Frans

we have to fight for our information aswell. Our own people are the worst, frankly.

Bribery does actually work with contractors, but is a little more diffucult to administer with your own perople ;)

for maintenance work, execution periods are generally too short to use contracted incentives. Most turnarounds are over before the first invoice has been paid.

In any type of construction, but especially in oil and gas, a safety based approach can form the basis of your progressing tool;

it’s not safe to cut a pipe until that pipe section has been blinded, steamed and tested, thus a wall chart which shows who has done what will aid those who are next in line to do their work. In oild and gas all the works are strictly controlled with a permit system so we are able to build on that and define "stop points". Before you know it, everyone wants to be involved and you have to fight them off to avoid every bugger having to sign off on the lav being cleaned.

Introducing these systems to a runnign project is a whole different game though.

Be proactive (as Charlie rightly says)
Think about what your schedule can offer to those who you want to collect progress from and sell that to them
QAQC people may not be responsible for quantity, but they are responsible to provide reports detailing what they have inspected and when. If you make this easy for them then they may actually do it

Best is to get in early so teh systems are established before tghe project execution starts and to have support from the management. Explain to your PM that you cannot inspect progress on the whole project with just 2 eyes. with PM support, resistance from below may lessen.

It’s a difficult job coming into a project already in execution and trying to set up monitoring systems on the fly. I don’t envy you!

Frans,

I think you have to be pro active.

Basically, discipline engineers or site engineers should be the one responsible in the performance of activities. Hence, awareness of progress for each activities under their jurisdiction is a must.

One way to motivate them to be responsible in achieving progress (hence monitoring, computing progress) is to present a very simple quantum on how to compute progress.

How to achieve this?????

First you have to understand the process or steps. Prepare a table on how to distribute weightage for each steps. Follow the activity description "VERB NOUN" because this is quantifiable. I’m talking in the engineer perspective since I’m an engineer and I always objective in my assessment of progress, that is why the verb noun activity description suit me well.

Having accomplish this, give it to the engineers. Let them change it, the way they like it or the way it will suit them or make it easy for them to accomplish, control and monitor.

Then, Bingo, you got what you want, progress, from the engineers.

Believe me, this is effective and I use it since long time ago.

What you will be going to do is a catalyst to change the way progress will me measured and reported that will also suit your needs.

You have to do it first because this the site engineers dont know what you want from them in the first place.

Sensei,
Successful Project Management Consultant

Frans - it sounds as though nobody gives a sh*t except you.

James’ earlier reply is spot-on...but if no-one is prepared to provide you with the information, then you will have a fight on your hands to get it. Have you tried writing a little document, stating how the project is to be monitored/progressed, and getting your boss to sign it?

James.

Frans,

That is a very fundamental question

In our organisation, the executors of each activity are responsible for reporting their own progress on that activity. The supervisors and inspectors (who work for us) are responsible for validating the completion of those activities. There are a few ways that can help achieve this;

Each activity in the plan should conform to the following;
- Duration should be less than 2 progress reporting cycles, that way you cannot get lost in long drawn out activities.
- Completion of the activity should generate a physical deliverable; a drawing issued, test package signed, delivery made to a werehouse, punchlist issued etc
- Each activity should have only one person responsible for its followup and completion.

You will need to build tools to help those who you need to report progress to you or the data you get will not fit the structure of your plan and will likely be unverifyable (people tend not to like being followed up on very much). Also, give them something back. The plan is not only about following progress but should be able to steer the effort. People who are in charge of many complex tasks will thank you for providing them priority lists, if presented in the right way.

For site-based progress, we produce A0 format wall charts for each major worktype where the executors, inspectors and supervisors can sign off completion of their tasks. That way, the following trade knows he can go to a central location and see what parts of the job are available to work on next. There are several very clever programmes for doinfg this, but frankly I find Excel the easiest, most flexible and best presented.

We then provide 3-day lookaheads to supervisors and executing contractors on a daily basis so that they can see what our priorities are (not saying they do what we tell them, but at least then they know... ;-) ) and they fill these in at the end of the day to let us know about in-progress items.

If you find yourself in the position of "guessing" progress then consider yourself in trouble. If you are guessing because you cannot access the works, talk to the executor. If it’s because there’s no point contact for the activity or it’s just too big, then try to break it down (or decompose) the activity further until you have manageable chunks.

hope this is useful

Hi,

Hyperlink doesn’t work. PAGE NOT FOUND!!!

Plz post it again.

Cheers,

Rav