California Engineering Contractors Streamlines Complex Infrastructure Rehabilitation and Scales Team Collaboration with Planera

The Challenge: Complex Infrastructure Work Demands Accessible Scheduling

California Engineering Contractors (CEC) took on an intricate multi-phase maintenance and retrofit project for the City of Vallejo on the historic Mare Island Lift Bridge. Originally constructed in the late 1930s and converted to a counterweight lift span in the 1970s, the bridge serves as a vital artery over the Mare Island Strait (the mouth of the Napa River), raising and lowering up to 20 times per day to accommodate marine traffic.

The scope of work required an intricate mix of disciplines—including full repainting of above-deck steel and the lift span, deck repaving, concrete structural repairs, fender replacements, pile replacement, and anode installations on the towers' sub-structure.

To comply with the project's Caltrans specifications, CEC needed to submit rigorous logic-based Critical Path Method (CPM) schedules, monthly updates, and Time Impact Analyses (TIAs). Historically, meeting these requirements meant turning to legacy software like Primavera P6. However, P6’s steep learning curve often limited active schedule building and updating to specialized schedule experts, effectively treating scheduling as an isolated "dark art" removed from the broader project team.

The Solution: Bringing Visual Collaboration and Modern Tools to the Schedule

CEC turned to Planera to manage the Mare Island Lift Bridge project from baseline creation through ongoing field execution. Planera provided CEC with a modern, intuitive visual interface while remaining fully compliant with Caltrans CPM standards, logic relationships, and required export formats (such as XLS, PDF, and detailed narratives).

Key elements of CEC’s implementation include:

• Visual Drag-and-Drop Canvas: Allowing non-expert users and newcomers to intuitively map out timelines, sequence activities, and evaluate delay impacts without navigating cumbersome legacy menus.
• Democratized Access: Expanding schedule visibility beyond specialized schedulers to project managers, field engineers, and superintendents using mobile and iPad interfaces.
• Integrated Field Look-Aheads: Leveraging automated features to generate 3-week look-ahead schedules directly from the master CPM schedule—eliminating manual Excel workaround tracking.

The Results: Streamlined Workflows, Better Insights, and Field-Level Impact

By adopting Planera, CEC has transformed scheduling from an isolated task into a collaborative project asset.

1. Faster Onboarding & Lower Learning Curve

Unlike legacy software that requires extensive classroom training, Planera enabled team members to dive in and actively contribute right away.

"The biggest thing is honestly the ease of use of Planera for newcomers to scheduling. P6 has a pretty steep learning curve, but as long as you can understand the basics of scheduling, you could ask somebody pretty novice to go into Planera and create a schedule." — Jonathan Tadros, Project Manager, CEC

2. Intuitive Canvas and Better Workflow

The visual nature of the platform made tracking critical path impact activities and baseline adjustments straightforward for the entire team.

"In terms of the workflow and the tools, it seems a little more straightforward and easy. The Canvas is sort of drag and drop and is fantastic." — Chris Mosser, Project Team Member, CEC

3. Bridging Field Experience with Modern Technology

As construction technology evolves, Planera provides the bridge between field expertise and CPM logic—making it practical to push detailed crew-level look-aheads directly to trade teams in the field.