Dear All,

Better Progress Measurement concept is given in a simple and clear manner in the following YouTube Link, which may be of your interest.

UCJ1QCqXRumD34CFwYPb1dmw

Regards,

R. Jagadeesan

you can and should do all 3 in primavera p6

Norzul...based on ur explaination , that one is not fair....actually wtg based on requirment of project...example for payment.....we’ve lum sump,BQ and single item progress....based on contracts......

I’ve best progress monitoring form. from my master at Talisman rite now...
At this moment, everybody outside there using his format......

this is my email...aizamcapri@gmail.com

Hi there guys!
I work for a client organisation, we generally award Lump Sum contracts, have schedule of milestones listing CONTROL ( No LD) KEY (LD but refundable once MAJOR milestone is achieved) and MAJOR milestones ( LD non refundable)
The Contractor submits his monthly invoice based on BQ with total amount payable, this gets verified by QS & Site PMC.
I check if KEY or MAJOR milestones are late or not for the month if late then LD amount is deducted from monthly invoice.

This system is cumbersome in that EOT must be upto date ( generally its not!!)and revised milestone dates included in milestone schedule. Unfortunately, the organisation and its procedures cannot be changed.

Just thought I participate showing my frustration!!

Rgds
Dyes

Project works are estimated before signing the contract. Thus we know the cost of works necessary to do to achieve each milestone. If milestone is achieved and approved then the predefined fixed cost is paid. This way of payment is defined by the contract. The payment milestones can be suggested by the contractor - it does not matter much. Each milestone shall represent measurable result, some object (floor, room, etc.) where some work was finished and the results accepted.
The idea - not to measure volumes because the volumes that are represented by each milestone were defined in design. If the quality is accepted and the object is approved then the cost of approved works is known.
Regards,
Vladimir

Zhang Haixiang,
I support your approach. This way you motivate the contractors to achieving the results - not just reporting volumes and, besides, the works are not divided into more or less profitable. Both the client and the contractor have the same goals and many potential issues are avoided. We use the same approach and it works perfectly.
Best Regards,
Vladimir

More accurate ’real-time’ data can be collected by using my companies software: www.sensorynet.co.uk. We allow status to be collected from the field via wireless and mobile technologies. Please contact me for further information: malcolmg at sensorynet dot co dot uk

Zhang:

Do you think it would be practical to add an schedule performance index factor to milestone payments, to reward adherence to the work plan or "punish" deviations from it?

Ernesto Puyana,
I’ve also used milestone payment system for a lumpsum project.
I prepare the baseline schedule, then load cost together with commercial guys,then calculate percentage payment for each month. then prepare a milestone (most of them are on critical path) list link to percentage payment.
We put all these in the contarct. As the contractor achieved a milestone we pay the relative percentage.
during construction we never calculate actual work quantity,never argue with contractor of actual quantity, it saved a lot of time and resource.
I know the payment was not accurate, but it works well. It provie a strong control of progress, also the safety of the payment.

Andrew Ng,

Are you saying that it is necessary to integrate planning with accounting in order to get the best or accurate results in taking actual percent progress?

Norzul,

There is no absolute right or wrong in your proposal, after all it is just simplification of the payment and measurement for the convenience of all parties involved.

If all parties can live with it, it must be alright.

After all this is strictly not any Earned Value Management(which is a cost control and project control process), but some semblance of "earned value" presumedly calculated to trigger off payment/s on progress upon reaching certain targets agreed.

Edgar

I thought the best measurement of actual "value" spent on any project should be those invoiced amounts from internal as well as external suppliers inluding those prelim items direct costs.

So far as measurement of the earned value, it has been argued that it should be on the "perceived" level of designed performance achieved(the most simplistic being 0% all the way until the machine is tested and operational i.e. 100%) which despite being representative of the "value" actually in the Clients possession when paid, may not be practical for Contractor’s cashflow position in most cases. In practices we have found all kinds of rules of intermediate assessment which have more practicallity than accuracy.

The measurement by % of physical progress is what have been encountered most in my experience if we do not wish to be compounded by "subjective" value judgement. These earned value measurements can still be as complex and tedious as any physcial BQ-type quantities measurement limited only by your desire for precision and resemblance to the physical reality.

Of the many quantities measurement, manhours is most popular being able to cut across different discipline and trades/construction elements as in the case of complex equipments or composite construction with varying degree of pre and post assembly before and after delivery.

If you so chose to have man-hours as the parameter of such measurement(as in the case you cited), you can start by determining beforehand the conversion ratio of each such machine-hour into equivalent manhours, in order to have the standard manhours as the common denominators. The value per machine hours divided by the average value of the manhour should normally be adequate representation of the contribution of each plant in terms of the value "forecast" and "earned".

Your baseline could then be calculated from the forecast manhours added to the equivalenet manhours converted from each forecast machine hours. The measurement of the progress of the "earned value" from man and plant records would then be possible, but I thought wouldnt it be accurate to call these "actual hours" rather than "earned hours" ?

In lump sum contracts, payment is usually tied to earned value. Percent complete will vary depending on wheter earned value is measured in man-hours, dollars o other.

For example, some activities demand very little man-hours and high cost equipment. If earned value is measured in man-hours, this activity´s contribution to percent complete and therefore to payment will be smaller than it would be if the cost of the equipment determined it’s progress.

As long as it is used only as a comparison parameter to measure performance, I think they all work the same; after all, it’s deviation one looks at. But, when payment depends on it, that’s when the discussion heats up.

Zhang:

You are right. That’s why one should always look at both indicators side by side: percent complete and end date forecast.

A low percent complete does not necesarily mean a delay at completion, as long as critical activities are ok. and viceversa: even when percent complete is high, you can get a delay, if work is not focused on critical path activities.

Ernesto,

Appreciate if you could e-mail me the sample of your report for reference. It most probably useful for me.

Shahrol Sabaruddin

Trends of project parameters - of finish date forecast, expected total cost and others tell more about project performance than project status information. I am glad that Ernesto has the same understanding.
But there is one more thing to control - evolution of contingency reserves. This evolution can be estimated using risk simulation and is harder to implement but most powerful.

Great input, Clive.

Makes me realize I’m on the right track with what I’m doing. My weekly report are two pages long, containing:

Executive summary:
-work finished last week.
-work started last week.
-finish date and percent complete status, delay causes and trends.
-critical path changes and trend.
-corrective actions: results last week; suggested next week.
-prospection: work to start next week; one month lookahead.

Full color Graphs:
Percent complete S curve: scheduled vs (actual+to finish).
Summary bar chart.
Finish date evolution.
Schedule performance index.

That report goes to managment meetings. For field managers, I append a 3 to 4 page detailed printout (built using filters and layouts).

Hi Clive,

I fully agree with what you said. But sometimes, especially when reporting to clients, contractor’s planners and execution people are not the only ones dictating what should be reported and what shouldn’t be reported. Contracts people sometimes are very demanding in this case. They would want to include some "cya" reports which may not be interesting/relevant to read/discuss now but could be very useful contractually in the future. Another reason for this is, to comply with what the contract is saying.

Just my thoughts on the topic.

Cheers,

Se

As planners one of our functions must be to provide information that can be readily understood by those who read it. It must also be acurate and provide a conclusion.

Many many progress reports I read are enormously thick containing pages and pages of print out. Often these are filed and nobody reads them. If this is happening to you ask yourself why.

When reporting on progress we must firstly assess what are the project drivers. On a non restrained programme which is logically linked these will usually be the activities lying on the critical path. These activities when reporting progress must be the ones that are critically analysed as delays here will delay the planned completion date.

I would therefore suggest that when reporting progress these are stripped out of the programme and discussed.
ie "activity 7 is in delay by 7 days caused by X. This in turn will have a delaying affect on A B and C. If the delays to X are not corrected the following are the likely consequences. In turn the following actions could be taken to resolve this anticipated delay."

The above paragraph is a succinct conclusion of progress and can be readily understood by the reader.

Equally I favour trend analysis on S curves for key activities, say frame construction. How much concrete should we have poured, what have we poured, what happens if we carry on the way we are. Again the people reading this information can readily asses where the problem lays and what must be done.

Equally trend analysis can be undertaken for key subcontractors or procurement activities to assess how the subcontractor is performing. Trend anmalysis provides, if used correctly an early warning system, and that to me is the most important aspect of the progress report. If we can advise on potential delays before they become a delay we are doing our job.

However any report is only as good as the data collected. I try and go to the lowest denominator for data collection (ie Foreman/site engineers). This provides real time data collection and takes the grunt work out of progress reporting. It also, if set up correctly enables the foreman to see how he is doing. If he has " bought into" the programme and has had an input into its creation he wont want to fall behind and will provide, all be it biased information as to why delays are occuring.

So in simple terms progress reports should be:
Based on grass roots data collection.
Be easy to read
Provide analysis as to where the project is headed
Provide a commentary as to the reasons for the delay
Provide a commentary as to possible recovery measures
Provide a succinct conclusion.

The use of graphics should be amplified and I agree with Charlie Jazz it up with colour and go easy on the print outs if you must, put them in an apprndix.

Just a thought.

Clive

Monitoring progress will be more interesting if we can visualize it physically. Don’t be trapped only with S-Curve, earned value, or complicated barchart.

I always use General Arrangement Drawing to plot the actual works performed and I evaluate directly the progress based on such plot drawing. Our Management also interested if we show not only s-curve or barchart but the figure of such physical progress.

Currently there is some 3D Plant View product to show progress physically but it’s too late because of late in design.

Thks

Vladimir:

I’ve lately included in my construction schedules activities related to acquisitions (at the beggining) and delivery (at the end), which act as buffers in the sense that on update, I check whether they become critical and if so, adjust their duration and make a warning in my weekly report to let the job manager know that available time for a certain negotiation or delivery has shrunk as a result of some particular activity or chain being delayed.

I know that`s not exactly what the critical chain people intended when they proposed buffers, but I think it works.

Ernesto Puyana

Hello.

In my case, I perform no as staff, but an outside consultant in charge of schedule development (with staff input) and weekly monitoring and control of schedule. So I don’t get involved with cost control.

I know earned value could be tracked by hours not necesarily by dollars (pesos in my case), but I’ve found that generating S curves from percent complete calculated by Suretrak from activity durations (see Paul Harris) is quite adequate and much simpler to manage. Specially when we`re talking about 1000 to 4000 activity schedules.

If anybody wants to check my report format, I’ll gladly mail it.

Hi All,

Then what is the best method of monitoring progress, regardless of the size of the project?

Hello.

I perform a weekly job visit to update start and finish dates as well as percent complete and remaining duration, activity by activity. upload that information to the Suretrak schedule, compute and produce several reports, using layouts and filters, which I export to a spreadsheet (Lotus, by the way, that produces much better graphics that excel).
This report includes an S curve, a summarized gantt chart and a detailed analisys of activities started, finished, pending, critical path and prospective analisys.

Might sound like a lot of work, but a well designed format makes it pretty straight forward.

Critical Path Analysis is also an important monitoring tool which should be used in conjunction with ’S’ curve reporting.

by tracking down planned resource cost againts actual resource cost & physical progress? or by planned quantities againts actual installed quantities?