|
Dear Planning Planet Member, Please find below this weeks newsletter. We hope that you find it adds value to your day. Please visit our sponsors as they keep our servers running and without them, we will cease to exist... | |
|
| UPCOMING MEETINGS AND EVENTS |
| Our Project Controls Gatherings are a great opportunity for our members to discuss industry issues, share ideas and form new connections. Here is a list of our upcoming gatherings... These meetings may just form the beginning of lasting professional relationships. Read more about the benefits of attending a PP Project Controls Gathering here. Don’t miss out! Follow the links above to sign up. What should I do if I can't see a meeting near me? If you don’t see an event near you listed above, why not create your own? Just email james.williams@planningplanet.com to get started. To make sure these events can be as successful as possible, please forward this to your friends and colleagues so they can also get involved. |
|
ENTERPRISE PROJECT MANAGEMENT: HOW TO RECOVER FROM “JUST CHECKING IN” SYNDROME |
| There is nothing wrong with the basic idea of “just checking in.” But most of the time, on the project landscape this phrase usually means: “Hey there — remember me? I’m either your boss, your colleague or your customer, and I’m not getting the information that I need from you. What’s going on!?” Read the full Clarizen blog post here. |
|
FIELD MANAGEMENT - DIVING INTO THE DETAILS |
| Interested in learning more ways to accurately determine construction status, track productivity, and manage trends and changes effectively? Download this new on-demand webinar that explores the challenges of field management and how the ARES PRISM field progressing module can help. Download the webinar here. |
|
THE GUILD OF PROJECT CONTROLS' ROLE DESCRIPTORS |
| Have you taken a look at the Guild of Project Controls' Role Descriptors yet? This is the perfect tool for those who want to find out the baseline knowledge required for their role and level of seniority - think of it as a job descriptor for all roles and levels of competence. If you are a Guild Member, do give it a try here, or if you would like to find out more about becoming a member of the Guild, click here. |
|
EARNED SCHEDULE - AN IMPROVEMENT TO EVM SCHEDULING METRICS |
| Earned Value Management (EVM) is a powerful tool for evaluating the schedule and cost performance of projects and predicting future results. However, existing earned value schedule performance metrics does not do a good job with schedule performance evaluation and prediction. Use of “Earned Schedule” enhances the earned value management’s ability to better represent and forecast schedule information. Watch this video training to learn how. |
|
|
Planning Planet PREMIUM is the title we are giving a number of member only products we are developing to help you - our community of Project Controls Practitioners. If you are not yet a member do please create an account - is it simple and free. PREMIUM Planning Planet products are for individuals who care about their career, their competence and most importantly, always seek to improve their capabilities because of ambition - in short these individuals have the will to REALLY succeed. We at PP know this covers the majority of our members and we are proud to launch our first Planning Planet PREMIUM Product, 'Proven Practitioners' Click here to find out how you can become a Proven Practitioner with Planning Planet Premium! |
4 PROJECT METRICS YOU MUST DEFINE & TRACK |
| As new technological tools enable organizations to collect and process more information than ever before, measurement and data analysis has become a major focus in nearly every industry. Project management is no exception—today’s enterprise project managers are expected to identify, monitor and report on a variety of metrics for every project. With so much data available, even experienced project managers can have trouble determining which project management metrics are the most significant and useful. Chasing the wrong metrics will not only waste valuable time for you and your team—it can lead you to misinterpret the actual health of the project by overstating or understating project risks. As you prepare for your next project, make sure that the performance metrics listed below are part of your reporting and risk management plans... Read the full blog post. |
|
ARE YOU FOLLOWING US ON SOCIAL MEDIA? |
Let's get social! We'd love to connect with you on our social media platforms. Not only can you easily get in touch with us on our LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, we also share a lot of useful information including event alerts, news, job opportunities and interesting blog posts. Following us will also help to get you connected with others in the industry! Build your network and keep up to date by following us on social media, just click the icons to get started. | | | | |
|
DAILY, WEEKLY AND MONTHLY PROGRESS REPORTS: WHY THEY MATTER |
| While not necessarily the most awesome part of a project journey, the importance of progress report making is undeniable. They cut through the haze of project progress and give the project manager clear visibility of what’s actually happening. They are like a glass-bottomed boat cruising along the course of the project, letting you see every minute detail that would otherwise be hidden. When you think about it like that, project status report creation does actually seem a bit awesome. Read the full Clarizen blog post here. |
|
| THE GUILD OF PROJECT CONTROLS COMPENDIUM AND REFERENCE |
| The Compendium and Reference (CaR) is a document which forms The Guild Standards. We have where possible offered advice as to previously written material which is in the public domain and proven to be of such quality that it can be used as a reliable reference of "best tested and proven practice". The CaR forms the knowledge domains and reference for all Guild Certifications and is a living document being continually improved, supplemented and updated by the Guild community to reflect improvements to practices, opinions and methods in our chosen profession. The Guild is ready to receive suggestions at any time for updates to the CaR Standards. Take a look here. |
|
DISPUTE MITIGATION DUE TO UN-MATURE CHANGE MANAGEMENT IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS |
| Despite the construction industry in GCC area growing rapidly, there are apparent severe failures to meet the project objectives it was undertaken for, in terms of scope, time and cost. However; change is Fact – of – Life unfortunately buyers and sellers usually fail to mitigate the risk of changes effectively due less maturity level of change management. The paper intends to expose the root cause of change in construction industry to enable buyers and sellers to eliminate the probability and impact of the change. Download the full paper here. |
|
|
WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADVERTISE ON PLANNING PLANET? We want to give more of our members the opportunity to advertise on our site. There are many reasons why this would be beneficial to anyone wanting to advertise their goods or services, including: - Advertise your webinars, blogs and seminars
- Access to our large and growing community of over 150,000 members via our global newsletter
- Full partner profile listing on our website
- Logo and strapline listing on our main home page
- A quarterly newsletter dedicated to you!
- Banner advertisements in a chosen discussion forum
We are offering two levels of interaction with our community, PP SILVER ADVERTISER and PP GOLD ADVERTISER. Click here to get started! |
ROCKEFELLER GROUP’S JOURNEY TO NEXT-GEN PROJECT CONTROLS AND ANALYTICS |
| Rockefeller is a commercial real estate giant whose annual capital expenditures average $250 - $300 million USD. Roughly a decade into its journey with Oracle to transform its project controls, Rockefeller Group entered a new phase last year that enables it to make use of sophisticated analytics in project portfolio management and forecasting. Watch this On-Demand Webcast to discover its vision for taking project controls to the next level with integrated cost and scheduling and ever more robust reporting capabilities. |
|
7 WAYS MANAGERS MOTIVATE AND DEMOTIVATE EMPLOYEES |
| Few things are as costly and disruptive as managers who kill morale. Demotivated employees underperform and then walk out the door at the first opportunity. I know a few managers like this... Click here to read more. |
|
SIX COMMON PROJECT MANAGEMENT MILESTONE MISTAKES – AND HOW TO AVOID THEM |
| Milestones have been a basic staple on the project management landscape for, well, forever. Indeed, just as you can spot economists at a party because they’re the ones saying “all else being equal,” and you can identify the IT specialists because they’re passionately talking about “cloud migration,” you can point out the project managers because they’re chatting about milestones. However, sometimes this chatting is more of a confession, because virtually every project manager has, at one time or another, made one, some, or likely all of the following milestone mistakes... Continue reading. |
|
ORACLE PRIME PROJECTS CLOUD SERVICE |
| Oracle Prime Projects Cloud Service is a complete, cloud-first project management platform that enables team collaboration and real-time visibility across the project lifecycle. By integrating the management of project portfolios, schedules, tasks, resources, costs, field teams, documents, and risk into a single platform, it delivers complete project success. Watch this video to learn how to build on the best with Oracle Prime Projects. |
|
|
WOULD YOU LIKE TO BECOME A GUILD OF PROJECT CONTROLS CORPORATE MEMBER? This is our effort to help YOU - the employers of our community. Becoming a Corporate Member will allow you to: - Better understand your ENTIRE Project Controls environment in terms of workforce
- Assess the competence of all your staff to fully understand their strengths and weaknesses
- Use the experience of our huge community in order to run your team much more efficiently
- Raise the morale of your staff as they will have much more confidence in their ability
- Recruit the best possible personnel
- Transform your profits!
All of the above is carried out with YOU in control! With a Corporate Membership, you will have access to many of our services including Role Descriptors, Self Assessment, Competency Review with possible comparison with other organisations and Compendium Desk Reference and so many more. Interested? Click here. |
GUILD ASSESSMENT CENTRE |
| Have you tried the Guild of Project Controls' Assessment Centre? From this tool you will be able to ascertain your strengths and weaknesses against the many years of research that the Guild has ascertained are the Standards required for your role. Further, for the first time you will know how you stack up in terms of skills in the Project Controls industry whatever your role.
Give it a try here! |
|
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCHEDULING - BACK TO THE FUTURE |
| The science of ‘scheduling’ as defined by Critical Path Analysis (CPA) celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2007. In 1956/57 Kelly and Walker started developing the algorithms that became the ‘Activity-on-Arrow’ or ADM scheduling methodology for DuPont. The program they developed was trialed on plant shutdowns in 1957 and their first paper on critical path scheduling was published in March 1959. The PERT system was developed at around the same time but lagged CPM by 6 to 12 months (although the term ‘critical path’ was invented by the PERT team). | | Later the Precedence (PDM) methodology was developed by Dr. John Fondahl; his seminal paper was published in 1961 describing PDM as a ‘non-computer’ alternative to CPM. Arguably, the evolution of modern project management is a direct consequence of the need to make effective use of the data generated by the schedulers in an attempt to manage and control the critical path... Read More. |
|
PRIMAVERA TIPS AND TRICKS TRACING LOGIC TO A TARGETED ACTIVITY USING PRIMAVERA P6 |
| This blog post explains how to trace logic to a targeted activity on your project by utilizing Multiple Float Path functionality in Primavera P6. This will allow you to focus on the work that is leading up to the targeted activity, which may not be on the project’s critical path. Let’s say you have a major Stakeholder on your project that has a Grand Opening Planned for a new store that is depending your work in the area being completed. | | The Grand Opening is a major event and not something you want to slip. The traditional Longest Path and Multiple Float Path Gantt Charts are not useful as they focus on project completion and not this targeted activity. If you follow the procedure outlined in this post, you will have a Multiple Float Path chart that focuses on the targeted activity. Read More. |
|
THE FIVE 'C's OF A TRUSTED LEADER |
| | Building trust is something anyone wanting to be a successful leader must do. Trust underpins every relationship in the workplace - between boss and employee, between colleagues, and between businesses. Trust isn't something that is inherent; it must be forged through consistent action. While there are many ways to become a trusted leader, they typically have some common traits, known as the "Five Cs." Read More. |
|
TOP 10 TIPS FROM A WORLD-CLASS AUTHORITY IN PROJECT CONTROLS |
| How to become a world-class authority in project controls and get to the top of your field? This is the question I was eager to know the answer from someone who has already reached to the top in Project Controls and is arguably one of the most successful individuals working in the Project Controls field today, Chris Carson. Here are the top ten tips, extracted from the interview with Chris Carson, for becoming a world-class authority in project controls. Read the full post. |
|
WHAT IS DYNAMIC SCHEDULING? |
| During discussions related to an ongoing research for the prospects of using dynamic scheduling concepts in construction industry in several forums, we received in many cases a similar question: What is dynamic scheduling? This is mainly because the dynamic scheduling topic is quite new in relation to construction field; despite of its wide applications in manufacturing and other industries. So, we thought of presenting a quick briefing about the dynamic scheduling’s concepts, approaches, strategies, policies, and applications. Read the full paper here. |
|
|
WOULD YOU LIKE TO BECOME A GUILD REGISTERED CONSULTING PARTNER? This is our effort to help YOU and our community. It is about having a product in your portfolio that any organisation with a Project Controls environment will be interested in. This is a GLOBAL opportunity: - You represent GPC to the client - YOU are our REGISTERED PARTNER
- There will have to be screening by us but essentially if you are an established consultancy OR have considerable skills and knowledge CALL US ON THE NUMBERS BELOW
- Your client is yours - we recognise this and will protect your relationship if required
- We have fixed costs - your margin and you total deliverables are up to you!
The Guild of Project Controls offers a solution - which evaluates a Project Controls environment by Assessing and grading the competency of individuals - a ‘stake in the ground’ - a report to document the actual competence of my team. If you are interested in becoming a Guild Registered Consulting Partner, click here. |
ARE YOU TAKING FULL ADVANTAGE OF PLANNING PLANET? |
| | | MEMBERS See who you know from within our 150,000+ membership pool! | | GUILD Take a look at the worlds first and only competence based credentials supported by a career path, role descriptors, self-assessment tools and online compendium desk reference of best tested and proven tools and techniques for project controls practitioners. | | BLOG Join other members who share their thoughts and ideas in the form of blog posts. | | FORUM 100,000+ questions and answers to the topics we struggle with (mostly software!) on a day to day basis. | | WIKI A knowledge-base that can be contributed to or utilized by anyone with skills and/or interest in planning, scheduling or project controls. No Wiki page or article is owned by its creator or any other editor, and its content relies upon collaboration and teamwork. How can you contribute? | | BUILD TIMES What is needed to come up with a production rate? A duration of time, the manhours involved, and an amount of work produced? Take a look and get involved. | | JOBS This has been dusty and quiet place for some time now. We have been liaising with recruiters, headhunters and talent managers plus a ream of corporate leaders and very soon we will have the largest live repository of project controls jobs in the world. Check back soon. | | ADVERTISERS Check out our Silver and Gold partners and see if you'd like to be included there also. |
|
CHALLENGES OF A COST ESTIMATOR'S JOB |
| If anyone asks, ‘What do you like the most about being a cost estimating professional?”, an owner’s cost estimator might say ‘the cost estimator plays an important role in an owner’s budgeting efforts for different projects.’ A cost estimator working for a consulting firm might say ‘In addition to supporting an owner’s budgeting efforts, the cost estimator is able to provide cost solutions to their clients’. Cost estimators working for contractors might say ‘they play a key role in winning bids for their contracting firm.’ Read the full blog post. |
|
SCHEDULING ETHICS: RECOGNIZING GAMING, DATA MANIPULATION AND ABUSE IN PROJECT SCHEDULES |
| Project teams face numerous schedule challenges and risks including: late part deliveries, unrealistic baselines, insufficient reserves/margins, inadequate resources, technical complexity, vague requirements, poor performance, and unanticipated changes. Unethical project scheduling practices can also pose a challenge to project success. Often, the pressure from customers, senior management and other stakeholders to stay on track and finish on time can foster an atmosphere in which gaming, manipulating or abusing the project schedule occurs to distort the schedule plan or hide performance problems. | | Sometimes the gaming is the result of over optimism and a desire to delay reporting bad news to allow time to “fix the problem.” In other situations the abuse is intended to mislead or deflect blame for delays. This paper examines how to recognize schedule gaming, data manipulation, and abuse techniques, raises questions about ethics in schedule management when they are used, opens a dialogue on this often overlooked phenomena in planning and control, and offers ideas to mitigate unethical practices. Read the full paper. |
|
HOW TO REMOVE ACTUALS / PROGRESS FROM PRIMAVERA P6 SCHEDULE |
| This article explains how to remove actuals so you can develop an “As-Planned” schedule on a Primavera schedule with actual data and progress. Read the article here. |
|
| |
|
ARE YOU INTERESTED IN BECOMING A GUILD ENDORSED TRAINING PROVIDER? Are you an experienced Practitioner in Project Controls? Or are you already involved in Project Delivery Training or Project Management software sales, support, and installation? Whichever your current situation here is a unique business offer for you! The Guild of Project Controls (GPC) has released a comprehensive Certification in Project Controls covering ALL levels of Competency AND all areas of Project Controls - either individually in the form of Planning and Scheduling, Cost Management, Forensic Analysis and Project Controls itself. Our unique offer to you is that this initiative is supported by Planning Planet (PP) the world's largest website catering for practitioners in Project Controls - we are part of the same Organisation. PP members (120,000+globally) invested their time in the Guild, tested and approved our Standards, Certification tests and maintain that the Guild reflects the operation and knowledge required to be proficient in Project Controls itself. WE WILL UTILISE THE PLANNING PLANET WEBSITE TO PROMOTE YOU WHEREVER YOU ARE SAFE IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THERE IS A PP COMMUNITY IN YOUR AREA. All this and our Guild COMPETENCY assessment tools where our ETP partners can offer potential clients a method whereby skills can be independently assessed and training requirements documented! We do not seek thousands of Endorsed Training Partners (ETP), we seek a cohesive delivery team for our training. Click here to find out more and become a Guild Endorsed Training Provider! |
HOW TO PERFORM AS-PLANNED DELAY ANALYSIS ON A CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE |
| When there are delays on a construction project and a delay claim has been issued, it’s vital to determine who caused the delays and what happens next. Forensic Delay Schedule Analysis is broad area of expertise in project controls whereby a set of techniques are used to analyze a schedule and figure out who is at fault, whether a Time Extension should be granted and if there’s monetary compensation owing because of the delay... Continue Reading. |
|
BENCHMARKING REPORTED SCHEDULES USING GAO’S SCHEDULE ASSESSMENT GUIDE BEST PRACTICES |
| Oman power and water sector is developing with a continuous increasing demand of electricity and water. Currently, the project companies are delayed in delivering these project on time. The author suggest that quality of project schedule plays a crucial role in project delivery which can be improved. Using Multi Attribute Decision Making and GAO Schedule Assessment Guide, a scoring model was developed to quality check the reported schedules. The outcomes from the scoring model will be displayed on a scorecard using scores for each of ten best practices and four scheduling characteristics. | | A set of recommendations were provided to the management regarding the use of the scoring model as monitoring tool , modifications to the contracts, and the use of scorecard to communicate the results to project companies. Read More. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you'd like to help the small but enthusiastic team of people helping with this newsletter please do get in touch with us via PPadmin@planningplanet.com We know we have a long way to go to make this informative and an anticipated bi-weekly "read" so do get in touch and get involved. Regards... The Planning Planet Team |
| To unsubscribe please email ppadmin@planningplanet.com please ignore the unsubscribe link below |
Printer-friendly version
Send to friend