16 Powerful Real-World Project Modeling Capabilities

Modern projects rarely fail because organizations lack scheduling software—they fail because the software cannot accurately model real-world operations. Complex projects involve detailed resource constraints, workforce preferences, shift rules, space limitations, and countless operational dependencies that generic project management tools often struggle to represent. Aurora was designed to address these challenges with advanced project modeling capabilities that create more accurate, realistic, and executable schedules.

Accurate modeling is the foundation of effective scheduling in complex operational environments. A project management scheduling solution is only as good as the model it uses to represent real-world operations, including resource availability, task dependencies, qualifications, business rules, and operational constraints. In this blog, we will break down some of the advanced project modeling capabilities Aurora has that other applications are missing. Such capabilities help organizations achieve accurate and consistent schedules, on time and within budget.

Note: Job / Task / Activity are used analogously.

Key Features of Aurora

Aurora is an intelligent project management (PM) and scheduler that can model and optimize complex projects or portfolios of projects, such as those found in capital projects, aircraft assembly, aircraft MRO, nuclear construction and maintenance, ship production and repair, energy capital projects as well as many other domains. In particular, Aurora’s optimization intelligently and automatically optimizes that allocation of resources to shorten the overall project duration, this greater through[ut results in increased cash flow and reduced risk. This is because final payment is due once the project is completed and project risk is eliminated once the project is complete. One of Aurora’s most valuable capabilities is its ability to define detailed activity-level settings that accurately represent how work is actually performed.

Powerful Real-World Project Modeling

1. Labor Preferences

Important questions to ask yourself: What labor does a task / activity prefer to use?

Under the assumption that you are doing more detailed labor modeling and you are not using just pooled labor, which is often true, the human scheduler, for example, may prefer to use Bob and Henry over, let’s say, Oscar and Roger based on experience, qualifications, or familiarity with the work. These preferences help produce schedules that better reflect operational reality.

2. Shift Constraints

Important questions to ask yourself: Are you okay with going across shift boundaries? Are you okay with going over a night break?

Keeping varying shift constraints in mind gives you more control over whether a job actually interacts with the timeline in a realistic way. Aurora provides options to model these shift constraints correctly.

3. Compatibility

Sometimes you’ll have two jobs that normally can’t be scheduled at the same time (e.g., because of resource contention). They both might need the same space zone, but in fact, because of the way the work is performed, maybe it’s the same person performing both activities or maybe they’re able to fit  together. You can actually mark those specific jobs as compatible and indicate whether they have to share resources.

4. Exclusivity

This is a way of saying one thing cannot happen at the same time as some set of other things. Essentially, you don’t really want to add more constraints to your network than you have to. By allowing for exclusivity constraints, one can ensure that the work happens in a realistic way without, either 1) having to add a whole bunch of temporal constraints, or 2) adding a bunch of “fake” resources, which is the most common way that it’s modeled by less capable tools.

5. Interruptiblity

This capability allows a job to be chopped into smaller chunks. For example, this may be necessary in a scenario where a person performing a rather long job can actually stop in the middle to help out with something else and then resume their work at a later time.

6. Alternative Resource Sets: varying combinations of resources with their associated duration

This is the ability, at the task / activity level, to say, for example, well I could use two labor resources and one zone or I could use three labor resources and two zones, but it gets done faster. Aurora provides different ways that a job’s requirements could be satisfied and its associated duration, if and only if it has a duration impact.

7. Efficiency Modifier for Labor Resources

If you’re doing detailed labor resources, some of your labor will be more experienced than others. As such, this is a way to, at the very least, take experienced mechanics, intermediate mechanics, and beginning mechanics into account, and automatically skew your estimated project duration up or down based on who is selected.

8. Capacity Change Constraints for Dynamic State Modeling

Capacity change constraints are a slightly unusual thing that can be used for a lot of different things such as when a job changes the capacity of a resource permanently. A simple example of this can be illustrated through space zones. Let’s say you have a bunch of things that need to use a space zone, but there is a panel installation operation that makes that zone permanently inaccessible. So in that case, that panel installation would be changing that capacity from say one to zero. Or conversely, maybe you’re doing some floor installation and so suddenly a zone that did not previously exist now does exist. Bottom line: it allows for more flexibility, modeling the changing state as you build, assemble, install, etc.

9. Concurrent and Non-Concurrent Constraints

Aurora has the ability to model concurrent and non-concurrent constraints, which can be defined as relations between two specific jobs similar to standard precedents. With concurrent constraints, the jobs need to overlap. It’s very common with an observation or assistant job. For example, the shorter job needs to happen during the longer job, but you may be more flexible about when exactly. With non-concurrent constraints, they cannot overlap for whatever reason. This presents a more specific instance of exclusivity.

10. Time Window Restrictions

Most scheduling systems let you do an early-start date and a late-end date to place a time fence on your jobs. Aurora is more flexible than this by allowing for flow-based date restrictions. Very often with a refined model where one is trying to build more or less the same thing over and over again, you may well have certain jobs that are fenced to happen on day two, for example. The Aurora intelligent scheduler has the option to do time window restrictions to fence that work in a repeatable way.

Analytic Assistance Capabilities

Building an accurate schedule is only part of the scheduling process. Aurora also provides powerful analytic capabilities that help planners understand why schedules are generated, identify bottlenecks, evaluate alternatives, and make more informed decisions throughout project execution.

11. Per-Job Scheduling Explanations

During schedule generation, Aurora produces per-job explanations that help users understand why each activity was scheduled in its assigned position. These insights make it easier to validate scheduling decisions and refine project models when necessary. 

12. Causal Chain Analysis For Any Job

Oftentimes, the critical chain (resource-constrained critical path), which is the causal chain through the whole schedule taking into consideration limited resources, needs to be analyzed. You may need to know the causal chain for a specific work area or subset of work. In this case, you can do a causal chain starting with any job in the model and see what is driving that job. Is it a precedent? Is it precedence plus resource contention?

13. Upstream / Downstream Job Analysis

Upstream job analysis reveals everything a particular job is dependent on. It starts with the job and it walks back through the network including all the constraint types mentioned above as well as resource constraint links.

Downstream job analysis is the opposite. It starts with the job, and then goes to all of its successors and their successors. So it’s everything that is dependent on that job, which can be incredibly useful, if you have, for example, part delays.

14. Point-to-Point Analysis

Within a big network, you may want to know how and whether two particular jobs are related. Please look at Figure 1 and note the tasks that have been selected have a bolded dashed outline.

Figure 1.

You pick the two jobs, you run the point-to-point analysis, and it shows the subnet network between those two jobs, making it easier to get a handle on a chunk of work in a much larger network. Please look at Figure 2.

Figure 2.

15. Monte Carlo Analysis for Risk Assessment

Aurora supports Monte Carlo analysis for project schedules. You can run multiple Monte Carlo simulations automatically, and Aurora then summarizes the outcomes—highlighting the shortest (best-case) schedule, the most likely schedule, and the maximum (worst-case) schedule. This helps you evaluate how robust your plan is.  Aurora is the only software that can run Monte Carlo analysis taking into account all the modeling details described above.

16. Tracking Resource Support

This is the ability to set any resource for tracking, either permanently or temporarily. It effectively lets you turn off a resource from consideration in the schedule. It still takes the calendar for the tracked resource into account, but it pretends it is unlimited. For instance, if you’re trying to determine what would happen if you had as much labor as you possibly needed, you could set your labor resources to tracking, and at that point, it would just be your network and your space zones as well as other things enforcing the schedule. It’s a great way to leverage extreme what-if scenarios and better identify the drivers in your schedule.

Connect with an Expert

Want to know if Aurora is a right fit for your project or would like to know about a specific project modeling capability not listed here? Connect with a product architect to discuss how Aurora can be customized for your project environment. Complete the contact form below to set up a one-on-one consultation today!