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Hi,
I am a lead planning engineer working for a company in uae.
Im faced with a challenge and so far have not been able to come around it.
the challenge is that i have an engineering schedule and we measure progress based on weights assigned to to only he deliverables (docs drawings etc). However we spend significant amount of time on meetings, vendor coordination , site visits and other internal activities which do not reflect in progress. As a result our productivity is always low cuz we end up spending too many manhours on a projec compared to very little progress (which only reflects deliverables).
is there a way that i can add or track progress for such internal activities and add them to my deliverables progress so tha that my productivity and progress figures are more realistic. I know in oil and gas indusry in uae clients generally do not allow adding activities to the lis of deliverables.
I was wondering if anyone knows of a method to counter this.
Ill be grateful
Thank You
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Payment of Engineering services is a contractual matter, usually only after full delivery of each part it is considered done the deliverable is paid, it is either 0% or 100%, this is because of contractual reasons that for years the industry have found equitable. I do not believe your proposal will be accepted unilaterally or at all.
On the other hand internal valuation of schedule performance should use other metric, it might be that using hammock activity provides no value at all for this purposes, some logic shall be driving the estimated delivery of your deliverables still to be deliverd. Hammock activities are not considered for resource leveling, maybe you can resource load them but will not be able to deal efficiently the issue on limited resource assignments. It is common for design services be done on partial assignments of the resources instead of full day assignment, it might be on different days the resources work on different jobs, it is a complicated issue not well managed by hammock activities if you are into serious schedule management versus a mere observer that paint bar charts a different color when deliverables are delivered.
I would make the intermediate activities necessary to get the deliverables visible, very visible indeed, VERY BIG PAINTED BRIGHT PHOSPHORESCENT GREEN, they do matter, without them the schedule has no logic and is a mere bar chart fixed with time. The owner/client should not object to this as long as you continue measuring progress for purpose of contract payment using the agreed payment schedule.
For purpose of updating the schedule you need to progress the intermediate activities and for internal control it makes sense to use budget man-hours keeping in mind budget man-hours does not need to be fixed as when using a fixed contractual volume of a deliverable, it usually is a value that needs to be adjusted from time to time to get good projections. Unless scope changes productivity shall be compared to some baseline or reference amounts of estimated man-hours.
Understood.
In that case, I wouls suggest you create one or more hammock / summary / LOE activities, and load your indirect budget here. Claim progress based on duration % complete.
Cheers,
G
Hi Umir,
If your internal activities are budgeted to utilise, say 10% of your total design budget, I would simply inflate the budget for each design deliverable by 10%
I don't see much value in tracking progress vs meetings attended etc directly.
Cheers,
G
Hi Umir
Engineering Progress separate two things:
1 Activities.
2 Deliverablies.
Activities include: Meetings, Site visits, Management reports, Cost Reports.
Deliverablies include: Documents, Drawings, P&ID, HAZOP etc.
Hi Umer
Welcome to Planning Planet
Three suggestions.
1. Turn the delivery milestone into a task bar and report % complete along the bar.
2. Set up a lead in fragnet linked to the deliverable (ALAP) and report on that.
3. Off Programme just report progress leading to a deliverable - maybe based on actual v budget hours.
Best regards
Mike Testro
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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