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information gathering and management in planning

9 replies [Last post]
Thu, 2007-04-26 06:33
baiyi li
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dear planners:


I am a PhD researcher in Loughborough University. I would like to have your views on current practice in "information gathering and manangment" in construction planning.

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Thu, 2007-04-26 12:10
#1
baiyi li
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Dear Bijaya.

Thank you for your comments. it is really helpful.

As you mentioned that "You can have an activity "programme preparation" in your programme. This activity has various steps (P5 terminology)".

In fact, the programme preparation are ususally very compex. It often contains more than 200 activities and more than 3,000 informaiton flows (depends on the details of preparation, here i talk the normal situation, the lower level of details such as "select fabrication method", do site layout design" decide site waste managemnet method etc.). if we go further details, activityies of the programme preparation can be thousands.

I know some company use checklist of "programme preparation".

Do you have any experience on that?

do you have some examples of such checklist?
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Thu, 2007-04-26 11:25
#2
Bijaya Bajracharya
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how do you manage and plan the planning process itself?

The choice is yours. You can have an activity "programme preparation" in your programme. This activity has various steps (P5 terminology) like brain reading drawings and documents, Brain storming meeting with team, outline programme, acceptance of outline programme, draft detailed programme, comments from team, programme review meeting, etc.

It all depends on type of work, size and complexity and risk factors involved.
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Thu, 2007-04-26 09:17
#3
baiyi li
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Dear Bijaya:

Thank you for your comments. yes I totally agree with you. PLNNING IS A ONGOING PROCESS. the greater the time between plan and implementation, the greater is the vaviance of actual schedule and budget against plan. the main reason for that is the availabe of information which can let planner’s "guess" or "assumptions" become decisions. and hence to reduce the uncertaint.

but when we focus on information for making the first plan itself. do you think that in current industry, planners often experience information gathering problems and lack of method for the effective management of information flows.


yes, it is easy to get information that the planner wanted, but if the compexity of project become increase and hundred and thounsnd of planning tasks need to be consider. do you think whether we need a method to manage and planning the planning process itself?

as your experience, how do you manage and planning the planning process itself?

thanks you
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Thu, 2007-04-26 09:14
#4
Andrew Pearce
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I wonder if the point/question Baiyi is making/asking is-

Do Planners get the mushroom treatment? (kept in the dark and fed Bullshit)

Certain companies pay lip service to thier planning function they have to have a planner/programme because the contract says so. In much the same way as they treat Health & Safety.

If you are in this situation you have the following choices
1. Do nothing, grin and bear it
2. Try to change the company view by demonstrating that your good work gives benifit to the project/company profits
3. Leave and work for a contractor that respecvts what you do.

The choice is yours!
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Thu, 2007-04-26 09:07
#5
Bijaya Bajracharya
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Plan is a live document and to keep its live status, it needs update information regularly. But I see that you are not talking about this type of information. You are rather focusing on information for making the first plan itself.

If the designer’ lack of understanding of installation space/process is tried to be compensated planner’s experience, there is a overlap of responsibility, and when there is a problem nobody will own the plan. Lack of information is a problem but a planner can easily get away with it by small letters in the plan.
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Thu, 2007-04-26 08:45
#6
baiyi li
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Dear Bijaya and Andrew:

DO you think that in current industry, planners often experience information gathering problems and lack of method for the effective management of information flows. Information is often “pushed” from the upstream players. Planners usually do not know how and where to get information.

On the other hand, it is difficult for the planners to select the required information from huge amount in different formats from a variety of supply chain organisations and disciplines. In addition, the quality of much of the information received is often poor. For example, the planners often receive incomplete design information, In extreme cases, the planner may even have to redrawing some drawings. The most common problems, mentioned by most of the interviewees, are that the designers showed a lack of understanding of the installation space requirements. making installation difficult or even impossible.
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Thu, 2007-04-26 08:37
#7
Bijaya Bajracharya
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...., planners have to prepare plans with incomplete information and .... a lot of guess work must be taken in the planning process

True but as Andrew points out, it is not the end of the world. that is just the version 1.


...neither the initial planner, nor the downstream planner will check these assumptions later..

That is just pointing finger to one another. The plan is made to the best of knowledge available at the time, and it is often good to make a note of this somewhere clearly visible.


... current planning approaches isolate the role of planning from information and logistics management.

Not on purpose but can be true in many real life instances.
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Thu, 2007-04-26 08:34
#8
baiyi li
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Dear planner

Thank you for your comments.

if we see planning as a collaborative process. each team doing a part of planning. let suppose, the main contractor’s planner decide the off-site prefabrication method, the subcontractors’ planner decide the work method. and the site manager decide the site layout planning. T

to simplify the planning process, let me suppose that there are three tasks in a planning: Task A, Taks B, and Task C. if the task A requires some information from Tasks B and Task c also required information from Taks B. Task B do not need information from A and C

option 1: if we do planning as this order: Task A first, then Task B, finially, task C. we can find that Task A is based on guess (need to guess the information from task B, because Task b is not decided and therefore information are not available).

option 2: if we do planning as this order: Task B first, then Task A, finially, task C. We can find the guess work are reduced. as we do task A, the information from task B is already available!!!. because we have changed the order, we do task B first!!


do you find the different?





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Thu, 2007-04-26 08:05
#9
Andrew Pearce
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I think the real skill of a planner is to produce the best programme on the basis of information available at any point in time.

A programme for a construction project IS NEVER going to be 100% correct by the very nature of the variable processes involved. (the logic may be fairly accuration but durations vary for so many reasons)

At is also based on each planner’s experience! I once produced a fairly detailed programme for 400 Bedroom student accommodation based on information given by telephone - 200 beds in a four storey block and 200 beds in 10 2 stoery blocks. Having produced similar programmes in the past I was able to give a reasonable estimate of resources required and used this information in the Pre Qualification tender.

The real secret to good planning is to continually monitor and modify your plans as information is released to the construction team.
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