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93% accuracy years into the future. 80 weather variables. One integration that could save your next project from costly delays.
Executive Summary
In a groundbreaking webinar, Asta Powerproject and EHAB's WeatherWise platform revealed their new integration that brings data-driven weather intelligence directly into construction schedules. The implications for project planning are profound:
Three Hard-Hitting Takeaways:
- The Industry is Flying Blind: Poll results showed the majority of planners still rely on extending individual activities or applying generic winter downtime calendars—essentially educated guesswork that leaves millions in weather-related delays on the table.
- The Data Changes Everything: WeatherWise combines 80 weather variables from 60+ satellite sources and 20,000 ground stations worldwide, achieving 93% accuracy in weather predictions multiple years into the future. This isn't weather forecasting—it's climate-informed risk modeling that works anywhere on Earth, from UK construction sites to the Amazon rainforest.
- Implementation Takes Minutes, Not Months: The integration requires no new schedules or complex workflows. Export your Asta plan, run it through WeatherWise's machine learning models, and import updated calendars with location-specific weather exception days. The biggest barrier? Getting IT approval to install the add-in.
Full Webinar Transcript
"Transforming Project Planning with Weather Intelligence" Asta Powerproject + EHAB WeatherWise Integration Webinar
[0:08] AMY LAW (Asta Powerproject): Okay, good afternoon everyone. I hope you're well. I'm Amy Law from Alicosoft. We are here today for our webinar on transforming project planning with weather intelligence. We are going to skip through a couple of slides just so I can give you a bit of a brief on what we're going to cover today. Hopefully you can all see my screen.
So we're going to do a quick round of introductions to everyone that we've got on the call. A quick overview of Alicosoft and Asta and the Asta suite. Hand over to Josh from EHAB to give us a quick overview of WeatherWise. We've got a bit of a discussion session and then some demos of both platforms and the integration that we're going to talk to you about today.
There is a Q&A function on the webinar. So they will come through to us and we'll answer those at the end. And in a second I'm going to launch the first poll. We'd just like to get a steer on who on the call is an existing Asta customer and EHAB or if you're new to us both. So I'll get that launched while we do introductions. So if I hand over to Josh first.
[1:10] JOSH GRAHAM (EHAB/WeatherWise): Thanks Amy. Yeah, hey everyone. Good to be here. Yeah, I'm Josh Graham. I'm the founder of EHAB. So we're a tech company. We've been around for about six years now. So really excited to be here and obviously weather is top of mind for us all the time every day. So really excited to share some of our insights. I basically work on the business side of things. So if you are an existing EHAB customer then I probably know you already. But yeah looking forward to the discussion today. So I'll hand back to you Amy.
[1:46] AMY: Super. Thanks Josh. Andrew, do you want to go next?
[1:46] ANDREW NORR (Asta Powerproject): Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm Andrew Norr, head of business development at Alicosoft. Been with the company for a couple of years and been working with Josh for I think probably at least the last year on this integration. So really excited to finally show everyone.
[2:06] AMY: Super. And Bob or Chris, do you also want to...
[2:06] CHRIS "BOB" RAY (Asta Powerproject): Hi everyone. I'm Chris Ray also known as Bob. If you're an Asta user you may have heard of me. I've been with the company now for the last 32 years. I'm pretty much Asta through and through and I get involved down in the integrations and other parts of the business.
[2:24] AMY: Super. Thank you. Right. Thanks everyone. That's an excellent poll response. So I'm going to end that there. And flip on through to our next slide. So I think Andrew, it's over to you for this next bit.
[2:42] ANDREW: Yeah. So I mean it looks like from the poll most people are fairly familiar with us but for the few that aren't we'll just run through some really quick slides explaining who we are. So Alicosoft is a software developer—we develop solutions across the built environment. Two sides of the business: one side which we're talking about mainly today is the construction side of the business where our flagship product Asta sits, which is what we'll be talking about today. But there are other solutions in there as well including our forthcoming Asta Estimate which is an estimating tool linked to Asta that will be growing heavily in the new year. So keep an eye out for that.
But then on the other side of the business we also do a lot in prop tech asset management. So if you do have any interest in that do reach out and we can tell you more about what we do in that area as well.
Just a little bit about us mainly about the Asta side of the business. So very widely used project scheduling tool. 75% of all UK building projects are using us at the moment. But we are not just in the UK. So we are in 50 countries worldwide. And ever expanding list of customers in those countries as well. And notably been on some really big projects in the past. Things like Tottenham Stadium, Battersea Power Station, Co-op Live Arena. You name it, we've been there.
[4:01] ANDREW (continued): Next slide. So the Asta suite—we like to talk about it as a suite—is a full cycle tool for scheduling and managing your project. Scheduling is at the heart of everything that we do. But we also take that a lot further. So we offer solutions for 4D planning as well directly within our scheduling environment and then tools around that to manage your information in the cloud. So we have a cloud data environment where you can hold all your data and manage it as well as collaborate with others in your project. And then we have tools to connect out to the field. And that could be either through the tools that we provide, which we'll talk a bit about in a minute, or as we're talking about here, integrations into other tools that you might use within your everyday workflows.
So how that fits together, if we go to the next slide, is into a number of products. So the one product that we're going to be talking about today, well, exclusively really from this suite, I think, is Asta Powerproject. So this is our flagship desktop tool for scheduling your project information. But then outside of that or on top of that we also have Asta Vision and Vision Live. So this is our collaboration modules that sit in the cloud and allow everyone to connect into the same projects and manage that data.
And then also where we'll have a lot of these connections happening in the future as well. So just about to release in the new year an API for Vision which will allow you to connect in any of your progress or site tools into your schedule as well. But on top of that we also as I mentioned have a 4D solution directly within Asta Powerproject to allow you to connect your BIM models directly to the schedule or even use BIM models to help create those schedules for you. So it's really a 4D tool aimed at the planners as opposed to BIM specialists—really easy to use and quick to connect.
And then we've got our site tool. So Asta Site Progress allows you to take your schedule information out onto site and report back what's been done, including evidencing it with photos and more information. And we will be updating this in the new year as well with Part L compliance. So keep an eye out for that. And finally, Connect is our tool that allows you to break down your schedule on site into more of a last planner type methodology and report back to the schedule.
So as I said, we won't be covering many of those today. It'll just be mainly Asta Powerproject and showing how that integrates with EHAB. But if you are interested in any of the rest of this, if you're an existing customer, obviously reach out to your account manager, give us a drop us an email afterwards. We'll be happy to talk you through more in more detail.
[6:35] AMY: Super. Thank you. And then I think over to you Josh.
[6:41] JOSH: Yeah, thanks so much for that. And maybe just one point to what Andy was just showing there—we're really excited by this first integration, but it may well be that there are more things that we can be doing with the Asta suite. So if you have any thoughts that come up through this process and about weather in general and climate and how that data might be useful in other parts of your Asta suite, shout. We're really open to suggestions and ideas. So we'd love to discuss that with you.
And I think it's probably quite obvious to a lot of people here why WeatherWise should exist. I'm sure most of you have had weather challenges on projects before. So it's nothing new if you've been scheduling projects across the UK. I know we always complain in the UK about our bad weather. Obviously it's a global challenge and you may have heard of this thing called climate change. So it's something that is affecting all of us. In the UK it means we're getting much wetter. So those changing weather patterns are a big reason why we started the company EHAB and built the WeatherWise solution.
And obviously when you have more rainfall or even hotter summers... I was at an event last week talking about the impact of hotter summers on health and safety. Something you might not think about. You obviously might think hotter summers, great that's fantastic, but unfortunately it means more injuries. So there's a really broad spectrum of weather impact and that's why we exist. And obviously layer that on top with increasingly complex schedules and deliverables that have lots of different interactions with the weather itself. Then it means that we think that there's a need for just much greater accuracy when it comes to [weather planning].
So a lot of the folks on the call probably have been using their experience or maybe some basic data to make assessments. And I'm actually really keen to understand on the call what are the approaches that people have been taking to date. So I know some people have built complex spreadsheets and update those sorts of things. That is very rare. So most people just say okay winter downtime calendars one day a week. So really curious to hear your thoughts and I think we're going to have a poll on that in a minute.
But the tool that we're going to show you today from a WeatherWise perspective is how do we combine weather and climate data? How do we layer that into your schedule and basically empower better decisions so that we can have that successful project delivery?
[9:08] JOSH (continued): Next slide please Amy. And I think the really simple workflow that I'm going to show is basically combining the schedule with the weather data which is automatically all pulled into the system. We then have a machine learning model which looks at climate trends, different types of extreme value theory, lots of different things. And then some of the outputs are going to be what we're going to show today in terms of integrating information into Asta as well as also giving you information where you can basically make decisions around mitigation or optimization of your schedule, obviously with the overall aim of trying to reduce downtime and improve project planning and forward thinking around risk. So yeah, that's what I'm going to focus on today.
[9:58] AMY: Super. Should we pop your poll up, Josh, while we're on topic?
[10:04] JOSH: Yeah, I think it's... yeah, really curious to understand how do people add weather into their schedules today? So as I mentioned, some people might hide it in the actual activities themselves. Just extend the activities based on when you're originally planning. I know some folks would put in maybe a calendar for concreting works or for winter working. Again, I've seen people also just put it in at the end as time risk allowance (TRA). So yeah, keen to kind of get your thoughts on this.
And interesting actually to see such a broad spectrum. I often see people really going for one or the other but let's see which wins out. And I don't know Bob if you might have a view on any of the other ways that people have are inputting that but I just put other as a kind of generic catchall because I know we could probably go into loads of detail about it.
[11:02] BOB: Okay, well I should have said this at the beginning but the first four are usually the way people manage it...
[11:14] JOSH: I was going to say it's proven me right even though I can't prove that you've proven me right that extending each individual activity is the... what I was going to say is probably usually the one that wins out.
[11:21] AMY: Super. End that poll for us.
[11:28] AMY (continued): Okay, right let's click on. So we've got some questions just ahead of the demos. So the first one is for you Bob. Obviously if anybody else wants to kind of intervene with answers. So Bob can you talk to us about the types of data that are being brought into Asta Powerproject from WeatherWise and how often it's updated?
[11:55] BOB: So the data that comes in—what we do is we use your current schedule. You've exported it out to WeatherWise. WeatherWise produces the update information and we can consume that back in. And every time we bring it back in, we're bringing it into the same schedule. Obviously, you can have baselines and stuff like that from previous versions of it, but you bring it into your live project and it will then adjust or create and update calendars on each of those tasks as required. And the frequency is as often as you want. But the key is you stay with your original schedule, not creating a new schedule from that information. It's just updating your current schedule.
[12:32] AMY: Super. And then this one probably for you, Josh. What types of weather data and what sources underpin the WeatherWise platform and how do you validate those for accuracy at specific sites?
[12:43] JOSH: Okay. Well, the short answer is we have 80 different variables, things like wind speeds at different heights, rainfall, soil moisture. So lots and lots of different things. Obviously, the common standard—temperature, wind, rain, gusts—are probably the ones that are most commonly used. We get that from a real range of sources. So I think we've got about 60 different satellite sources now in the system as well as obviously all of the Met stations around the UK and if you're working globally there's about 20,000 ground stations that we pull data in from. So there is good global coverage.
In terms of the accuracy piece, it obviously depends—in places like the UK versus Antarctica, then there's obviously just greater data coverage. But because of that satellite data source, it's usually reasonably accurate. And then obviously when you're combining it with the probabilistic model that we run in the system, that increases the accuracy even further. So we're actually about to publish a big report on about 300 projects running in the system. That should give you a good idea, but when we ran that last time, it was about a 93% accuracy even multiple years into the future. So we're hoping we can get 90% again.
[14:00] AMY: Super. And I guess same question for you Josh as I asked Bob. So how often are those forecasts updated and are there risk metrics assigned?
[14:14] JOSH: Yeah. So I mean the data in the platform for that long-term modeling updates every month. So at the end of... in fact now today is when the November data will have been updated. So usually it's about 3 days after the end of the month. But if you start a project halfway through the month it will use data up to the preceding day. So yeah it updates pretty regularly.
[14:42] AMY: Super. Okay. And then I think one for you, Andrew. So how do you see this integration evolving over the next few years? I know you've been talking about AI features and what's coming up. So how does that interlink with our integration that you have?
[14:55] ANDREW: I think so at the moment what we'll see when we get to the demo stage, the integration is very much a Powerproject integration. It's a file-based import that we're bringing data into Powerproject. I think in the future where we see all of our integrations going is via the Vision platform to give that central integration point not at the user level but at the project level. And I think the thing that we'll probably be looking to do with integrations like this is make them a bit more real time. As opposed to being a kind of send off, do something, get information back, but instead getting real-time information into the schedule as you're processing it. At the moment obviously not possible, but that's where we'd like to get to with it.
[15:36] AMY: See that? Okay. And then last one, I think this one's for you, Bob. For our existing Asta Powerproject users, what's the timeline and effort to set up this integration if they want to use the EHAB... as it's very...
[15:51] BOB: Yeah, it's very simple. It's a case of installing the add-on which will then appear in the add-on section, exporting your project out to WeatherWise and then just receiving an updated XML file from that with any updates and then you can obviously repeat that process as frequently as you want. But to set up it's a matter of—I'm not saying minutes but literally... not years.
[16:19] AMY: Super. Okay. Excellent. So I think I need to hand over to you Josh don't I? Hang on let me just stop sharing my screen and then I can make you the presenter.
LIVE DEMO: WEATHERWISE PLATFORM
[16:44] JOSH: Right, so folks. Hopefully you can hear me well. Just let me know if not. But the WeatherWise platform obviously aims to give you all of the weather information that you need really from the earliest phases of a construction project all the way through to delivery and even into operation as well. I'm going to show you a couple of reports in the platform that kind of do some of the preceding work before the integration into Asta.
So when you land on your homepage, you can basically select a site and you'll notice there's kind of a dropdown to-do list on the left hand side. So that always will show on each of your reports, which is kind of your setup. So I've just selected a project in Ireland that I use as a demo. It's usually pretty rainy there. So that helps.
And what I can do is basically get data from this in a few different ways. So I'm showing you this to highlight just how many different data sets that we pull into the system. So I can choose to cut and chop my data from just the last 5 years, the last 10 years, the last 15. It goes all the way back to 1979. Obviously depending on how you cut and chop the data, you'll see different climate trends within that data.
And the standard variables that we load in automatically is temperature, precipitation, wind speed. But as I mentioned, we have quite a lot. So things like cloud cover, potentially useful if you are working where you need solar panels for equipment, humidity and moisture. We have loads of marine variables now. So for those folks doing coastal work or offshore work, that's pretty important.
But some of the more interesting ones maybe if you are doing house building or things of that nature, then soil moisture. So this is where satellite data comes in really handy. You can load in soil moisture and we'll help you understand not just when is rain falling but also when is the soil saturated. So when you're doing big excavation work that's obviously going to impact you. And wind direction as well—so wind direction at different heights. Again this is quite useful if you're working in urban areas or if some of the wind directions are maybe accelerated or not from different wind directions.
So that's just to kind of provide you a little bit of an insight into the types of data that you might be able to get. Obviously, a lot of people when they think of a weather down day, it's just rain or cold. But in reality, obviously, there's lots and lots of weather variables that might impact you depending on the work that you're doing.
So that's where the second part of this comes in, which is depending on the work that you're doing, right? And so this is kind of core functionality of the tool where you can choose from our library. We have lots and lots of activity types in here. About 150 standard types. I'll just load in asphalt as an example.
But asphalt comes with a default set of rules. And this is important because the rule—the asphalt rule—is what will eventually become a calendar in Asta. So in my project in Ireland based on the rules that I've currently got set in here, I think I made them very very sensitive. But as you can see, the rule is being broken almost all of the time. So I've got this very very low rainfall threshold here. The beauty of this tool is I can then change that, play around with it to understand okay if I were able to mitigate or if there was a change that I could make to my schedule then ultimately what is the result based on the historic data at this location.
So we have default rules and those rules have been built by doing expert interviews, by speaking with people as well as looking at British standards. But they're also completely changeable. So in no way, shape or form do we say you have to conform to these. But the thing about this is that we usually work with clients to build up a standard set of activities for you. So your business might then have a default—we call it a risk matrix—which then means you get consistency as to how you model weather risk across all of your projects. Because I think today it's left up to each planner to ultimately do that. And it may mean if your project is handed over to a different planner, they don't actually know how much risk has been embedded into the schedule and there can be confusion around that. So that's kind of one of the unique pieces that we offer in the platform.
And if I wanted to integrate this type of insights into a Powerproject so that I could get a more certain schedule, then you head over to the integrations tab in the top right. So schedule integrations. I've already selected my site which is this island site. So that stays consistent across the workflow. And actually we've already done the reviewing of the weather rules because we were just on that page, but I can review them again if I need to.
So at this point, I would then import my plan. So I'm just going to import a sample file. Where is it? Here we go. So I've got my EHAB sample file. And effectively, you can import from XML. I think we do take quite a lot of different file types. But ultimately what we're going to do, and this is kind of key, is all we're going to do is add in and change the actual calendars.
So I've already skipped ahead some of these steps, but on the left hand side, I've imported my plan. And normally what we suggest is that you use activity codes. So we'll in here there'll be a drop down and this is just a small plan. So it's just got one set of activity codes. You can either use existing activity codes or you can create your own EHAB defaults. And effectively the exercise here is to match your activities in your plan with the rules that we have in here.
So I'm just going to match these up here because basically we need to know which activity needs to be associated to which category in EHAB and obviously the rules that you've set in the previous screens will then be the rules that determine how much risk, where the risk is being applied here. Okay...
[Josh continues mapping activities]
You also don't have to categorize every single task if you don't want to, but I'm just going to do that anyway. So I'm going to apply those changes and on the bottom of the screen, what we're going to see is the matching is going to basically just match up based on whatever coding that you've provided. So at the bottom, we can see there's a few categories in use. And so I can then if I wanted to go and check what were the categories that have been labeled as such.
And then the results. So this is where we basically export. So now what we're going to be doing is getting the file that can then be pulled over into Asta Powerproject. So all I need to do is select Asta from the dropdown. And there's two kind of options here. But I think I'm just going to go with the default. And I can pick different confidence levels as well. So again, the P50—what that basically means is we're going to be using the average results from the model. But if you want to have more confidence in the dates, then you would obviously choose a higher percentile or maybe you would choose a lower percentile. I'm just going to stick with the P50.
And we have this little feature here where you can basically preview what the weather exception days are that we're going to be exporting to Asta. So rather than exporting to Asta, realizing that you need to change something, going back into WeatherWise etc., you can just take a look here and it'll give you a good idea of the information that's going to be pulled into Asta Powerproject.
And so in effect, what we do is based on the data for your location, based on the thresholds that you've chosen, and based on the climate trends, etc. in your location, we're going to mark out weather exception days or down days. Realize it says P6 there, so apologies, that's a typo. But effectively the calendar preview is going to show us which of the days in any given week for each of the calendar types are actually going to be the exception days.
Hopefully this works doing it live in the webinar. It'll be embarrassing if it doesn't load in, but it should do. So in effect I'm just going to hide all for a second. So we've got our 10 categories here. And these categories are effectively what the calendars are. So I'll just pick asphalt. And we can have a lot of exception days because we'll add in potentially multiple years worth of calendars. So in December, based on the rules that I've set, this activity is basically not going to happen. And it doesn't look like it happens for most of most of the winter time.
If I wanted to instantly see a change in those results, I could go back to the previous step, change [the rules], go back to here, and then preview the calendar again. So it gives you the ability to kind of play around with and understand for accommodation works, for example, probably it's going to be very few days that are being blocked out and then potentially in the winter time there may be more days.
And so maybe the final comment before we go to exporting this and pulling it into Asta is we'll block out the exception days that are the most likely days in any given week to be down days. And if for example you already have a five-day working calendar and a weather day is occurring on the weekend then of course that won't be an additional working down day. That's just when the weather day is most likely to happen at the P50. But ultimately it's not going to provide an additional weather day into the calendar.
So once you're happy—and there's more statistics and stuff that you can get here if you want to kind of dig into the detail of the calendars—then all you need to do is click export and at the moment that's going to download a file which you would then pull into Asta Powerproject which is what Bob is now going to show you. So hopefully that all kind of makes sense and the workflow on the WeatherWise side. And I'll stop sharing my screen now and pass over to Bob to show you how you then pull that into Asta.
LIVE DEMO: ASTA POWERPROJECT INTEGRATION
[27:53] BOB: Hopefully you can see my screen now. I have Asta Powerproject open. I have a sample project open here. So this is a project that's say the process would be it would be originally created in Asta. It would have been exported off and sent to WeatherWise and updated there and we'll get another file which I'll show you in a minute with those changes.
Just to talk you through what we've got here is a very simple project—a number of just a few activities to show as an example. If I go here I'll show you that all these tasks are actually currently using the same calendar. Classically standard part of creating a project in there. I've also actually applied a baseline to this. So you can see I've got a baseline in there. No variances in the tool at the moment as it's just in place. Turn that back off.
And what I'm now going to do is—Josh also talked about those activity codes, those classifiers. There they are. They've been brought in previous time. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go into here. I'm going to go into the EHAB importer. And this is now going to let me select the XML file generated in [WeatherWise].
[Bob imports the file]
And as this runs, you can now see over on the left hand side, it's now creating a whole set of calendars. So it's taking copies of those calendars and then creating specific versions for specific tasks or across multiple tasks and then applying those days that are in there. If I close that, that's as simple as it's done.
And now you can see here these red items here. These are the exceptions it's added to the calendars. So really for those Asta users we've actually created an exception item there which is applied into the calendars. And when we look in the copy the calendars you can see if I go to—that's the standard one. Let me go one here. You can see it's actually allocated in here. Those are weather exceptions. For this purposes, I've removed all the default public holidays, so it's easy to see, but they would remain there. And then if I ran it again, it would remove those and reapply them to the necessary calendars and tasks.
So now I've done this, you may have noticed when I did this, there's an option to reschedule. So you can see the impact of this. And when I go back to my format side, I can just turn my baseline on. And you can see there very subtly if I zoom in down on that. You can see here where the impact across these tasks happened. And now that I've got an impact and delay and I can now see where overall my project's been delayed where those tasks have now collided with those exceptions that have been assigned to those calendars.
But the advantage here—it's the current project I'm working on. You're progressing and updating, working on there and all I do is every time I just rerun the import, select the latest XML file and it will then adjust everything it needs to, leaves any holidays and exceptions you've assigned into it and the calendars you've assigned to each task. So you can already set different calendars to it but it will then automatically apply those and update the relevant ones inside here as you can see and it just uses the same calendar name and just puts the reference of the EHAB side onto it.
And that's as simple as it is. It's really—most of the work's done inside the EHAB side. We literally just import that in. So you take it from us and then take it back out and import it and just repeat that.
So that's really as simple as it is from from an Asta point of view.
Q&A SESSION
[31:32] AMY: Super. All right. Thanks, Bob. So we have had a few questions in. So I think the first few are for you by the looks of things, Josh, if you're armed and ready. So is historical data available only in certain areas or is it available for any place in the world?
[31:51] JOSH: Yeah, great question. So on land it's available everywhere at about a 9 kilometer grid. In the ocean it's about a 30 kilometer grid. And that is global as well. So yeah we work on projects in the Amazon rainforest and in Antarctica where obviously weather can be quite challenging. And so yeah the data availability there is very very [good]—it's available due to satellites. Obviously if you are working in the UK then a lot of the data will be coming from ground stations. So we basically combine those things together depending on where gaps exist in information but yes the short answer is yes it's available globally.
[32:26] AMY: Thank you. This is a question about whether you referenced Josh a study which I think Richard Omrod who was one of the founders of Asta was involved with. I'm not sure if it's called construction management and economics. When you developed your module...
[33:05] JOSH: We didn't. I'm about to go read the paper now. I mean, I'm not sure...
[33:12] BOB: Yeah, I'm not sure how old Josh is to be honest, but I think it was probably published before he was born.
[33:18] ANDREW: Yeah, it's a paper into simulation applied to construction projects. So maybe we can find you a copy, Josh, in the Asta archives and get it over to you, see if it adds any value to what you're doing. Be interesting to see how much Richard had predicted the future back then.
[33:36] JOSH: I wasn't expecting to come to this webinar and have homework to do, but fair enough.
[33:44] AMY: This one's probably for you, Andrew. Does the integration rely on using Asta Vision?
[33:51] ANDREW: Currently no. This version of the integration is completely into Powerproject. Just as a plugin. It will in the future work with Vision and that is where most of our integrations do sit normally. Just this one just for technical reasons in what we wanted to do in the initial stages, it sits in Powerproject.
[34:12] AMY: And probably linked to that, have we got details of licensing and costing probably for you Andrew and you...
[34:26] ANDREW: Um, yeah. I mean, we can get licensing information sent out to anyone, but it's available as standard if you've got an Asta Powerproject license, the integration's there.
[34:37] AMY: Oh, okay. Yes. You meant for...
[34:37] ANDREW: Yeah. So, yeah, anyone that's interested in getting the integration, just get in touch with myself or Bob after this and we can get the beta version sent out.
[34:50] JOSH: Maybe just to add to that, we can send some demo data through for people to test if they want to get an initial kind of feel.
[35:02] AMY: Yeah. And when we do the follow-up email for everybody with the recording, we'll include links to both websites where there's some free trial options. And you'll also get a survey at the end. If you could fill that out for us, that'd be great. But it does give you the option to express interest and then that means that we can get back in touch with you nice and quickly.
Okay. Bob, maybe this one's for you. How does the Asta program identify which tasks to assign to calendars? Is it by coding?
[35:27] BOB: It uses the unique task ID.
[35:32] BOB (continued): So based on the data that you export out, you're then classifying that inside WeatherWise and then that information based on those individual unique task IDs is what we're reading.
[35:47] AMY: Josh, I think this one's for you. Have you got US data available, which I think is the answer is yes. And can the data be set to US units?
[36:01] JOSH: Yes. Yes, it can be set to US units. And we do have data for the US for sure. Yeah.
[36:08] AMY: And in terms of historical data in WeatherWise, how far back does that data go?
[36:15] JOSH: So it goes back to 1979. You can kind of chop and change it as needed. So the default is that we'll use all of the data because that gives us the best view of climate trends. But yeah, in theory you can chop and change it a little bit if you need to.
[36:35] AMY: Super. And what we've shown everybody today is ready to go. It's in its final version ready for deployment.
[36:40] BOB: What I said about getting ready in minutes. Yeah, I mean to set up an EHAB account, you can go onto the website and create one today and then it takes a couple of minutes per location to add in the information. So yeah, we can get you up and running pretty quick. The biggest challenge I imagine is just making sure your IT approve you installing it.
[36:59] AMY: And maybe one for you Bob, will EHAB work with native Powerproject files for importing and exporting?
[37:11] BOB: That'd be for Josh I think on that one.
[37:20] JOSH: Yeah. It should. Yeah. But any format you export from Powerproject to go to EHAB—it will allow you. You're not using it to recreate a schedule. You're just using the core dates that we're putting in there and the unique task ID. So it's just using those to reference back in XML to us.
[37:46] AMY: This one we might have to take offline but just in case we can answer it quickly. If Powerproject is hosted in Loadspring will the integration still work?
[37:53] BOB: Loadspring would have to install the add-in into [their environment]... Yeah there's no reason it wouldn't work if it's installed right there. There's no other requirements other than it'll just read an external file. So like any other plugin that you would use with Loadspring, it just needs to be installed by them on their end for you.
[38:18] AMY: Josh, I think this one's for you. Can you identify one in 10 year weather events for contractual claims?
[38:24] JOSH: Yeah, one of the reports in the system is like an NEC style report which is like past information and it then highlights... I think we can do one in tens, one in 20s, one in 50s, one in 100s. So depending on your contract type you can select different options and effectively get the report that would be used for compensable events. Yeah.
[38:49] AMY: Okay. And another one for you Josh, sorry. Can we set hours and non-working hours and holidays in the calendars imported from EHAB?
[39:00] JOSH: Yeah, so all of the calendars that are already assigned to your activities, we retain the same exception days, I think. So if you have a 5-day working calendar or a winter blockout, for example, we'll just copy those same exception days and create new calendars which are copies of the original with the added exception days in. So the only thing we'd recommend is, if you already have a weather downtime calendar for whatever down days are in there, we'd probably take that off, so that you have like effectively a clean schedule so that we then add—so we're not double bubbling the weather risk basically.
[39:40] AMY: Okay, super. Loads of great questions. I don't think I've covered everything. If I've missed any questions, I will get a report at the end of this and we'll go back through and come back to you individually if I have skipped over anyone. But I think that's probably us done for today. So we're a little bit ahead of schedule, which is good. And as I said, we will get an email out to you all with the recording. We'll confirm answers to questions that we received. And you will also get a survey. If you could complete that for us, that would be really helpful. And watch this space. We've got some webinars that are about to go up onto the website ready for January to talk about a roadmap and what's coming for 2026.
Anything to add Bob, Andrew or Josh?
[40:25] ANDREW: No, just any questions...
[40:32] JOSH: Yeah, thanks Josh. Yeah, just the final one for me is obviously... Oh, sorry. Yeah the final one is kind of just thinking through how people—a lot of people mentioned they extend the activities in their schedule. So just thinking through basically how do you change that process? Because I think obviously we've got great tools in place—the transformation is always the challenge. So we've done that with a lot of teams who have migrated from doing it one way to the other way. So obviously happy to share insights with anyone who's maybe thinking they want to take a more data driven approach. So happy to have a call about that.
[41:15] AMY: Awesome. Okay, super. Well, have a good afternoon everyone and thank you very much for joining us.
[41:15] ALL: Thanks folks. Keep going. Appreciate it. Thank you.
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]
Watch the full webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A1INUByVb8
