Further to my previous posting #15, I have had a lot of requests for copies of the video of my talk on the subject of “What makes a good planning engineer”

These are available free of charge from Asta’s website.

If you would like a copy, click on the following link.

Free Video – What makes a good planning engineer



Gary France
Chairman
Planning Engineers Organisation

How to be agood planner
Get yourself as much varied experience as you can before you start thinking about planning

Better to get experience as well as work within team as team member not individually.

Teamwork always provide you excellent exchange of ideas rather than you work individually

Mary,

I see your original question has been answered by a few people.

In November last year I gave a talk entitled "What makes a good Planning Engineer". This was at a conference organised by Asta who produce software called Powerproject. This was centred around how planners in the UK construction industry work.

The talk was filmed and I have a copy. If you contact me, I could arrange for a copy to be sent to you on CD.

Gary France
Planning Engineers Organisation

Hi Mary,

I try to resurrect this thread. The fundamental in “How to become a good planner? ” is proper attitude towards work and skillful in basic planning.

Proper attitude towards work is an evolution meaning it is not something acquired from birth but rather it is a continuing process as we grow and move on with our life. It is a brave decision to acquire proper attitude towards work in consideration of our work environment.

The world change and gone were the days in constructing the ancient seven wonder of the world with slaves. And, the new generation planner must be skillful in the use of planning software, Primavera P3 and others. A good planner must be analytical. The qualities enumerated by Chris Oggham, Raj Maurya, Planner Planner, and Bill Guthrie (Courage) and the rest are also important (same level of importance).

Another factor that makes you a good planner is also the project management team that you are in. While we are aware that planning is a function of management and planning is the most important function of project management, it is still the character of the project managers that will help you or us become good planner. Why is this so? This is because a lot of project managers run the project where planners work. It is the project managers who decide to utilize planner’s expertise, hence the greatest performance in your life. The project manager may also play politics, use his instinct in planning and relegated his planner to a small cubicle as if the planners do not exists.

The greatest factor that helps you make a good planner is the company you work in. We know most companies now got planning department. But, a lot of companies operate their planning department for showcase only and run the planning department like circus with planners as clowns.

However, there are few companies that are serious with their planning. These companies create a department called: planning and cost control department PCD). Project performance is dependent on the report of the PCD. All activities were planned, tracked, monitored and evaluated by PCD. By using database, the actual productivity of all workers (direct and indirect, laborers doing excavation, etc.) were captured and compared to baseline. All costing were referred to relevant Work Breakdown Structures and compared with budgets. All decision regarding bonus, project awards and recognitions were based on the report by PCD. These companies also used the PCD in evaluating company wide (all department) performance.

In my experience, it is only in this kind of company where you will find good planners or maybe the best.

Planner Planner

you forgot one

U have to have the honesty and courage to show who you are, not be [edited] a coward and hide it.

We do not care to publish our names but why not in a good site like PP.

[edited]

I think being a good and successful planner one should the following qualities other than master brain & experience.
Good listener
Convincing ability
Polite
Ready to accept new things
Positive thinker
etc.

Mary,

Your question is really quite difficult to answer as none of us are psychologists. I don’t think there is a type of person who is a ’natural’ planner, but there are, perhaps, types of behaviour which make some people better planners than others. The best I can come up with is a list of some Dos and Don’ts. It’s not exhaustive but may give you a start.

Do - be meticulous and thorough in your work;
Do - present your work in a ’user friendly’ format;
Do - pay attention to detail, sometimes you’re the only one who will;
Do - try to foresee and avoid difficulties and potential problems;
Do - be aware of new developments in your field, not just your planning expertise, but the industry in which you are applying it;
Do - stick to deadlines for the submission and approval of the plans you produce;
Do - be pleasant to people, even the ones you don’t like much, you never know when you might need their help;
Do - Develop a skin like a rhinocerous, some people tend to think that if anything goes wrong it’s the planner’s fault;


Don’t - endulge in wishful thinking, tell it like it is, not how you or the project manager would like it to be;
Don’t - guess, if you don’t know find out;
Don’t - let yourself be passed off with insufficient or questionable information;
Don’t - accept or offer excuses when something goes wrong, if it’s your responsibility, put it right. If it’s not give the person responsible the opportunity to put it right if this is possible;
Don’t - let people tell you that you don’t need to know, if you need certain information to do your job effectively;
Don’t - let people or a situation get to you, if you need to scream, cry or lose your temper, go somewhere private and do it;

I hope this helps

Chris Oggham

Mary,

IMHO the only way to have a successful plan is to get all the major players to buy into it. Once you stop people calling the document "your plan" and start getting them to speak about "our plan", then you are on your way to a winner.

Regards

WG

Dear Mary and Zhang

That may work where you are, but try it in the real world, to DRIVE YOUR MANAGERS and you will drive yourself out of a job, fast.Beg to disagree with you, you are so far off base on the reply.

Mary, a PLANNERS JOB is to develop a plan for the project, track progress, and identify problems prior to the problems taking place and ADVISE , ONLY ADVISE Management of the problems. Have never in 25 years ran into a planner who made decisions effecting the outcome of a project.

Planners have no authority on a job, zit, none nada.

Management has the power to make a decision, and he will make decisions based upon recommendations made by his staff, inclusive of the planner. thats what its all about

kindest regards bill