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. |
