New Syllabus available on Cost Control from ASYNC

Project Cost Controls Solutions via Microsoft Project Professional

Basic Requirement

This syllabus is a specializing field which a participant can precede upon completion of the Intermediate Level Project Management and Microsoft Project Professional and or Streetwise Project Management Intermediate level syllabus as it will require an extensive level of understanding in the software usage since the syllabus will include hands-on application and real life test cases.

This course is an intensive 2-day event requiring the skilled use of both software and analytical mindset. The participants will need to go through at least a total of 8 hours hands-on software use and completing the course with an individual presentation and defense of his/her project on audit by facilitator and peers

Syllabus content

Day 1
1. Material and Resource Costing
2. Productivity and cost controls
3. Cash Flow and Budget requirements
4. Resource costing by use and trade
5. Resource sharing and Resource Pooling
6. Project 1 (Individual)

Day 2
1. Multiple Project Management and Cost compilation
2. Progress Payments processing
3. Cost Price fluctuations and adapting to it
4. Cost and Project Acceleration
5. Project Costing and Behavioral pattern analysis (requires good spreadsheet understanding)
6. Project 2 (Final Evaluation for certification)

What if your project is late because some managers or seniors fail to cooperate?

Without encouraging "future career prospects" I can only make suggestions about what you as a project manager can do the next time to cover your own posterior. (None of these suggestions address the behavior of the managers since this appears to be outside the scope of your authority and control as the project manager. Without the organizational authority to affect their behavior, there is little point in trying to impact them. You probably won't succeed and it may have serious repercussions for you personally.)

1. Don't take the situation too personally. There is a real danger in getting too emotionally "involved" in your projects. When this happens, anything that negatively impacts the project - whether you can do anything about it or not - takes on a sinister aspect. You must accept that there will always be things that will impact your projects over which you have little or no control. When these occur, you can only react as best you can with the good of the project as your primary aim.

2. Make sure that the impact of withheld information, resources, work output, etc., is clear. A good change-control process is helpful here. It allows you to describe the change being made as well as the impact of that change on the project. Document this and be sure that everyone who should be informed is informed.

3. Realize that shifting priorities are a fact of organizational life. Priorities change constantly in any organization. New challenges arise that require a response from the organization and that response requires that resources be moved from one activity to another. In most instances, those resources come from projects that are as a result of the shift in emphasis no longer as important as they were yesterday. Unfortunately, many times, the project manager is not told the reason they've lost their resources.

4. Document what happens. Always document the things that happen during a project. Never assume that "everyone knows why this happened." They may, but, then again, they may not, or they may have a completely different understanding of the situation. Try to document the occurrence in a factual way. Try to avoid accusations and conjecture about "why" the thing happened. Document what happened and the impact it had on the project. A good change-control system can help with this. This documentation should become part of the total project documentation and can be included as part of the final project report. A good, carefully worded narrative about why the project was delivered late can reference this documentation.
5. Use your sponsor or product champion. A sponsor is someone in a position of authority in the organization who has agreed to act on behalf of you and the project when an issue is outside your scope of authority and control. If you do not normally identify a sponsor for your projects, seriously consider doing so. One of the functions of a sponsor is to intercede in situations like the one described. When a conflict occurs, the sponsor should be informed and asked for both advice and for direct assistance in resolving the conflict. The most common conflicts are over needed resources but they can also occur over issues of cooperation and delivery of work or information.

Project Management Software Versions

At the recent Petronas Project Management CoP, a participant asked about the latest Project Management software available.

These are the most popular and the latest versions

Microsoft Project 2007
Primavera Project Management P6
Artemis 9000
Project Kickstart
Project Insight 2007
MacProject OSX


Others (but not so popular)
AMS REALTIME 7
Collanos Workplace
Contactizer
FastTrack Schedule
InLoox
LisaProject
MicroPlanner X-Pert
O3spaces
OmniPlan
OpenMind Business
Planner Suite
Planisware 5
Primavera Project Planner
Project KickStart
RationalPlan
RiskyProject
Teamcenter
Tracker Suite

Effective Project and Planning Managements Skills.

This article was presented in Petronas PoC Forum held at Malacca, Malaysia on the 22nd January 2009 The examples was shown in the forum but due to their size, it was not posted here. Should you need to see these examples, send me an e-mail.

The article proper -
A project at any cost is still a project. Managing a 1 million dollar or a 100 million dollar projects will still have the same sets of problems. Only the scale or magnitude of the headache differs.

One thing that I ALWAYS adheres to is keep the work to its elemental. Sophistication will breed confusion.

A project runs on resources, everybody in the field knows that. You need the 4M features (Manpower, Machinery, Materials and Money), these need to be done it a set time frame. OK, that is simple enough. Managing it is actually simple too.
*if you want your solution to be simple, keep your tool simple too*

I have always relied on simple tools of the trade to assist me. In 1983 when I first came into the rat-race, I relied on massive amounts of paper to put things in order and at the same time allows me access to any information that I need, fast. These are some of my methods that I adopted thru the years.

When I get a project to run, manage and complete, I will look at it in 3 areas.
1. The Resources that I need and have
2. The interfacing that need to be done and
3. The financial issues that it will have.

The Resources that I need and have
This is a case of needs and availabilities. Most of the time the person who created a work implementation program is NOT the person doing the job, thus the “feel” of the job requirements is not there. The amount in the submitted workforce histogram is for most of the time inaccurate.

The interfacing that needs to be done
This is the most important link in Project Management – The human interfacing. The catalyst to the implementation of 4M is Human. Know your team, and know them well.


The financial issues that will happen
My initial habit is to do a financial analysis of the project before it starts. I will load my Implementation program with the 4M and then do a Resource versus financial comparison; this will give me a feel of the work contribution to the cash flow. I will next do a Financial versus time, which will assist me for payments and claim by the time intervals I set

One important format I used is putting information that can be read by ALL, from the Planner Up AND Down. (See Chart on left) The situation today is quite scaring, the Planner creates a very detailed looking program and upon completion, the program is distributed to all parties in the project.

The problem here is the tool of the planner is very sophisticated software and beyond a planner, not many understand these data. The Management just asks the planner the overall status and standard questions in the areas of progress, delays etc.

The missing link here is the ones implementing the work physically. Some are tradesmen who IT knowledge is quite minimal (or none at all). Are these implementers briefed on what is expected from them daily?

Information not understood by ALL in the team is not worth churning out.




The simple facts
a) The Management needs the important gist only. When they ask for a progress report give them what they really need to see to know the problems. Their report therefore must be summarized to these data.
b) The Implementers needs to be given the daily TO DO list, based on their individual skills and trade. Filter out the relevant details, distribute.
c) The Consultants, in most cases the consultants work progress is minimally monitored. There is very rarely any Progress monitoring works program for Consultants
d) Authorities (if ever) should be given their required involvement time frame tables or List.

Pre-Implementation
I had always looked at a Development/Construction program as a “Diary that has yet to happen”. This made me put things in perspective to get it done, Period.

I adopted a reality check mindset
-Weekly values
-Big Job Bigger Detailing
-Downsize in documents, upgrade in field
-Resource list is always first before program

Weekly values
Rethink to add in reality. I week is 5 Working days (or 5.5 or 6 in some cases), NEVER 7 days

Bigger Jobs Bigger Detailing
For a $1,000,000 job, you could be happy with a proposed implementation plan of 500 activities but with a $100,000,000 job, it would be safer to detail out as much as possible in order to really have a good feel and better zeroing to the area of delays etc.
The rest will be explained in the forum

I identified the Productivity of each resource; I had the foresight then to keep in a data base. With such productivity Index, I was able to make a fairly accurate time frame requirement to do a particular work. I always use FOS on my targeted time frame values. Nothing in reality is sure. Follow this simple rule. New People- Low Productivity, Old (experienced) People better productivity. New Machinery – Higher Productivity, Old ones – Low.
(Some “elderly” people can behave worse then some new ones.)

I use the FOS on each of the resource available for me
Say a 5 year old excavator whose productivity of work is 20m3/hour, due to its age I will devalue the 20m3/hour by say 20% and use a value of 16m3/hour

Pre-Implementation requirements always involves 3rd party. However this is rarely addressed to effectively

In most project Plans, most activities identified for Pre-Implementations are never thought out carefully. In most case, their durations are impossible to be done in real life.

Areas of shortfalls
Understating duration of approval,
Can the allocated resources do it in that duration? We need to really know the output of each of the resources we are inputting into the works program. Don’t assume.

Human and work environment interfacing allowances not given, especially across different regions


Availability of authorities in the set time frame
Can the authorities concerned come and attend at the time you set in your implementation plan?
Failure to identify and inform external parties/authorities, Utilities providers

Lead time should never be assumed
Lead time estimates are one of the common contributors to project progress delays
- Explained in forum
Implementation Stage
a) Observe the progress at the ground; always audit 3rd party information gathering (if possible)
b) When you track progress, keep the tracking to a reasonable duration interval.
c) Audit the targeted (proposed) workforce

Item (a) bring your laptop or PDA (it must have at least Pocket Excel), collect it yourself (if you have a progress reported submitted by your team/implementers (soft copy is better), use it as a point of reference but never final, you decide.

Item (b) tracking a project progress must be done a regularly as possible; a delay event noted early gets rectified or addressed to earlier. A week’s delay can be addressed to on the weekend. Too long a delay and the float time of weekends and public holidays will never be enough.
Note.
Productivity during Overtime works (after the normal 8hours output) is only at 75% efficiency. You will be paying more for less. (See attached Productivity Data Analysis char above)

Item I when you do your walk-about, talk with the implementers. Ask them and visually check if possible, the quantum available. Simple logic will show you that if there are not enough resources, then progress too will be less. Use your tools of PM (Software- MS Project or Primavera), list out/filter the following –
I. What work is on-going today
II. Who is doing what (and quantum)

*try this tip*
Using PM software, do a system projections or update of the progress by a certain date, then filter the program for works or activities on-going items
That will be your look-ahead program.

Post Implementation
Close project documentation as fast as possible. This will free up management and administrative resources. One thing I observe, site documentation is for most of the time badly stored.
Instruction, Correspondences, Addendum etc are always kept in the legacy format. Adapt a better or simple filing system. This will help in many issues e.g. Extension of time claims, Litigation, financial variations etc. For the last 15 years I utilized Microsoft ODBC and the Microsoft Office family to do this for me. I get a scanner and convert all relevant documents into JPEG format and cross link these document to Activities in my Project Plan document, upon completion, I will burn the entire works program and its related scanned documents into a CD (JPEG documents will degrade in quality if left in a magnetic media for a long time)

Productivity Rates - What is it?

The time required to do a job = Duration
Material Quantity divided by Productivity Index = Duration (E.g. 3000 pcs of Bricks/ Bricklayer of Productivity 300 piece day = 10 days duration)
A resource loaded work program, enables the SO to check the Practicality of the duration by allowing the SO to ask STRUCTURED question & get the person who made the work program to Expose the situation.

Example. PILING WORK, Duration Suggested 12 days, SO asks - How many Piling Rigs? How many pile points? How many Pile points can be complete by 1 Rig in a day?

PI is not a fixed value
PI changes with Distance, Height, Locality, Work Culture, Race etc
Distance Increase Productivity Drops, Similarly Height increase Productivity Drops
Compensations will be needed to maximize PI with Height or Distance increase. Compensation – Usage of Machines etc