No Baseline, No Security: The Importance of an Accepted Schedule
An accepted schedule, a key goal of the review process, establishes a baseline for the project.
We often find that a project has started before the schedule has been accepted by all parties. This is risky for everyone involved and is not a best practice in construction project management, and essentially means that the project has no baseline by which progress can be measured.
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Reliable Schedule Metrics: The Next Level of True Schedule Performance
A schedule is aligned when it meets the essential statement and is signed off by the appropriate parties. The essential statement is then expanded upon to offer greater insight into the actual mechanics of the metric. A1, below, is an example of a well thought out, well-defined metric.
Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail.
What Led Zeppelin said – “Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there’s still time to change the road you’re on” – is not true. Well, at least not without significant time and cost implications for your project. It is well established that changes which occur later in a project’s life cycle are more costly than those that occur in its early definition phases. This is particularly true in the construction industry, where components may have already been fabricated or installed.
The planning phase of a project is the critical phase in which major directional and scope decisions are made. If the planning phase is given short shrift, the project runs a much higher risk of running late and over budget. This makes logical sense and is also backed up by data.
Top quintile performing organizations invest 7% of the total project budget in planning. Bottom quintile firms invest just 3.5%. The bottom performers pay dearly for this lack of investment in planning. The data shows that the cost of the overall execution phase of the project grows to 110% for these bottom performers, but is closer to 93% of the total budget for the top performers. Because the vast majority of the cost lies in the execution phases, a single percent variance in execution has a much larger impact on the overall project.
Planning: Just Some Ivory Tower Thing
It’s an interesting intellectual exercise, all this thinking about what might happen in the future and how we might get some project done. But does it really impact my life? How does effective or ineffective planning impact us on an individual basis?
Well, let’s ponder that question by looking at road construction and traffic. I’m from Chicago, which Forbes Magazine recently ranked as number 10 in terms of having the worst commuter traffic in the US. I no longer have a commute, because I moved close to the office, and I don’t miss it. The hours I spent on the road getting to work and getting home each day took a toll (pun intended).
The worst days for me happened when construction crews were behind schedule and did not open lanes closed for the previous night’s work before rush hour started. With close to half a million cars driving to downtown Chicago every day, a delay of just half an hour translates into 122 full-time work years of lost productivity. I know – I doubted the math as well! Let me show you how I calculated this number.
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The Belly of the Beast
As a follow up to the discussion of complexity vs simplicity, let’s look at a few different ways of representing two activities that are linked together with a finish-to-start relationship.
Netpoint 5 Beta Review
Santosh Bhat at Australasian Project Planning recently got a copy of the beta version of Netpoint 5. Here what he had to say…
Introduction
For those not familiar with Netpoint or the Graphical Path Method, refer to more information on the Australasian Project Planning website here, or go direct to the source of all Netpoint and GPM information at PMA Technologies.
Background
Back in October 2014, I started a LinkedIn Group for Netpoint users and made a post of enhancement suggestions for Netpoint. Unbeknownst to me, the PMA technologies team were well into making the next major release of Netpoint.
At the Netpoint & GPM Conference in January 2015, the features of Netpoint 5 were presented, and now having had a chance to trial a Beta release of Netpoint 5, I’ve put together the following article reviewing some of the main new features to help those who may be moving from earlier releases – or those who may need just a little nudge to try Netpoint for their organisations or projects.
Disclaimer
As can be expected, there are some limitations of this review, Netpoint 5 is still in Beta release, no doubt there will be further modifications before a final release. Also, NetRisk was not a part of this Beta Trial, so some of the enhancements to NetRisk are not reviewed.
Activity Sizes and Patterns
Netpoint 5 now allows setting of sizes and patterns for activities.
Moving from Primavera P6 8.4 to Primavera 15.1… What?
That’s quite a jump in version numbers! But remain calm, all is well. It turns out that the huge change in version numbers is not indicative of major changes – or improvements – to Primavera P6.
You are a collaborator!
Depending on the context this could be a compliment or an insult. During the second world war the Nazi’s used local government leaders to help them impose their brutal regime on conquered countries. The most infamous of these is Vidkun Quisling from Norway. His name has now become synonymous with a sell out who betrays his own people. This is not the type of collaboration we seek in today’s interactive and dynamic workplace.
The Truth about CPM Risk Models
Let’s work through this together paragraph by paragraph and see if we agree. If you are involved in project management then you are familiar with critical path schedules. If you are not involved in project management and you are reading this then, hi Mom.
Active Quantitative Probabilistic Risk Project Management
If you have been among the millions following my blog for the past few years, you know that I’m a fan of a disciplined approach to both qualitative and quantitative risk analysis as a tool to manage schedule and budget risk in project management.
Most often, risk analysis is seen as a tool used at the start of a project to gauge schedule and cost risk, or to assess the potential downside in a failing project. It is very helpful in these scenarios.