Are you a graduate engineer ?

If yes then it should be easy.

You start of by making a BOQ. With other word’s how much material is required.
Once you have completed the material list all you need to do is get rates (Estimates) for each of them.

Then you ad them all up and you have your budgeted price.

Then you do a Monte Carlo / or Other and determine your contingency.

If you still whish to tell your boss something I would suggest review your Job Description.

I remember many years ago before I became a planner my boss walked into my office and ask me to do a project budget. It took me a half a day to find out what he is on about and half a day to do. Needlest to say it was not 100 % correct when submitted to him the next morning but he showed me the problems and told to fix it.

So in short I had to learn it the hardway.

Cheers

I WOULD SUGGEST< DO NOT DRINK ANY MORE TEA< SAY HAM"D"ALLAH" EVERY MORNING< AND TRY SOME REAL PLANNING

Dear Alex and Jaco,
I agree with what Alex said.
I would like to add that, even for a scheduler, it is required to visit the site, because I have come across many such cases where the site engineer will boost up progress measurements to keep the pressure off from Project manager or consultant / client.
For a planner, site visits are an absolute must, essentially because midway through a project, site situation changes so much that the schedule will not give accurate projections.
Activity durations and their linking logic may have to be changed (with approval ofcourse) and this should be done as committed by site engineer.
Resources requirement may change as per site conditions.

We have sites which are more than 1000km away from our offices but there is usually a person from site who has to do the above coordination on behalf of planner.

Regards,

Neeraj

Jaco

I am not saying that, just talk, action too. If you get the job, it is part of the job as a planner to go down to the site and understanding the progress and difficuity if you can do it as regular as possible. Of course if physical constraint like location. Then I would ask if a project manager can visit his site from time to time, why a planner cannot??

Being present in site will help to communicate and understand your job. Thats why I always looking for planner willing to take the effort to visit to site. Of course, I can tell if it is only just talk but no action. In addition, I came across so many time when the site supervisor comments about their planner sitting in their air-conditioned site office and never understand the real site conditions, and trying to instruct them what to do next...

Well if a plan only exist in planner’s own world and not the real world then, it will never work.

I hope this will help to understand not only what to answer the question but also what a planner should do in real project as well.

Regards

Alex

When the interviewer ask, how did you obtain the progress information: Always reply : talk to the people (Supervisor, site managers) and site visit.

It is extemely important for a planner to know their site as well as their people on the job in order to have a realistic plan/report. And this is what the employer always looking for.

If a planner planning is project 100% on his desk. I personally will never hire them.

Regards

Alex

Thanx a lot for the explanantions of Philip & David it was really very very useful & interesting... U r always interested in knowing such unknown facts from experienced planners like u.
Mail ID:bala_vrce@yahoo.com
Cheers
Bala

A well-known pioneer in the early days of scientific management was Henry Gantt. Gantt worked for Frederick Winslow Taylor in the USA and is to be remembered for his humanizing influence on management, emphasizing the conditions that have favorable psychological effects on the worker.

(I know of a couple of project managers who wold have fit in perfectly in that period )

The Gantt chart for which he will also be remembered, is a visual display chart used for scheduling which is based on time, rather than quantity, volume or weight. It was created in 1917 and was used for production control.

PERT was devised in 1958 for the POLARIS missile program by the Program Evaluation Branch of the Special Projects office of the U.S.Navy, helped by the Lockheed Missile Systems division and the Consultant firm of Booz-Allen & Hamilton. The calculations were so arranged so that they could be carried out on the IBM Naval Ordinance Research Computer (NORC) at Dahlgren, Virginia.

CPM was the discovery of M.R.Walker of E.I.Du Pont de Nemours & Co. and J.E.Kelly of Remington Rand, circa 1957. The computation was designed for the UNIVAC-I computer. The first test was made in 1958, when CPM was applied to the construction of a new chemical plant. In March 1959, the method was applied to a maintenance shut-down at the Du Pont works in Louisville, Kentucky. Unproductive time was reduced from 125 to 93 hours.

Hope this clarifies the details.

Regards,

Erik Jonker

Hi Moshin,

Seeing nobody answered your questions, I suggest you find a good book about project planning.

The answers is as follows.

1. Gannt is a form of graphic presentation of planning, ie the bar chart. It is the named after the guy who came up with the idea. (I was taught all this more than thirty years ago so I stand corrected if I am wrong). PERT was a form of planning invented in the USA I think by NASA prior to gantt. However the bar charts you used to make was originally known as gannt charts.

2. Early and late dates? The difference between early and late dates is that early dates are the earliest dates on which an activity can be performed in terms of the logic within the schedule, and the opposite for late dates, ie the latest an activity can be performed but the end date of the schedule will be maintained. In the old days before primavera, open plan, super projects and the rest planners actually drew up pert charts, and calculated dates manually. Have you seen the terms forward pass, and backwrd pass on your screen? A forward pass is done to calculate the early dates, and the backward pass to calculate late dates. The software uses the same calculations to achieve this.
3: Float is the difference between late and early dates. This is the time that you can be late without being late overall. If the float is zero the activity is critical as there is no time to waste. There is also more than one type of float, the two main types being Total float and free float. Total float being the amount of float within the overall schedule, and free float the amount of float within the activity’a sub chain.
4: I think I have explained critical already, but the reason the critical activities are shown in red is so that that wiil stand out.
Good luck with your interviews. Insh Allah

PS Jaco I liked your dissertation on costing. Good luck to you and your wife:-)

Cash Flows

I would suggest you read a book on the subject. (AACE have some good books)

The answer is simple.
Yes.

Most people do know how cash flow work.(You use it everyday)

You get your salary Cheque = Budget
You promise your wife you will buy her something = Commitment.
You Get the Item delivered
You get invoiced
You pay the person.
What ever is left "over" at the end of the month is your’s/or your wife’s = Profit/loss. (Normally I have found any money loss it is mine - any Profit made belongs to My Wife)

Then we go on you purchase on credit = (cash Negative)
You pay your account on last month pays = (Cash Positive)
You pay your account as you recieve your pay = (Cash Neutral)
Calculating wat you will spending the month is your = cash forecast (Cash flow) (tricky if you dont have estimating experiance lesson = Know your wife) This you achieve by saying on which day you are going to pay which account.


And then their is thousand more things.

The tricky part in cash flows is when you use more than one currency’s (Currency savings/loss projection) and inflation. Also try to calculate interest.

So next time just think a little about everyday live (we all use planning etc evryday of our live)

PS the answer to your qeeustion regarding percentage complete on the excavation I would sugget the following manner.

1) Calculate total Volume required for excavation (1000m2)
2) Calculate total Volume to Complete excavation (400M2)

This will tell me you have 40% to complete so you are 60 % complete. (I prefer looking at wat is required to complete rather than what is completed which eliminate estimating errors in progress)

Probable Questions: 1. Brief something about your previous project experience and your achievement in the project. 2. Have you used Resource loading, project budgeting etc. etc. Cash-flow curve.......etc...etc into your schedule. 3. How good you are in preparation of weekly/monthly progress reports. 4. Any experience in cost controlling?. 5. How well you could handle Primavera(for an example). 6. Can you perform well under pressure. 7. Why do you want to be considered for this post?. ........etc...........etc................