Volumes of work

The term Volume or Quantity in relation to work done to date or work to be completed by a specific time line is ambiguous in nature and on any project documentation this metric is always a best estimate in order to complete a specific task or deliverable. The reason for this is based on the level of skill and experience available to you that exists to you on the project team. So when you talk about Quantity, no matter how precise your quantity surveyor is in relation to the likely construction cost of a project, the final tally will be a estimate of the total cost. So having a metric that is based on estimations as an active property means that all other metrics that are dependent on this metric would be out by an increasing margin of error depending on the initial estimate for quantity. Most projects start with some fixed metric of certainty such as allocated budget, project team numbers, time given to complete project or contingency budget and work from their with everything else stemming from these certainties being an estimate, even if original budget, team size, timeline or contingency budget changes in the meantime.

Hi Wade,
in your example the foreman estimated volume of work and basing on resource availability and productivity calculated activity duration, added contingency reserve and gave project manager the results of his calculations.
Our projects usually consist of many interdependent jobs and we need to create project schedules and estimate project budgets well before many types of work will start. Our contractors estimate project cost before the contract is signed and so they schedule future projects basing on their resources capabilities, productivity and availability, volumes of work to be done, material and equipment costs, etc. to prepare their proposals.
Just imagine that your initial estimates of masonry union cost and duration was not good and foreman asked for more time and money than you expected. It is not safe to rely on fair ideas.

Yes, project managers do not have an expertise in everything that they manage and project managers rarely create the schedules themselves. In construction this is the job of project planners.
When project is planned project planners use the databases of various norms including resource productivity on typical assignments, material requirements per volume unit of typical activities, etc. If these norms are absent project planners ask the same questions to people that have needed expertise.
Activity volume is not the same as the quantity of raw materials. If we build a wall we know its dimensions and volume, then we calculate the required materials basing on this information (as an example the required number of bricks). We know (or ask an expert) about the number of bricks that one mason lays in one hour. We may also know the crew (the number of masons and helpers) assigned to this activity. It is sufficient for calculating activity duration.
This estimation is natural and I expect that people do it this way and if the volume will change activity duration and material consumption will change proportionally.
When norms are known it is not necessary to ask experts for estimating activity duration, cost, etc. and project plan can be easily created and justified. And volumes of work are known if drawings are available.

If you have the knowledge to create reasonable estimates based on activity volume and those estimates are accurate enough for your project needs, then there's nothing wrong with that.

I'm merely giving a too-long answer to the original question you shared. I might note the volume of work to be done, but the volume is only one factor in the estimated budget and duration estimates. The volume IS considered, but in my project tracking tool I probably won't use volume alone to track progress.

Hi Steve,
we are used to projects consisting of many thousands lines.
I don't know what tool do you use but do you enter activity volumes in your project management tool? Do you calculate activity duration and cost basing on volume of work to be done? If yes what tool do you use for these calculations?

Hi Vladimir;

We are using MS Project at the moment, but others are using Primavera, and we are starting to use our SAP/ERP system for some high level scheduling of projects. We do not track costs at the moment of office workers as we do not use timesheets, but it would be a very easy step to do so if we wish based on the estimated durations already in our schedules. Our SAP/ERP systems tracks all costs including those salaried employees (annual), but again it would be very easy to link those to tasks because we also have a resource loaded schedule.