25 Apr 2020 Project Controls News

Dear Planning Planet Member,

With all that is going on in the world we hope that this finds you safe and well.

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On May 6, Professor Bill Ibbs along with construction consultant Paul Stynchcomb and attorney Doug Patin will present a 90-minute online webinar on the Potential Impacts of COVID-19 on Construction Performance, Labor Productivity and Project Schedules. Some projects are suspended while other projects continue under new controls that are intended to impede the spread of the virus. For projects that are suspended or slowed, there is the potential that idled workers will not return to their projects. For projects that are deemed essential and are continuing, there may be issues with crew continuity, material and equipment supply chains, and construction means-and-methods. The results are possible critical path delay, loss of labor productivity and financial damages.

Produced by ConstructionClaims.com, the webinar will touch on these issues, and include discussions of the latest COVID-19 advisories issued by the US Government that may require action on the part of construction managers and contractors in order to preserve rights and obtain relief as to project schedules. In most cases, contract terms and conditions will continue to be enforced, and as such, contractors need to be aware of notice deadlines, the content of notices and ways to measure schedule and labor productivity impacts.

Included in the webinar handouts will be an Excel spreadsheet/checklist for use as a template in identifying and calculating lost productivity costs due to COVID19. For more information or to register, visit covid19lostproductivity.com [3].

Note, Planning Planet readers - use code Planet20 at checkout for a 20% discount.

Do you wish to see predecessors and successors in your schedules?

In our outstanding patent pending software tool, Portfolio Project, you can jump to and from predecessors and successors in your time schedules. Any links, your planner has made in his planning tool, PP can see and make you jump between.   

Read more [5]...

In Primavera P6, there are three options in the Scheduling Options dialog as follows: Retained Logic Progress Override Actual Dates

These three options control how Primavera P6 calculates “Out of Sequence Progress”.

Read more [6]...

#EVA25 - PLAN B Following the unique circumstances that we are currently going through; we have had to re-schedule our 25th anniversary event that was due to take place in May to the following new dates:

• Thursday 09th & Friday 10th July 2020

In our aim to keep you all informed of any further developments, we will continue to monitor the situation and will review these new dates again on Saturday 6th June 2020. In the meantime, keep safe.

There is also a plan C.  Learn more... [7]

This new book is a user guide and training manual written for Project Management Professionals who wish to learn how to plan and control projects with or without Resources and Roles. 

This book is an update of the author’s Primavera P6 Version 8 to 18 book and contains information about the recent updates found in P6 Version 19 PPM.  Click on this link>>> [8] to read an article on these new functions. 

It is available in paperback, spiral bound and eBook formats from Kobo, Kindle and iTunes. Also instructor PowerPoint slide shows are available for training organisations. 

Click here for more information on this book>>> [9]

Other books, training manuals and instructor PowerPoint slide shows by Paul Harris are available on Microsoft Project, Oracle Primavera P6 and Elecosoft (Asta) Powerproject.  More information and links to sellers at our website>>> [10]

Paul E Harris, Director, Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd

The impetus, of this narrative, through the detailed content of this work, takes a unique look into the industrial world and at many of the subjects in a manner and degree of detail as never seen in print before. There are many persons who don’t understand or just have a misconception of what exactly is the true meaning of the term: Project Controls.

Even many head hunters, through their utilization of poorly designed databases, evaluate process and project controls candidates as falling within the same genre.  Check it out [11]...

Live Broadcast: From Excel to Software Tools – The Journey to Better Cost Management

You’re invited to our Live Broadcast.

This live broadcast [13] will discuss how companies that are still using Excel to manage projects can benefit from using a dedicated project controls software. 

Join us to be part of this discussion, and also to take a look at the live demo of Cleopatra Enterprise Cost Management Solution.

Get in the Game: Turnaround Work Planning

During shutdowns and turnarounds, plants are out of production. Therefore, all work has to be executed in the shortest time possible to get them up and running again. This makes turnarounds complex projects, where lots of labour is involved in just short amounts of time, bringing significant (financial) risks.

Work planning has a vital role in making sure that all turnaround jobs are prepared for a safe and efficient execution within the required timeframe and budget. Read the article [14]

Project controls improvement opportunities in times of coronavirus

Due to a lot of projects coming to a halt and companies killing many investments they had planned, estimators, schedulers, cost controllers and other project team members have some extra time on their hands. 

We therefore thought of providing you with some tips of how to utilize this time to ensure we come out stronger and more efficient after this crisis, and do our part in limiting the impact on our strong global economy. Read the article [15]

When an XER file is created and exported from the P6 software, among the different data, it also contains Risk data. This Risk data can cause few problems as the project progresses including multiple lines of unreadable characters and decreased performance of the database import process.  

How can you remove the Risks from .xer file without causing potential database pollution? 

ScheduleCleaner is a software solution that can help you clean the Risks, Risks Categories, and Risk Control Plans data. 

Lean more about this tool functionalities here [16].

Also, you can experience ScheduleCleaner first-hand by downloading its 15-day Free Trial [17].

The cutting-edge Primavera P6 project viewer, ScheduleReader is now upgraded to version 7.5.

This release introduces many new features and functional enhancements that allow its users to better visualize project data from XER, XML and XLS schedules. 

Earned Value Analysis is now available in ScheduleReader 7.5.

The new Earned Value Analysis enables users to measure and compare current project performance and progress in order to get the right information on whether the project is executed according to the plan.

ScheduleReader version 7.5 comes strong with more new features and functionalities. Check them out here [18]!

CCC is putting out a Call for Presentations...

• http://constructioncpm.com/abstracts/ [19] and
• http://www.constructioncpm.com/news/News21-3.pdf [20],
• http://www.constructioncpm.com/news/News21-4.pdf [21] and
• http://www.constructioncpm.com/news/News21-5.pdf [22]

We are now booking exhibitors. http://www.constructioncpm.com/images/SanLuisLayout.jpg [23] and sponsors at http://www.constructioncpm.com/exhibitors/#eventlist [24]

Registration is OPEN [25]

Most important -

Save the Date and Get Pre-Approval for Budget

January 17-20 2021 San Luis Resort Galveston Island Texas

Planning Planet Forum posts - Join the Conversation [26]... 493,191 unique views this year and counting...

Currently the largest construction project in Europe, Hinkley Point C is a nuclear power station in Somerset, England. The scale of the site is enormous, a vast landscape of deep man-made galleries, steel bars and huge concrete slabs that stretch as far as the eye can see. 23 cranes loom over a space the size of 240 football pitches, or two-thirds of the City of London. This will more than double to over 50 cranes when Hinkley reaches peak construction.

The power station is located adjacent to the sea, allowing for water to be pulled directly from the sea into the facility for cooling purposes. As a result, sea walls were needed to be constructed. The walls now stand at 14 m high, built to withstand everything from a one-in-10,000-year storm surge, to a tsunami in the Severn Estuary caused by massive volcanic landslides in the Canary Islands. Construction continues within the site as the space for the reactors themselves is beginning to come into focus, with the base of the first, Unit 1, formed in June 2019 with a record-breaking concrete pour.

The plant, which has a projected lifetime of sixty years, has an estimated construction cost of between £19.6 billion and £20.3 billion.

Once finished, Hinkley will contain 3 million tons of concrete and 50,000 tons of structural steel, enough to build a railway line between London and Rome. Two tunnels out to sea feeding water for cooling are more than 7 meters in diameter, drilled with the same machines that bored a new subway line in London. The pipes will be capable of filling an Olympic-sized swimming pool in 20 seconds. The plant is predicted to produce approximately 26TWh of electricity per year during its operational lifetime of 60 years, which will be equivalent to 7% of Great Britain’s forecasted electricity demand in 2020s.

Are you looking for a planning job in construction? We have a long list of planning jobs on our website, take a look and see whether your next career opportunity is here for you: VIEW JOBS HERE [27].

Can I suggest that you follow our LinkedIn company page here [28] where we post news, views, jobs, career advice, our quarterly newsletter and more. Our most recent newsletter “The Planner” can be downloaded here [29].

I am always available for a chat. I'm normally in the office between 7.30am and 6-7pm weekdays. Get in touch on 0203 887 1893 | bill@constructionfuturesuk.com [30]

Holistic View of Integrated Breakdown Structures [31]: new on-demand webinar on how different project breakdown structures fit together from a practical viewpoint. All disciplines on a project have some sort of breakdown structure of how they group information. Most of the time, these breakdown structures do not talk to each other.

This webinar discusses:

• Requirements of different breakdown structures and how they fit together.
• Recommendations for how to align breakdown structures.
• How to integrate different breakdown structures at a level sufficient to run reports across each structure using the same set of data.

Sometimes during tender or bid submission for a project, the client might not provide a Project start date and bidders would be required to show ordinal dates in the Gantt chart timeline and calendar dates in the start and finish dates columns.

This tutorial will show you how to set-up your Microsoft Project schedule to display calendar days. Read more... [33]

A superior alternative to the "most popular" software for us as planners?

Spider Project

Spider Project offers numerous unique functional features and is the only PM software that optimizes resource, cost, and material constrained schedules and budgets for projects and portfolios. 

Check it out here [34]...  Ask questions here [35]...

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