1. What aspects of delivery and construction will be monitored?

Asnwer: All aspects of the delivery and construction will be monitored. Some items will be in the project schedule and some will be monitored by other means and methods.

2. How monitoring will be measured for each aspect?

Answer: The baseline schedule will be used as the measuring stick which progress will be measured agasint. 

If your scheule is manloaded and or unit loaded with manhours and or quantities then you can use this as your gauage to measure your progress. EVERY activity has one thing in common and that is that it takes MANHOURS and or dollars to do. So your controlling factor will be your manhours which will be driven by your quantites. 

3. Criteria or definition of good progress for each aspect?

Answer: if the activity has an actual start date within the date range of the early start and late start date is good progress.

if the activity has an actual finish date within the date range of the early finish and late finish date is good progress.

If the overall total float on the project is 0 or less

Zero injuries on the project and no loss time incidents

The number of NCN's are low

The number of RFI's are low

The number of change orders are low

Payment requests are turned around in a timely manner

Hello everyone!

I have a high level project schedule with basic wbs for construction projects: engineering, procurement, approval & permits, construction, commissioning. 

I don’t want to have a detailed schedule with resources, because I will not be able to take updates for each item.

As an output I should have a planned, actual progress for weekly/monthly reports. Is there any methods for progress measuring in primavera schedule?

Two of them I already consider: 1) Manually put Physical % Complete (but don’t know how it works at the end, would it effect on finish dates/durations)?

2) Using Step weightage.

Would appreciate any help/advice and maybe examples on how you manage with this.

Thanks in advance! 

Hi,
The best method is based on cost in the EPC ( for uniform items)

Dear All,

Bernard is very right. It all depends on what you want to know. Its a pitty theres no standard to be followed.

The units in term of money will always serve its purpose to monitor the budget but not the physical progress. Other units may not tell the true status of the project unless critical activities have been filtered out to produce the report.

So it will always be case to case basis, I supposed.

Have anybody tried to devise standard unit for measuring progress? Say, progress points. What is the formula? Am sure everybody will be happy to share their own ideas.

regards,

Nestor

Money and time are not linear across a project (in most cases). Earned manhours are the best measuring stick for completeness of a project (versus the original scope of work).

Consider a very simple example of a project with three tasks:

Task A: Spans from beginning to end (5 days) with 2 men (rate = 2)
Task B: Spans 2 days from the beginning with 6 men (rate=1)
Task C: Spans 2 days from the beginning with 2 men (rate=4)

Scenario 1

Task A achieves a full day of production, tasks B and C achieve no progress. All men are on site.

Time - Schedule still meets original critical path. 1 out of 9 scheduled days is progressed. Project is 11.1% complete.
Money - 18 rate-days out of 48 scheduled rate-days burned. Project is 37.5% complete.
Manhours - 2 man-days out of 26 scheduled man-days progressed. Project is 7.7% complete.

Scenario 2

Task A and C achieve a full day of production, task B achieves no progress. All men are on site.

Time - Schedule still meets original critical path. 2 out of 9 scheduled days is progressed. Project is 22.2% complete.
Money - 18 rate-days out of 48 scheduled rate-days burned. Project is 37.5% complete.
Manhours - 4 man-days out of 26 scheduled man-days progressed. Project is 15.4% complete.

Scenario 3

All tasks achieve a full day of production with only half a crew.

Time - Schedule still meets original critical path. 3 out of 9 scheduled days is progressed. Project is 33.3% complete.
Money - 9 rate-days out of 48 scheduled rate-days burned. Project is 18.8% complete.
Manhours - 10 man-days out of 26 scheduled man-days progressed. Project is 38.5% complete.

I suppose which stick you use depends on what you are hoping to measure (completeness of the work scope or completeness of the budget).

Bernard Ertl
InterPlan Systems Inc. - Project Management Software, Project Planning Software

Tomas makes a good point, but I want to reply to Lutfallah - its ALL about money. Every single one of us is working for a company to make money. Not to build houses, or refineries, or software, but to make money. Profit and Loss. End.

It depends who you are ?
If you are the investor or client, u r correct the most common unit is the money!

But if u r a general contractor or an engineering company managing the project for and on behalf of the client, for my oppinion the correct parameter is the manhour.

Why ?

The material/equipment cost of a plant (lets assume a refinery) is almost about 65% then doest it mean when the all equipment or material delivered to site the total progress would be equal to 65% or higher ? Of course not!!

You may think another way. Lets assume you made one year office building rental agreement, and as per your contact you have to pay all the rental amount beforehand. Then your cash out-flow is 100% rental fee. Your progress and cost accruel in rental agreement should be on monthly prorata basis "total contact amount / 12"

To facilitate a progress control system for an EPC contact a comon basis for all diferent disciplines should be set for the associated manhours for each activity.

Then you may collect all apples and bananas with the same unit.

I would reccommend you to employ both methods at the same time; they are physical progress measurement and their equivalent manhour progress. Why I am proposing this hybrid method ? The answer is simle: Otherwise you have lost the mony and your contractor.

An example : Lets assume that you have 200 tons of piping work which 70% of this work are consist of large diameter pipes

In piping erection works: Large diameter pipes are heavy and it is very easy to make physical and money wise progress on 16" or 20" diameter pipework. Within the first 4 months your large diameter pipe work will be completed. But the balance of work consistig of 3/4" - 1/2" small bored pipes will last at least another 3 months.

I would reccomend you to utilize the hybrid method for progress measurement otherwise there is always a big risk associated with the sole physical or financial quantities.

We measure manhours for industrial process plant maintenance projects (shutdowns / turnarounds).

Bernard Ertl
InterPlan Systems Inc. - Project Management Software, Project Planning Software