Procurement Plan vs Procurement Schedule

Hi everyone,

Interesting topic and as explained by Johannes, it is exactly how you plan your procurement activities.

My question now is related to schedule those procurement activities in P6.

I have several steps before the Material (Equipment, Piping, Materials, etc) get on site but how to develop a schedule and what resources I can use in order to get the progress of the procurement activities.

Thanks in advance

Piero

That should be delivered by your Procurement Coordinator, while it must developed within the master schedule. It should be the detail plan/schedule of procurement activity e.g. PR - Source List - RFQ - BCD ...till PO...anyway, both of it is the same for me.

Steffan Mynhardt, I am interested in the examples you take about in your post on Procurement Schedules. I need to produce a Procurement Schedule for some relatively small scale Civil projects (£3-5 million).

Regards

Andy

Hi all,

A very good question and discussion. It is true that so many people are confused abouth "plan" and "schedule".

I fully agree with Raymund de Laza, Roland Tannous and Shahul Badhusha, and just summrize.

Definitely "plan" is higher than "schedule" while "plan" is in fact a strategy defining how to do sth and "schedule" is a time tale intepretating when shall the work be carried out.

Therefore, I believe you can understand which one should be the first to develop.

BR,

Zhuang

Hi all,

A very good question and discussion. It is true that so many people are confused abouth "plan" and "schedule".

I fully agree with Raymund de Laza, Roland Tannous and Shahul Badhusha, and just summrize.

Definitely "plan" is higher than "schedule" while "plan" is in fact a strategy defining how to do sth and "schedule" is a time tale intepretating when shall the work be carried out.

Therefore, I believe you can understand which one should be the first to develop.

BR,

Zhuang

First ENG .. because from ENG the Procurement Dept. will take the quantities and documentation to purchase.. and so on!

Anyway you can sit with the PM it will be nice occasion to improve yourself..

Ciao

Nicola

Hi Raul

You can not develop any of the 3 schedules first. It should be one integrated schedule. In general  i use the following approach.

• The best way is to start at the end schedule and to estimate the duration required for the construction activities and allow for sufficient float and unworkable days. This should be in sufficient detail to determine the Required Of Site dates for all procurement items  such as tagged equipment and bulk materials
• Then start at the beginning of the schedule for the engineering activities.
• Check with the engineers and obtain an engineering schedule. Allow float for contingencies in the engineering process.
• The engineering department shall inform you when they are planning to issue the procurement requisitions for each of the items to be purchased.

 So, now you have the dates when the materials and equipment can be procured and on the other hand you know when they are required on site.

The procurement department shall now develop an procurement plan that ensures that the materials and equipment are delivered on time. This can be done on an spreadsheet listing all items to be purchased. Include time for negotiations and placing the orders, lead times for building the equipment and manufacturing the bulk materials,inspection, FAT testing and transport to the jobsite.

When this is completed you can use this data to bridge the time between the ROS dates and the combined lead times for engineering and procurement times for each item.

The engineering, procurement and construction schedule shall be made in a precedence network. I use Primavera P6.

Trust this will help you

Johannes

Hi Raul,

During the project schemes development, they have already allowed time for Engineering, Procurement and Construction works phases on a summary level and on a very broad estimate, normally based on past experience.  So here you are and they asked you to develop a level 3 programme.  A level 3 programme should be based on very concrete dates.

In brief, you need to develop the Construction programme first  and identify dropped dead dates, then identify when you need to start these activities on site. 2nd identify all the long lead items and calculate backwards based on when you need them on site, you need to consider everything from sourcing of materials, gettiing an LC from the bank,  placing PO, manufacturing, shipping, customs clearing and delivery to site. For subcontracts or Contract Packages you need to consider their scope and their lead times for procurement of materials, mobilisation of resources, statutory requirements, etc.  so you need to allow "Lead Times" for this. So commencement on site minus your lead time + a couple of weeks as buffer takes you to "Award of Contract" and then minus your procurement cycle time (prepare tender document package, tender out, tender return, tender queries, review and recommendation to Award) Obviously, you need your engineering and design works completed before you can prepare a tender documents unless it is on a "Design and Build" basis, so there is your interface with Engineering.

You may need to know about the procurement strategy of your commercial department and how they plan to procure it. Procurement may involve procurement of contract packages or subcontract packages and/or materials supply, it may consist of supply and install or install only or supply only.

Best regards,

Daniel

Plan the Procurement of something how you are going to bring those things on site (Using just your brain power).

Out of your planning idea make the Procurement Schedule on any Programs (P6, MSP, ASTA, etc..) then Print or view from your Monitors.

This Procurement Schedule will be called your Planned Procurement Schedule as you will be compairing this to your Updated Procurement Schedule while the work progresses.

Therefore, Your Plan was materialized and became realsitic when you see the schedule on the screen or print out and this output is called your Plan, Target or Baseline.

Hope this will help.

Regards,

Raymund

Hello ,

Simply put, the Schedule is a means of communicating the Plan.

So the Plan comes first and this applies to almost everything not just Procurement.

Now just for the sake of it , lets say we are Building a high rise residential building. One of the items to be procured by the Client are the Elevators , or lets rightly call it "Vertical Circulation". (Not always the case of course).

Now what the procurement plan contains, as far as Vertical Circulation is concerned, are the strategies, assumptions, constraints, issues, plan of work and even timing of procuring the Elevators. The what, how and when.

So our procurement plan might state the following:

- Our intention to procure an Elevator Specialist before we procure the Main Contractor (if there is only one Contractor) or the Civil Works Contractor (if we intend to have multiple-prime contractors) because we prefer to get some type of input from the Elevator Specialist. This technical input , if found valid,  might be taken account for  in the For Construction Documents which will be released to the Contractor at the end of the tendering period of the Civil Works Package.

- Our intention to go through a 2-stage Preliminary Tendering period where we require some type of preliminary design input from participating Elevator Specialists before we arrive to the Final Tendering Period.

- Our intention to have between 8 and 10 elevators specialists take part in the 2-stage Preliminary Tendering Period and qualify only 3 to the Final Tendering Stage for the Elevator Works.

- 3 Specialists will be qualified and will have to go through a final/ conventional tendering period after which the works will be awarded to only one Contractor/Specialist.

-- Elevator Specialist needs to be given enough time to prepare his input which might be under the form of technical notes, calculation notes and even drawings.

- We need the input from the Contractor Specialist on July 31 (Date Extracted from the Master Schedule, Date coincides with middle of Civil Works Tendering Period). 

The stated above is what your procurement plan states, roughly speaking.

Now take the information stated above and build a schedule out of it.

Once you've done that, you would have understood what comes first, and how Schedule and Plan Interact.

Note: Information is just theoretical .Might contain inaccuracies. For illustration purposes only.

Best Regards,

Roland

In general plan is developed first followed by the schedule of works related to procurement 

Hi Raul Santos

Procurement plan in general defines the materials/equipment how to be procured through a selected supplier

Procurement schedule defines when materials/equipment are procured with the sequenced delivery dates associated with selected supplier

Some long lead items require Factory Acceptance test which is considered in procurement schedule in coordination with supplier