locations you wish to report holistically on. You will be presented with a review screen, this will give you a quick oversight on the previously mentioned information but also what milestones you can expect to see in your tracker before creating it.
Interacting with the Milestone Tracker
Just like other areas of Visibuild you can interact with every cell in the milestone tracker to drill deeper and deeper into the data.
By selecting level 3 concrete pours I can view the summary of all concrete pour milestones within the Level 3 location heirachy.
Dive even deeper by clicking the title of Level 3 Pour 1 to view the Milestone details page. Here you can get a breakdown of the status of each Visi linked to this specific milestone.
