Planera makes critical path method (CPM) scheduling easy for the construction industry with a collaborative and visual whiteboard. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Planera CEO and co-founder Nitin Bhandari to learn more about the company.
Nitin Bhandari’s Background
Bhandari is an engineer by background and a three-time tech founder. And Bhandari said:
“I’ve always been drawn to the innovative technologies that are born from startups and have been working in the startup environment for 17 years. Throughout my career, I’ve founded companies including Skyfire, which was acquired by Opera, and Zenlabs, which was acquired by Life360.”
“Most recently, I collaborated with colleagues in the construction industry to co-found Planera, a digital planning tool created to help companies in the construction industry more accurately and easily create project schedules, develop estimates and bids, and create a timeline for project completion.”
Formation Of Planera
How did the idea for Planera come together? Bhandari shared:
“The idea for Planera was developed in 2021 when I was approached by a friend who is a construction company executive who was interested in replacing the legacy scheduling software that has been used in construction planning and scheduling for decades. After struggling with the dated technology for years, he was ready for a new solution. We surveyed the market and realized that there were only two types of solutions in the industry: easy-to-use tools that were unfortunately also extremely limited in their abilities or complex tools that were not only expensive but also difficult to learn and implement for teams.”
“After consulting with ten other construction companies to discuss this issue with their leadership and staff, we quickly realized that the industry desperately needed a solution that was the best of both worlds — powerful yet simple. Together, we created a tool to make construction planning and project management fast, easy, and collaborative.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Bhandari explained:
“Planera’s suite of tools allows users to build, analyze, and optimize schedules to increase profitability, providing a more accessible alternative to the industry’s legacy systems and overly complex Gantt-chart-based scheduling tools. Planera’s project scheduling software eliminates the guesswork in the construction planning, estimation, and risk analysis processes.”
“The software combines the sophisticated capabilities of legacy solutions, such as CPM scheduling, critical path analysis, float management, project filtering, and resource usage graphs, with a simple-to-use online “whiteboard” interface that promotes collaboration and easy access across the entire project team.”
“Planera was developed in collaboration with construction industry professionals to be an accessible and adaptable technology for the construction, engineering, architecture/design, and general contractor sectors. By simplifying the scheduling process for both infrastructure and commercial projects, Planera serves as a multifaceted tool that organizations can use to plan, create timelines, and collaborate with all key project stakeholders.”
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Challenges Faced
What challenges has Bhandari faced in building the company? Bhandari acknowledged:
“Scheduling and planning are core to a construction company’s operations. While everyone is very excited about Planera as a modern alternative to legacy software, they are understandably measured in their adoption of new technology. We encourage our customers to start with a pilot project, experience the benefits of our collaborative platform, and then roll it out across more projects. We encourage this approach as we are building a very long-term relationship with our customers.”
Evolution Of Planera’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Bhandari noted:
“We started off with a collaborative platform that allowed users to create a baseline schedule. This is the plan one puts together before the project starts and is often the basis of winning a job. Then, we expanded to add the ability to do detailed resource planning.”
“Once the baseline was perfected, we added the ability for users to add progress updates to the schedule and run the project on our platform from start to finish.”
“More recently, we have added the ability for our customers to quantify project schedule quality and future risk in a way that is very powerful, yet very simple to use.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Bhandari cited:
“This year, Planera launched from stealth with $5.4 million in pre-seed funding. Recently, we also announced its industry-first Risk Analysis tool, which simulates thousands of potential scenarios to help assess and quantify schedule risk associated with an array of project contingencies.”
“The tool is integrated into Planera’s CPM scheduling and planning solution, and addresses a significant gap in the industry where contractors previously had no way to accurately and comprehensively quantify risk while preparing project schedules and cost estimates.”
“With Planera, contractors can quickly simulate risk and measure impact based on advanced statistical analysis. With recent economic and supply chain challenges, it is critical for construction professionals to have a comprehensive picture of risk and plan for every scenario using modern software. ConTech solutions like Planera’s Risk Analysis Tool allow organizations to ensure they can accurately anticipate all variables and minimize disruption throughout projects.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Bhandari about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“Shimmick Construction uses Planera to build more accurate pre-construction schedules by analyzing the optimum usage of resources and adjusting the project plan to minimize resource spikes and maximize profitability.”
“California Engineering Contractors, the West Coast’s leading heavy construction contractor, recently announced that they will be integrating Planera’s new Risk Analysis tool for projects in 2024. CEC has previously worked on projects including the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge and BART system renovations, and their interest in the tool as well as how it will be applied in upcoming projects.”
“There are dozens of other customer success stories, which continue to grow every month.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Bhandari assessed:
“Construction is a $12 trillion industry, possibly more. The industry is going through a rapid modernization wave with the goal of increasing efficiency and profitability. If we deliver on our vision to democratize scheduling and planning so companies can make good business decisions daily, we are looking at a $10 billion to $15 billion TAM.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Bhandari affirmed:
“Legacy incumbents have powerful features but are incredibly hard to use, so very few people in a construction company are able to use them. New challengers are trying to make software easier to use but are removing important functionality like resource loading and full critical path scheduling.”
“Our approach is to build software that is both powerful and very easy to use so everyone in the project can participate in scheduling and planning.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Bhandari pointed out:
“Planera is already a market-leading product for long-duration scheduling and planning, which is referred to as Master Scheduling in the construction industry. There is tremendous demand from our customers to also allow them to do weekly and daily planning on Planera. So we are investing heavily in that product expansion.”
“Planera is the only product that allows users to easily quantify risk using Monte Carlo simulations. Moving forward, we will also invest heavily in improving the ability to model and quantify all sorts of unexpected challenges in a project.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Bhandari concluded:
“Construction projects are hard and have a lot of moving pieces. We believe that the best outcomes are reached when the entire team can participate in building and maintaining the schedule and has the ability to plan for contingencies. Central planning does not work well for large and complex projects.”
“The construction industry will rapidly move towards a model where best practices are centralized but execution is distributed at the team level. That will be made possible by a new wave of modern software tools, and we think Planera is well positioned to help drive that transformation.”
