Location, Location, Location

No, I am not talking about real estate, I’m referring to location of the project when it comes to project estimating. I was assembling an estimating module for one of my workshops and got into the factors used in estimating. This article will be about some of the factors we use and why. On a day to day basis we use factors for labour productivity. We also take a labour rate from one area and use a factor to get a rate for another area. For conceptual estimates, we may want to evaluate a project by comparing the installed cost... Read More»

Portfolio Management: Lamborghini Body on a Plymouth Horizon Chassis

Having attempted rolling out project portfolio management at several organizations I can state with confidence that the portfolio management process fails to deliver on its promise to streamline an organization’s project pipeline and provide high value. However, it is not the fault of the portfolio management process. Rather, I have found that the fault resides primarily with how organizations are structured (refer to a prior blog post titled Portfolio Management: Is Modern Management Practice Compatible?). Another major issue is a lack of education and understanding of portfolio, program, and project management at the upper management level (think C-suite). It’s easy... Read More»

Do You Always Under Estimate Your Projects?

I got a request the other day looking for someone to do a workshop on estimating. Some engineers were interested in what projects really cost and how are these costs developed. It sounded like they were doing the estimating and were always wrong. If you do not understand what goes into an estimate and the process involved you will always end up with a poor estimate. In this article I want to give them, and you, the detail that goes into an total installed cost (TIC) estimate for a complex project (multi-disciplined project). This is an estimate that covers the... Read More»

"Manage That Pipeline!"

OK, so for those of you that manage the Project pipeline, I'm sure that many if not most of you have experienced those Charters that don't get approved, or die. The documentation gets completed, it goes to the powers that be, but somehow even though it doesn't get an OK2GO, it doesn't die either. It seems to perpetually stay on hold, but it keeps on getting brought up during the Steering Committee meetings, and six months or a year after its initial pitch, it is decided that the documentation should be reviewed, updated and reviewed again by the team for... Read More»

Project Procurement

What Do You Mean Equipment Deliveries Are Holding Up My Project? In my early days of project management, I learned that if you want to get a project done on time, you have to get the equipment / material to the contractor. Now, I'm sure most have you have been involved in a project that has gone off track because the equipment was late, holding up the contractor which resulted in your missing schedules. Some causes of equipment delay are; lack of planning for purchase of long lead items the procurement cycle expediting drawing approvals lack of vendor response. In... Read More»

Proper Methods for Resource Planning

Controlling and micro managing creative, knowledge workers generally doesn't work. Conversely, providing an arbitrary delivery date or even allowing the team to completely self regulate work without a delivery date, doesn't work either. We have all heard of Parkinson's Law (work expands to fill the time available for its completion), but don't try and run your business with this principle. Tried and true project management planning, scheduling and controlling will more scientifically determine the time needed to complete work assignments, effectively manage the execution of the work and create a reliable, realistic and healthy environment. Along with, and surprisingly sometimes... Read More»

Hidden Contracts

They Want How Much? We were in the process of buying the electrical equipment for a new plant when the electrical engineer came in with the bad news. They had been told by the electric utility the project would have to buy the transformer from the utility company. We could understand hooking up the transformer, but to actually have to buy the transformer was crazy, which we told him in no uncertain terms! The transformer we needed cost $750,000 from our preferred supplier, while the utility wanted $1,250,000 for basically the same thing. They put a few bells and whistles... Read More»

Vendor Information Requirements

This article is the last in a series on a section in your bid documents titled 'Performance Required by the Successful Bidder'. This article continues the review of the vendor data you require with the vendors' proposal. This data will be required later in the project, should they be the successful bidder. The document I want to discuss in this article is equally important and is called the Vendor Information Requirements Form. This form is used to find out more about the vendor and how he will perform on your project. This form will play a role in selecting the... Read More»

Information Required To Get The Job Done

Vendor Data Requirements In the last article, I talked about the Standard Component List and it’s importance to your project in helping make sure you get what you want and what you need. Another important document, that goes along with the Standard Component List, is the Vendor Data Requirements. This document is typically used when purchasing equipment and outlines to the vendor exactly what information you expect him to include with his quote. This document comes in a couple of formats, one as a printed document describing in detail what information you are looking for and the other as an... Read More»

The Schedule & The Project Plan

A project schedule is not the same as the project plan. Repeat after me, the schedule is not the project plan. As the name suggests, the project plan is a collection of documents used to manage the execution of a project. The schedule includes dates for tasks and milestones in the project plan and is an element of the plan, but is not comprehensive enough to be considered a plan. The project plan goes much deeper than a timeline and is the overall blueprint for the project. According to the PMBOK, the project plan may include the following: Project charter... Read More»