Volumes of work

No problem Vladimir. I worked in the construction and manufacturing project including today but there is no complexity to estimate things in those domains due to there are a well stabished, well porven theory that belongs to investigation of operations which is part of my academic and professional background.

Hi Rami,
yes, volume of work is one of many factors but it determines activity duration and cost.
We can rely on the historical data and create own internal reference-books with unit costs, material requirements per volume units, resource productivity for typical work types, or use industry standards that determine the same parameters and calculate activity duration, cost, material requirements basing on volume of work to be done.
Volume of work is an initial information that is used for calculating activity duration and cost when resource crew assigned to an activity is known.
So it is natural to calculate project schedules, enter actual data and analyze project performance basing on volumes of work done and remained.
My question is about the way volumes of work are managed when the software does not have special fields for volumes of work, resource productivity, unit costs and material requirements, etc.

Best Regards,
VL

Dear Luis,
Volumes of work are defined at activity level and represent an initial information on project activities (how many meters, tons, pieces shall be done). When resources assigned for activity execution and their productivities are known it is possible to calculate activity duration and other parameters. Using internal or industry norms that usually are applied to volume units of certain types of activities it is possible to get objective estimates of activity duration and cost if activity volume is known.
Other ways of activity and cost estimation are subjective and not reliable.
Optimization is performed when the project is scheduled taking into account all existing constraints.

Hi Vladimir

Now I got what you're exactly asking about, thanks for elaboration.

Before I get into your question, I would like to clarify one thing: Yes, the volume of work determine the activity duration and cost, but not on its own. I will give you an simple example:

Let's assume I have a 100 sq.m of wall to paint and normally it takes 2 Hours / sq.m for prime coat and the cost is $50/Hour/Labor - I can't just directly go and say I will assign 1 Labor to do the job and calculate:

Activity Duration: 100 sq.m x 2 Hours = 200 Hours / 8 Hours / Day = 25 Days.

Cost = 200 x $50 = $10,000

There are lots of factors that are involved:

Labor Availability, Working Hours, Climate, Material Availability - I have to look at the holistic view as those items can't be ignored because they will could impose risk and affect the duration and cost if for example if its winter, it might take more time for the paint to dry, or if the material is long lead item, or there is labor shortage, or there are holidays. That's how we come to a reasonable estimate that has built-in contingencies.

Now coming to your question: I worked with an International Company overseas for 10 years on very large jobs ($300 Mil and above) and tracking productivity was very crucial. We had an in-house program called Pyramid that takes data from Primavera and has additional parameters to track progress, productivity, unit costs, Manhours and so on. Of course, the outcome from the program is as good as the data reported from the site so one needs to ensure the reporting is genuine and actual for the outcome to be reliable.

Currently, I work in a smaller size consulting company and I do track those parameters using an excel sheet that I developed that suits our needs as a consulting company.

Those are the two ways that I've encountered throughout my career to track those parameters you are referring to.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
RK

Vladimir

This might be a bit off topic, but I published an article in the past on how to improve productivity on projects. Here is the link if you are interested to go through it:

https://www.projectmanagement.com/articles...ity-on-Projects

The ad placement is a bit off but it will be fixed.

RK

Dear Daire,
volume of work is objective information that can be measured correctly in physical units (length, wheight, etc.). The level of skill and experience may define productivity of resources assigned to do the work.
Project budget shall be calculated, allocated budget and time given to complete the project shall be taken into account when project resources are planned. Project planning may result in understanding that allocated budget and time frame are not realistic if they were defined before calculations.

Vladimir,

It seems to me that you are approaching project management in a very logical and mathematical way where X in equals X out. It seems that you are trying to put a project management methodology into an equation that will fit in all project management scenarios and all you have to do is just plug in the numbers turn the crank and outcomes your complete approach to a specific project. Unfortunately this approach has been looked at before and as each project is a unique set of variables even if repeated like for like you will still get a different outcome. A key skills for a project manager is communication and this is because not everything will go to plan not matter how well thought out an approach is as a project manager needs this skill to relay to people the reason why something has not gone to plan, modifications that need to be made and lessons learned as a result to all relevant parties involved with project.

Dear Vladimir
A few years ago there were in Portugal the Technical Tables which was a kind of Bible for the Construction where estimates were made