Hi Sreejith,

I was just wondering whether you had posted your "progress Tracker" on your blog yet? I like to collect info that could be useful or a benefit to myself or colleagues :)

I did have a look on your site but couldn’t see it...



Regards,
Liz

If we have manhours and machine hours assigned to resources so to have weightage bases on the effort (machine and manhours) for my WBS can we combine the manhous and machine hours( of all the activities under that WBS) and develope % weightage for that WBS

James,

That is your opinion that I have to respect.

On the other hand, IMHO, your client, PM etc. are not busy so they have time to indulge in your works as detailed as possible.

My projects are multi-billion USD. My clients are very busy and focus on what they are doing. They hire professional and fired unprofessional, the pretender to be professional.

My PM even told me that when the time comes that he will start to doubts what I’m doing, I better start to look for another job. My PM believe what Im doing and support me because he know I’m professional. People who question my ability ends up like a baby in project management.

Cheers,
Charlie

Charlie,

Perhaps the reason why your work has never been questioned is because the client or the PM actually take no interest in what you’re doing. On the other hand, perhaps they do ask you a question, but maybe you don’t understand the question, or are unable to answer it, so provide a response that uses an awful lot of words that contain nothing of any substance – which is precisely what Directors, PMs and Clients often do (just as politicians). We can all be confident of spouting a pile of bollocks if no-one is going to ask you to numerically substantiate it.

As the client is paying my salary, he is perfectly entitled to question everything I do, especially if they are somewhat new to the world of EV and/or truthful project planning and progress reporting. It is the only way that they can learn. Unfortunately, when you are exposed to the truth, it really hurts, and the natural reaction is to question absolutely everything and immerse yourself into a mode of self-denial. Howsoever you insert your head into the sand, it doesn’t stop the truth from being the truth (mathematically, at least). It takes the client many painful experiences for it to finally dawn upon him that, actually, there is some validity in this EV malarkey – and maybe he’d better start taking notice of it. Ultimately, therefore, it is up to me to ensure that I can answer his questions with facts and figures that are based on substantive data, and not politicised bullshit.

Maybe you misinterpreted my earlier posting: I said I CAN to go down into the weeds, if necessary. I won’t do it unless I have to because, as you said, most PMs won’t stay awake past the first minute. I always say, though: “If you don’t want to hear the answer, then don’t ask the question”. I will happily teach those whom are willing to learn – but do not mock just because you fear the truth or fail to understand the road to enlightenment.

Charlie – which path do you tread?

James.

James,

Your first paragraph is full of rubbish.

Project dire, OM or Client start barking about % complete when they dont have confidence on your ability to present your work. When the % progress you capture did not much with reality.

AND SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR METHODOLOGY.

And why will your director, pm or client hire you in the first place if you cannot give them confidence on what you are doing to the point that you have to let them go to the process as detail as what you describe.

Maybe your approach is wrong, for the simple reason that professional work will not be question by client, director or pm since for the very simple reason that this higher level management do not have time to go into details.

The way we approach our work is to show confidence on what we are doing since we were doing it for the last 20++ years of experience.

Now how come the top executive management will question what you are doing? This will only happen if you dont know what you are doing for the last 20++ years of your work. That is why you have to present to top executive management your mathematical computation in details,

common, this is not real to me, it never happen to me.

Cheers,
Charlie

James,

Have you ever, ever done a progress report that you are confident of????

With your post, I dont think so.

You will end up a "DEVIL ADVOCATE" in your project team with envery bolts and nuts being questions as to accuraccy.

I dont think so if ever you are ever confident in planning.

Believe me, out there are some of the best practice in progress reporting using weight distribution.

Cheers,

Charlie

James,

Well said Mate, I could not agree more.

Cheers,
Daniel

I think manhours is better than cost, however, reporting an overall (EPC) progress % complete is meaningless as at it maybe misleading in terms of the timely completion of the project.

Cheers,
Daniel

CJO and Trevor are absolutely right. "Weightage" is utter nonsense and meaningless. Any arguments about it are purely ethereal and serve no purpose other than providing a platform for PMs and Directors to offer opinions that have no basis in reality.

Weightage is just a result of the project measurement units that are used. Whatever measurement units you have estimated for a particular project phase, as a proportion of the total measurement units, is what your % weightage is....no argument, no debate. Currency, Duration, Manhours, are all perfectly valid units of measurement, so long as the same unit can be applied across each phase. However, each measurement unit may give a completely different answer to the question of % weightage. Have you noticed though.......true Earned Value is always converted to currency!!!

Cheers

James.

I think, we need to examine and look at each phase (EPC) independently, bearing in mind that the ultimate objective is to complete the project on time.

Engineering/Design Phase – deliverables are estimated in man-hours and therefore this is straight forward. The estimated man-hours for each deliverable will be your weight value regardless of how many man-hours it takes to complete this particular deliverable. The deliverables may consist of drawings, calculation sheets, data sheets or a document. The progress will be measured physically and this can be agreed with the consultant/designer in advance or usually we just adapt the consultant’s progress measuring system (stages). So in this particular phase of the project, you will have a list of deliverables with corresponding weight value (estimated man-hours) and percent (%) complete for each deliverable to calculate your progress. However, this maybe misleading and you need to evaluate this in relation to timing. Each discipline of the Engineering/Design phase needs to be concluded on time in relation to your procurement and construction programme. In other words the timely conclusion of the design phase (design freeze) is very important so you can procure it and build it on time.

Procurement Phase – it involves cycle times for tendering, evaluation, recommendation and approval to award and lead times for procuring, manufacturing and delivery of materials. So if you look at it closely, everything is base on time. So the ideal weighting for procurement is ‘time’. Again, you need a plan and you need to make intelligent assumptions regarding, cycle times and lead times and you can use this for tracking progress. Again, this need to be evaluated in relation to your start date on site to meet the overall objective and that is completing the project on time.

Construction Phase – In construction the ideal common unit of measure is man-hours rather than cost that is if you are measuring overall progress. Why? Because of the fact that certain items cost a lot but take a few man-hours to install or build. Progress must be measured physically, however, the trick is you need to measure eggs against eggs, and this is where earned value comes from meaning, if you are building a 20 storey building with an estimated 100,000 cubic meters of concrete and your estimate for each floor is 5000 cubic meters (assuming the concrete is equally distributed across the height) if you completed 2 storey then you earned 10,000 cubic meters regardless of the actual concrete delivered or poured. The same goes for each type of trade/ construction phases.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any query.

Daniel

Ronald,

Thanks a lot mate.

It sounds better to track each phase indipendantly. To give a high level summary or project status in one figure (say XX% as on date) coverting to equivalent manhours helps.

Backtracking to see if proper estimates are done for each phase - meaning if the weightings looks suspect one can always verify the estimates.

That solves it.

Thanks a lot.
Daison

Anoon/Ronald,

Thanks to you guys.

May be it’s boring but going back my question - Is there any general thump rule on what shall be the "weightage" split between Engineering, Procurement and Construction? Or is it purely on the estimated quantity/cost/manhours?

To put the question in a different way - If after keeping the parameter of estimated manhours for calulating the weightage what if the allotted weightage to any of these three does not seem adequate? Say if Engineering looks to be weighted too low or too high, what is the general/common split one can take just to be sure?

Thanks,
Daison

Trevor,

There’s nothing real in a Plan until it is done, so what’s wrong with weightage (or whatever)? I believe a Plan is just an estimate, the more data you got, the more it become realistic. EPC is really difficult, because for Engineering, how can you estimate Design works? (it’s like designing a Plan).

Weightage, or parameters, when agreed, can be measured against with, so the issue will evolve once you are getting late, but who made the estimates anyway? (for sure not me!).

There is nothing to think about.
"weightage" is not even an English word.
You can’t define it, measure it or use it for anything sensible or productive or meaningful, or say why it is necessary for PM.
It is a pompous, nonsense word which seems to have originated in India and found its way into Singaporean and Malaysian English, and is probably going to become part of Chinglish as well as spread south-west of the sub-continent.
Measure something real instead.

Reading all the posts in this thread one question remains

Who/what will decide the weightings between phases of an EPC project with the phases being Engineering, Procurement and Construction?

Before answering the question, please think about scenarios such as Lumpsum, Managment contract etc. (I am talking from the EPC side, not client)

What will be the common denominator for these phases? As most prefers Manhours? In that case would it give you the correct weighting? Wouldn’t Enginnering and Procurement be weighted less?

Or is it going to be on "Judgement" across phases and then based on manhours for disciplines within phases? And if it is Judgement, is there any thump rule for this judgement?

Thanks for the answers guys.

Daison

details of the NCR was mailed to you

milestones and man-hours does not and will never determine the functionality of a Drawing! my question is when and how can you determine the funtionality of a Drawing / Document? Gentlemen?

Dinesh,

If you were having a house built, would you consider it to be 20% complete if your builder had laid just one brick? No, of course you wouldn’t....so why would you consider a drawing to be 20% complete just because the draughter had drawn the first line on a piece of paper? The Start/Issue/Update are perfectly good milestones to help understand approximately WHERE in the PROCESS you are, but have only limited use in determining the VALUE (cost) of it.

If you are going to use manhours to calculate progress, then you should calculate the progress via the formula Actual/Total. It makes no difference whether the document has been issued for Initial Review or Final Update.

By using the "milestones", people can begin to play games - and it’s these games that cause project data to become erroneous and produce false results. Mainly, this is because people apply a subjective value to a milestone, without understanding what proportion of the project the milestone constitutes.

James.

Whoever calculated the percentage weightings for "drawings" ought to be shot. You become completely blinded by this "start/issue/update etc..". Use manhours instead, and use the most basic arithmetic to calculate % complete.eg. Actual/(Actual+Remaining). It’s so simple even my momma can do it!!!!

James.

how about functionality? i.e. engineering documents / drawings, at what stage can you say that what you got on hand is workable? and you can build something out of it

what’s wrong with man-hours? you’re right, people will sleep all day and can be counted.

but that’s the way it is, you can count how much you win, or how much you lose too.

actual work done does not necessarily mean within budget, so you need to count how much man-hours you had wasted too.

Hi Carmen,

I think what is important is that you have a baseline program which is aprroved by both parties (Contractor, PM/CM), this will be the basis for monitoring your actual performance against your plan, any delays caused by any parties or any unforseen situations is another matter. You can use your approved baseline programme for any justification of claims and EOT.

When a planner estimates a duration of an activity, it is of course, based on production rates on that particular country or region, this will depend largely on the skills of the labours of that particular place and based on experience it varies from country to country. Also it is a common practice to have some contingency for down time as labour do not always perform at peak continously.


Cheers,
Daniel

Hi Carmen,

Engineering & Design works are mostly based and monitored in manhours. We estimate the works in manhours, we bill the client based on manhours expended and unit rates of our engineering & design staff. so everything should be based on manhours.

We use duration as weight value mostly in construction works where quantities are very difficult to measure, for example MEP works and Fit-out works. We call this time based. You monitor the project based on time.

You can easily do this in P3 by using the global feature.
Define a resource and assign it to all activities, then define budgeted quantity = duration, you can now produce a plan progress curve based on time. Monitor the same activities in terms of physical percent complete.

You can use this type of progress measurement and monitoring for time driven projects where you have no limitations of manpower and you have target date to meet. For resource driven projects this is not applicable, you have to use manhours.

Cheers,
Daniel

Hello Carmen,

I do understand what you are trying to say. I worked in the contractor side for most of my oil and gas/pertroleum experience. We did used manhours as common matrix for progress monitoring. The fundamemtals was that there were lots of client provided materials to the points that we, as contractor, practically provided only manpower. So it is only natural to use manhours as common matrix for progress monitorin.

But my experience in construction and projects is so diverse. I’m involved in building works, civil/infrastructure works/ marine construction, utilities constructions, bridge construction, light rail transit construction, project development (feasibility study, concept design, preliminary/schematic design, design development, tender process, construction phase) etc., etc.,.

So what I’m using as common matrix is duration if it is effective otherwise I can prepare other type of matrix let say monitoring progress of concrete work as critical then I compute cubic meters of concrete, formworks = sq meters of formworks, steel reinforcement kg, masonry sq m.m, etc., etc.

So percent weightage distribution should be flexible as to what project you are in, the added value you want to tell the project team.

Sreejith,

You mentioned something that I forgot. It depends on the side you are playing in a project.

Client side: he has the budget and he wants and needs to expend the budget in the best and transparent way. This mean, pay invoices according to real work executed. Weighting activities for Procurement, Engineering or Construction based on COST ONLY, can lead to erroneous figures in terms of progress executed.

Contractors (includes EPC contractor or only construction contractors): they are the one putting resources in project execution and taking risk, especially in Oil&gas project nowadays. For this group, the accuracy at the moment of weighting activities in order to progress the work is very important. The hidden idea at the moment of progressing the work would be to get paid for the real work executed, no less , no more (????).

Cheers,

Hi Charlie,

Better to read your post here and not in the “Working in the UAE as a Senior Planner / Manager “.

Could you explain a bit your statement “Each activities will be assigned percent weight equal to activity duration/sum of activities durations”.

Weighted values for activities depends of the project phase. For instance:

Engineering phase: weighted values based on man-hours per deliverable. Roll up by activity and by discipline.

Procurement phase: weighted values based on one or two parameters. Mandatory parameter is cost, optional parameter would be delivery duration.

Construction phase: weighted value based on man-hours. Sometimes you can see weights based on cost. I do not recommend cost due to the cost structure for construction activity.
Normal cost structure has 3 components: labor, consumable materials and equipment. Some activities with high cost is due to consumable materials or equipment but no labor . Based on this, cost being used as weight is not a reliable parameter of activities.

Weight based on duration for Engineering activities is giving us wrong information. Some activities in Engineering have long duration with manhours budget very small. What is best indicator for weighting : manhours or duration ??? for me manhours.

Cheers,

Hi Abd Aziz,

Wt Distribution is always depending on what report are you going to generate.

Example:
1. If you are working on the spreadsheet and dealing a work items with estimated qty and unit cost, then therefore you can easily calculated the wt for each item as against the overall cost.
2. If you are dealing a work items with estimated manhour then you can also calculate the wt using manhour.
3. In P3, I used to load these information (Resource Loading) both qty and unit cost and sometime the manhour...but having hardtime to present the wt percentage in the graphical presentation (bar chart - column format)...so I always end up preparing it in spreadsheet format...

Hope this input will help...

Ronald

Hi

PMBOK not necessary tell you how to build a spaceship, however, it teaches you how to manage the project in order to finish the spaceship on time and on budget.

The weight distribution for each project is different. and in accordance with the contract terms and condition. you have option to use man hr, quantity of materials m3, cost, unit output ... the list just go on .

Al