What is AI project controls?
AI project controls is project controls software that reads a capital project's own documents and systems, keeps one project record from them, answers questions from that record with computed figures and their sources, and proposes changes that people approve. It covers the schedule, the cost, the risks, the contract and the changes, together.
Five principles that make it project controls, not a chatbot
- 01One recordThe schedule, the model, the cost, the risks and the contract read from the same record, so they cannot disagree with each other in a review.
- 02Figures by tools, sentences by the modelEvery number is computed from the record and cites its source. The language model never produces a figure.
- 03It proposes, people decideAnything that would change the project waits for the person with authority, and the approval is kept with a name and a time.
- 04With the asker's accessAn answer never shows a person more than that person may see, in a meeting, a chat or a report.
- 05The day it happensA letter, a progress update or a clause deadline reaches the record when it arrives, not when the monthly report is written.
Questions, answered plainly
- What is project controls?
- Project controls is the discipline that keeps a capital project on time and on budget: planning and scheduling, cost control and forecasting, risk management, contract administration and change control. On a large project it is a team of planners, cost engineers, risk and contract managers, and the reports they produce.
- What does AI add to project controls?
- Three things. It reads the documents and messages a project already produces, so facts reach the record the day they happen instead of in the monthly report. It ties each fact to the activities, clauses and milestones it affects. And it prepares the options, such as ways to recover a milestone, so the people with authority decide with the figures in front of them.
- Is AI project controls the same as asking a chat model about my project?
- No. A chat model produces words, including numbers, from patterns in text; it will give a float or a forecast whether or not it knows it. AI project controls computes every figure with a tool from the project record (the critical path engine, the float calculator, earned value) and cites the record it came from. The model only writes the sentence. An answer that cannot be computed says so.
- Does the AI change the schedule or the budget on its own?
- It should not, and in Verian it does not. The AI proposes: a risk, a recovery, a progress update, a draft notice. A person with the authority approves, and the approval is recorded with a name and a time. Scenarios are sandboxes; baselines are locked.
- What does it read?
- Schedules from Primavera P6 (XER, XML) and Microsoft Project; IFC 3D models; Excel and CSV registers; Outlook and Gmail mailboxes; Microsoft Teams meetings and chats; progress from site on a phone; SAP and other ERP exports.
- How is it different from a dashboard or a reporting tool?
- A dashboard shows what was entered. AI project controls reads the sources, reconciles them into one record, and answers questions nobody built a chart for, with the sources shown. The difference is felt in the review: a question gets an answer in the meeting, not an action item to check after it.
- Who uses it?
- Owners, EPC contractors and engineering firms running capital projects: oil and gas, energy and utilities, infrastructure, mining, transport. Within those, planners and schedulers, cost engineers, risk and contract managers, and project directors.
- Where does the data live?
- Verian is hosted on Microsoft Azure. Each organization's data is isolated from other organizations' data at the row level, and the AI answers each person with that person's own access. SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certification are in progress.
How Verian does it
Verian is a project controls service built on these principles. Verian’s team keeps the client’s project record current every day on Verian’s own AI platform, eleven applications on one record from Schedule Intelligence and 4D Scheduling to Risk Management, Financial Controls, Contract Intelligence and Change Control, and delivers the figures, forecasts and reports. The client’s people log in, see everything live, and make the decisions. Verian does not sit in the client’s meetings or negotiate for them.