I think it is not possible to equate physical % complete with cash flow.There are items or materials that are so expensive that its percentage as far as cash flow is concern is so high but the actual contribution if it is installed is low.

What i am thinking is, an ACTIVITY on part or as a whole should be broken down into phases for physical % comp to be more accurate.

Say, Excavation, you can say that physically it is 100% complete but, it could be presented as 90% only with 10% for snagging or any corrective/additional works.

Punchlist works or snagging should be given enough duration because it will be used to represent all activities that need corrections or alterations

Using weighted qty by different units of measure monitoring sheet is the only way to go. Example civil you would have excavate by m3, Blinding by concrete m3, Shutering by square meters, Rebar by tons. and you would weigh them excavate = 10%, Blinding = 5%, Shutering = 5%, Rebar = 10%, Concrete = 50%, Inspect = 10%, Handover = 10%. Then do the same for Mechanical, Piping, E&I all by activity numbers.
The percentage complete may differ depending on managers and client Norms. That is the only way to measure Physical progress and be sure you are accurate. This system is not always used on projects as it is a lot of work to monitor but if implemented early fairly accurate.

And in small fragmented mini projects where no physical units are utilised? Establishing training programmes, systems, procedures, studies, country/travel security, HSSE audits, Business Assurance? It has to rely on finger in the wind Team Leader assement. However, weighting/gates/hold point/milestones/interphase milestones agreed up front as deliverables are hit should be transparently recorded. Otherwise, its easy to accept to 90% complete in 10% of the time and embarrassing to have the last 10% of your project take 90% of teh time.
Horses for courses.

Based on my experience, using the labour resources to monitor the physical % progress will give more accuracy.

Cheers..

Hi All,

What does physical % complete mean??

I’ll put a cat amongst the pigeons and say for most projects that rely on physical % complete as an indicator, it is a myth, a spook story that planners tell their kids at night… “They told me it was 75% complete, BUT it’s been 75% complete for the last two weeks and there’s been three more people working on the task!!”

The majority of project teams I’ve worked with take % complete to be a faithful representation of how the task / work package / project is progressing, but what data are they actually basing that assumption on? More often than not and left to their own devices, I’ll bet they’ll use duration. Does this truly represent physical % complete?

This method only shows how long a task has been in progress relative to the period of time needed to complete the task. It doesn’t tell you anything about the status of the task / work package / project. As physical % complete and to a certain extent % work complete, is so subjective the only reliable indicators are 0% (it hasn’t started) or 100% (it is complete).

If your teams are using work plans, start by breaking their work plans into event milestones or gateways. Then break down each event milestone into lots of mini-milestones (inchstone is the latest buzzword I believe). The principle is much the same as intermediate EV milestones, you weight each mini-milestone with a percentage, when they hit each mini-milestone, you can then manually re-calculate the cumulative physical % complete total. That way at least there is something substantive to base your project reporting on.

Use this in conjunction with a milestone slip chart or any other supporting rational and I reckon you’ll get a fair representation of how the project is progressing. I’m not really trying to start a crusade to eradicate physical % complete, but surely just cranking a handle and churning out an ambiguous weekly total isn’t really as effective a measure as it’s made out to be.

In my humble opinion, letting your scheduling engine of choice determine project progress is tantamount to a confession of incompetence. I know a certain PM, who will forever remain nameless, that wanted to declare to the customer that their project was currently 27.38% complete!! If anyone could determine progress that accurately, then they should be dedicating their lives to world peace, stopping famine or getting everyone out of the credit crunch because they’re wasted in a PM role!!

A long post to digest, but please feel free to discuss. Like Barry I’m curious to know how others in the community view physical % complete.

Regards,

Darren

For my Opinion,

% progress of an activity could be monitored by using quantities as a database. It does not need to have all LVL4 or LVL5 activities in your selected scheduling programme. You can monitore the work done by quantities by excel or office programmes from site to collect data and get higher level % progress. If the item is an Lumpsum activity of a workpack defined, then you can plan the work carefully and you can use the time(ex: For Installations or transportations) or money(ex: For procurement) as % progress monitoring.

Thanks,

For me, Physical Percentage cannot be measured in terms of money or time. It can only be measured in terms of actual quantities (or materials / equipment) installed or placed.