Part 8 - Challenges, the Laws of Physics, Project/Construction Management and Reality
| Basic Management Fundamentals Owners’ upper management and project governance, and Project Management Offices’ (PMO) leadership are always looking for the single biggest issues that can be resolved to remove impediments to project progress and performance, and to get a stagnate project back on track. But sometimes it is the smallest most basic activities that create the largest issues for maintaining proactive management on a project. Recently, a new management team was introduced on a mega project to convert the contract management centric approach to a PMO centric management approach. This change was understandable and foreseen as beneficial to improving the overall management on the project. While this was aligned with the standards and practices defined by the global professional organization Project Management Institute (PMI), there was Owner oversight, construction management, contract management, project controls, quality management and risk management – but no defined project management roles in the organization’s management structure. As expected, the new PMO team focused on analytics and decentralized management into specific physical asset project boundaries that will be managed independently to meet goals within a segmented territory of the project. The basis of this approach was adopted from a predecessor review by an industry management consultant that assured the Owner that the approach, which worked in 2001 on a major European project, would do the same for a 2018 project in North America. While understandable in its presentation to the Owner’s Board, it did not resolve the root cause of the performance attributes affecting overall project progress. Hidden in plain site were common management interactions between project participants that deteriorated the work environment required for effective project management. Some of the typical factors negatively affecting project performance, included:
Roll-out of the new PMO centric approach was implemented with Owner’s Board acceptance and project governance support. Expectations were high for turn-around of performance to critical dates leading to project realization. Monitoring of performance metrics produced charts, dash boards, and heat maps that required constant attention to variances and management inquiries. Some of the missed opportunities included:
Reality A Owner’s hire consultants for expertise that does not exist in-house or that is used to supplement staffing levels and to validate expertise and conclusions of in-house personnel accountable for the same services. In organizations where institutional expertise has been drastically depleted, Owners also hire consultants to oversee other consultants. Some organizations have demonstrated that hiring a consultant allows them to disrespect and bully other consultants. As a result, Owner’s management of consultants must monitor the interactions with the organization to assure consultant staff is provided respect and professional courtesy that comes with professional ethics, contract requirements, and laws and statutory requirements. If not, the consultants will expend scarce project funds on non-value added activities that displace funds allocated for the creation of project assets. Reality B The PMO, organization and consultants hired by the organization must insist on a code of respect that transcends contractual responsibilities. Just as in-house staff are accountable for interactions between employees, it is equally important the organization’s consultants insist on respect in interaction between in-house staff and consultants, and between consultants.
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Part 7 - Challenges, the Laws of Physics, Project/Construction Management and Reality
| Analytics at the Expenses of PM Overhead Project Management Offices (PMO) establish and uniformly apply Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for program and project managers to monitor performance on projects and programs of projects (Mega projects). Typical KPIs on projects are Schedule Performance Index (SPI), Cost Performance Index (CPI) and Planned EVM verse Actual EVM. Other KPIs for monitoring project cost and schedule goals can include forecasts of future efforts expressed in ratios including remaining duration, remaining EVM, Estimate To Complete, and pending project/contract changes. For projects that are not performing as expected, PMOs may need to conduct management reviews and implement additional monitoring measures to mitigate poor performance to cost and schedule. As a result, more granular KPIs (Sub-KPIs) are created for work directly related to the performance of individual contributors with significant roles and responsibilities where the service quality was identified as a root cause affecting project performance. The purpose of the Sub-KPIs is to monitor, measure, assess and act on performance attributes and make decisions on critical activities in order to assure progress to meet project schedule milestones. The goal is to improve processes and procedures, and to reduce schedule activity durations, which are identified as risk threats to critical project dates. Each of the Sub-KPIs will capture historical data that will be used for identifying and resolving problems and for increasing confidence in future project decisions. This new level of monitoring will focus on analytics that PMO executives should establish through a defined breakdown structure of KPIs, which include metrics for activities that are driving durations of processes and procedures essential to quality performance to goals. Examples of Sub-KPIs include:
In the example, the Sub-KPIs are all related to schedule progress as prioritized by the PMO. A high percentage are outside the project teams control, and under the direct responsibility of the PMO’s management and the contracting office, which is usually an existing organizational asset within the Owner’s business structure. As a result, monitoring of the related Sub-KPIs should have executive level buy-in and commitment that provides the PMO with the authority to improve processes and procedures. Creating new Sub-KPIs will require enhancement to existing reporting to incorporate color coded graphics such as dashboards, heat maps, histograms, and bar graphs, which provide conspicuous visual recognition of critical metrics for managing efforts across the project. The color coding may indicate Red – Outside Tolerances - Action Required, Yellow – Near Tolerance Thresholds - Action Under Review, and Green – Within Tolerances - No Action Required. Depending on the project domain, other Sub-KPIs may be created for monitoring and improving performance to intermediate milestones and EVM targets. For rail-transit projects, there may be significant access restraints, production time limits, and promised on-site services by Owner to contractor. In this case, Sub-KPIs might include ratios for: 1) Actual access days to site and planned access days. 2) Actual contact hours and planned production hours. 3) Actual crew days for work and planned crew days to support contractor. 4) Accrued liquidated damages and contract amount. 5) Accrued incentive payments verse contract budget. Reality A In theory, KPIs and Sub-KPIs increase management quality and improves project performance at the expense of added management overhead cost and staff levels. However, each PMO needs to assess the benefits from the added managerial effort for implementing and monitoring the KPIs and Sub-KPIs. Reality B The number of KPIs will proportionally increase costs for Project Controls, management overhead and for added project analysts that are required for the collecting data, reporting data, explaining metric variances and implementing corrective actions. Reality C At the expenses of other progress/performance report attributes and content, readers may overly focus on the red metrics while ignoring non-red items. This may cause missed opportunities on schedule risk events that may actually be more significant to schedule performance and be more easily resolved to mitigate or avoid the events. Reality D Performance monitoring of Sub-KPIs without an improvement in schedule durations may indicate processes are not aligned with project expectations despite recognition of the impact to progress. Executive management needs to ensure that the metrics identified as contributing to schedule risks can be mitigated. Otherwise, the risks are just be accepted threats that need to be built into the schedule. |
Part 6 - Challenges, the Laws of Physics, Project/Construction Management and Reality
| Achievable Goals and a Clear Mission and Vision A financial commercial features an optometrist doing volunteer work saying over and over through various video clips – better, faster, cheaper regarding the manufacturer of eyewear frames. While it highlights a business woman’s volunteer effort to bring eyewear to distressed communities on the continent of Africa, it can be misinterpreted as an acceptable means and method for leading a business to achieve the goals of a corporate leader. Saying better, faster and cheaper to employees at every interim point of progress is not the best method for achieving business success. But for the commercial it works. Unfortunately, today’s managers see this style as the foundational approach to managing a business and their employees. As a result, management professionals frequently use the acronym SMART to create a framework of target goals for employees to follow and be successful.
The two most important Letters are A and R. In order for the S, M and T to be meaningful, the environment for project success must be created by corporate leaders, including those that are accountable in a Project Management Office (PMO). Leaders also need to think SMART in aligning the environment with employee goals.
Reality A SMART is a acronym and it is a concept that provides the first letter of attributes that can be defined for printed expectations for creating successful management in a PMO and throughout management in an organization. Like any goal it will challenge the PMO status quo based on the best metrics from the previous set of goals. Reality B A PMO is most frequently portrayed as support to projects, programs of projects and portfolio of projects. Many PMOs focus on dashboards, heat charts, to-do-lists, integrated project schedules and project priorities. But generating large amounts of data analytics in varied formats may create distractions for PMs, who already use established systems, techniques and tools for managing projects. PMO leadership is more than just providing excellent deliverables for measuring progress against planned metrics that show project status and aid in making decisions on projects. A PMO is in the business of project management, and it is the knowledge resource creating project management success. PMO is accountable for:
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Part 5 - Challenges, the Laws of Physics, Project/Construction Management and Reality
| Access to Work Space Getting painted into a corner may leave no way to finishing work without disturbing completed work. While project/contract progress can be accelerated by working on multiple locations, the construction management team must ensure that the work is performed and integrated with other work and that the area is accessible for completing remaining work. Construction management services work with contractors to develop means and methods for construction, establish supply chain and logistics for materials, monitor work in the sequence planned, and to implement work-arounds for unplanned field conditions. In many rail transit projects, the work area is within an existing operational asset that is being replaced, upgraded or expanded. These projects are normally constrained by fixed property lines with contract work zones that have trains running through the area. The core business of rail transit companies is transporting people and commodities from a current location to a new location. This core business is a relied upon service and it is essential to regional and national commerce in countries throughout the world. As a result, the execution of projects need to be organized and executed in a manner that maintains transporting services with little to no impact on commitments. This includes work flow that allows access and assures constructability of work as progress changes the condition of the asset. On large project, there may be multiple contracts that share work zones or that overlap at critical points. This increases the construction management effort for stimulating and maintaining contractors’ progress and for coordinating the logistics for:
Scheduling multiple contracts is possible using available software tools. It can easily make adjustments to scheduled activities, manpower and equipment that can be used to manage contractor progress across a program of projects with interdependencies for predecessor and successor activities between contracts. It can also manage milestone and schedule constraints. Scheduling experts can increase work hours, increase manpower, accelerate material deliveries, and add construction equipment. Unfortunately, scheduling tools can not create work space. Reality Putting fifteen people in a telephone booth may increase the call minutes per square foot but it will drastically reduce the quality and effectiveness of telephone conversations and lead to rework as calls need to be redone due to background noise and mistakes from cross-talk. CM office is responsible to manage and coordinate contractors’ access to work areas and to manage the contractors’ creation and maintenance of safe and secure temporary facilities, material storage and staging, and of parking areas for employees, company vehicles and construction equipment. |
Part 4 - Challenges, the Laws of Physics, Project/Construction Management and Reality
| Manpower, Resources and Work Calendars Forcing ten pounds of an item into a five pound bag can only achieve a negative result. Despite the obvious visual consequence, project executives and project control experts often envision that increased project progress can be made by adding staff and adding work periods. Demanding the construction activity be shortened by adding more trade personnel and expending more manhours to achieve more daily progress is not unusual. Construction scheduling tools can adjust the manpower, workday calendars and shifts to show acceleration of work with the goal to reduce the overall schedule duration. However, these simple adjustments in the number of personnel on-site requires equal adjustments in material supply chain as well as equipment, tools, supervisory staff, construction management (CM) staff, and added processes for transitioning information at shift changes. While effective for schedule recovery or for schedule acceleration, implementation will continue to be affected by work conditions, site access, and the work restrictions cited in the contract documents. Additionally, the availability of support services, such as construction management (CM) and independent testing (ITA), for direct work will need to increase proportionately. However, increasing persons in a work area may not necessarily create an equal improvement in the effectiveness, quality and speed of construction. On rail transit projects, adding resources and equipment is not always possible, and where it is possible, it is very challenging to achieve results that in theory should increase production and reduce activity duration. In other words, doubling the personnel does not always result in doubling the production and halving the duration. In addition to CM and ITA services, support services will need to increase proportionately for access and protection, track outages and on-rail vehicle escorts (pilots). Where construction can be isolated from railroad operating areas, support services may be more readily out-sourced and may have a higher ratio of improvement for production and schedule. Services requiring rail transit personnel are also limited to the established headcount, crew sizes, crew vehicles, and tools, equipment and materials. As dictated by annual budgets and labor contracts with unionized trades, railroad personnel are normally hired and organized into work groups for maintenance and operations, and construction. Each group is assigned to specific geographic locations or project locations. Due to several factors in managing company resources, personnel and assignments can shift between the two groups in order to maintain utilization while eliminating peaks and valleys for hiring and deferring personnel. When added personnel are required by projects, they likely are transferred from the maintenance and operations group. The flexibility in making these transfers and the resulting increase in progress is limited by factors such as travel time from assigned location to the new location, and the familiarity of personnel with the project construction scope, work flows and processes, and construction equipment and materials. Maintaining a steady state level of manpower is made more challenging by the unique training and qualifying periods for skilled trade persons in rail transit companies. Due to the specialized skills need for operating and maintaining rails systems, companies create stringent screening processes for candidates including written and practical tests. New hires start at an apprentice level and are on probation for at least six months. Thereafter, employees continue in a training program for the specific skill hired and the established process defined in collective bargaining agreements to qualify personnel for full rate skilled trade positions. Timeframes to becoming qualified can vary depending on the unique skills required for executing duties in an environment that is focused on safety and customer service. Signal maintainers = 3 years. Lineman = 12 months. Plumber = 6 months. Carpenter = 6 months. Electricians = 6 months. During this period the incumbents are expected to demonstrate critical skills, teamwork, operation of tools and equipment, and safe work methods. Failing to do so may mean separation from the company at worst, or extending the probation period for qualifying and for permanent assignments. A short term alternative is to expand regular manpower shifts through overtime, which can increase daily progress while full time standard rate employees are identified or hired. However, this alternative comes with its own challenges including:
Reality The actions taken by CM and contractor to adjust staffing to improve schedule performance is a function of the contract requirements, including provisions for time is of the essence, work hours, liquidated damages, and schedule incentives. Depending on the contract, the CM will rely on the contractor determining the best actions to increase production and achieve performance milestones or to adhere to the planned curve of progress approved by CM at Notice to Proceed. As may be requested by government officials or other influencers, Owner’s with the explicit goals to beat schedule dates will need to work with the CM to identify the cost impacts in exchange for improving the date contracted at the time of award, fast tracking or modifying the Owner’s standard procedures and process obstacles, and for coordinating interdependent activities and dates for predecessor and successor projects and contracts. |
