Zhang
Thats an interesting comment regarding big and small projects while I can see that the management and organisation of the two are different surely the planning is similar allthough the coordination between elements becomes more critical.
Clive

Dear Oscar,

Thanks for your encouraging comment. I would like to say that the Project Palnning and Cost Control are interrelated so Planner should always consider the cost factor in Planning.

Asad

Main role of Planing Engineer is to Plan the Project by keeping the Cost Factor importance and to complete the project on contractual completion date.

Prject Planning should be done by coordinating with the Project Managers as they are the key persons for Projects but the Planner have to keep in mind the importance of cost factor.

Generally Project Managers are considering their main responsibility is to complete the project on time by ignoring the cost factor. So it is the responsibility of Planing Engineer to Prepare the Project Plan considering and giving importance to Cost Factor to make more profit.

Pure planners are doing effective planning job at the same time they get rewarding careers and satisfactory wages.

These professionals can easily be differentiated from primavera encoders, wanabee planner, alien plannger and sometimes labourers trying hard to joing the fraternity of planning engineer.

It will be very easy to spot them in there post here in PP.

Pure planners can effectively presents master schedule, time-impact analysis, etc...

I would prefer the pure planners a grauduate of engineering course.

Cheers,

Charlie

Andrew,

As people become less skilled they need others to do what the same person could have done 10 years ago.

Least it keeps people employed!

Andrew

I think alot of the problem today is compliance as well.
Just look at the documentation that is required these days. Some off to good, some of it a waste of space.

Funny that some people think working on big projects is good for experience, I would say the complete opposite, especially when it comes to junior engineers/managers. This does have it limits though.

Andrew,

I agree with you on the statement that we have lost the abililty to plan. My thoughts on this may be a little nieve, but I believe the lack of planning is lost when so many people are involved

With projects and schemes in today’s society, there are so many people involved in running a project. For example a £1 million pound road rehabilitation scheme may involve the following people from the contractors point of view

Contracts Manager
Quantity Surveyor
Site Agent
Planner
Buyer
Estimator
Site Enginner

The above may not all be full time on the scheme in todays world, nor do they need to be involved at all.

When a bid is done, for jobs say under a £1 million, I believe the site agent should be bidding these schemes, they should be getting all the quotes, estimates & material prices, he should complete the bid in full. That way he has already thought about how the work is going to be done. No offence, but Estimator’s often live in fairy land and have no idea. He should also put the programme together for the tender submission.

In summary - The estimator should be the site agent.

Once the work is won, the handover process is already in progress, the agent also then has a good repore with the subcontractors and also is familar with the contract documents & overall price.

Once the contract is won, the agent should do the following;

Planning & programming
Valuations and claims
Material & Subcontractor procument
General Management of the site
Health, Safety & Quality Control

You dont need to have a QS/Planner/Buyer/Estimator involved at all.
You do need, good site engineers, contract managers & a well rounded site agent who is diverse in his skills.

Off course he should be assisted by others, but he should have over all control of the process.

If your junior engineers can get a handle on all the processes above, you’d find that planning ability would improve as well as the general skill level.

Most engineers today, are pigeon holed with limited skills in other aspect of engineer, ie cost management, planning, esimating etc.

This I believe is where the problem is

Just my two cents here: Neither a planner or a project manager should develop the planning by their own. Getting the right support from your own project team requires you to let everybody give his/her input.

I’ve seen companies where the job of planner was to make an overall planning based on the very small plannings of the project coordinators, and really, there were some that really got it, even utilising earned value and risk analysis. But in the end, 80% came to my desk asking for help on making the planning. No prolem, that way you can teach them what you want them to do, and theyt were eager to learn too.

Ed,
does the certification Aram and Vijverberg have been working on leave an opening for us here? You might register the developer of the planning in a database, make that database accesible to new employers (charge them a little amount for it maybe?). If I had a couple of plannings on my name in that database I’d refer to it on my CV...

Andrew,

I was probably jumping the gun a little in saying that the planning should be done by the project manager.

Your right in saying that the planner should work very closely with the PM.

I am a planner, but I am off the opinion that the project manager/ site agent should be doing the planning on projects.
A planner to me is merely a good operator of P3 or similar projects.

Interresting topic isn’t it?

In my opinion there are to options in this matter. First in addition to a CV you could think of a "personal profile chart", being a four area’s graph showing two axes. First axes being f.i. Detailed = Overall and the second axis being f.i. Leading = Following. In this chart you could give an idea of the profile of this planner in order to fit into the project (-team).

Membership of an organisation will only benefit the individual planner is this organisation profits of "good workmanship" and thus needs to attract good planners and maintains there professional skills. I guess there are only two options 1) an organisation created by the market itself out of providers of planning engineers (so more then one and with customer intrest) and 2) an organisation like ourselfs (profit based) which benefits of good planning knowlegde. According to our planners it works both ways, planners of ARAM are well known for there knowledge and support and therefore ARAM is well known in the market. With new client this gives us advantage over other compagnies who provide, amongst other functions, planning engineers (both in changes and rates).

Both options apply,

Ed

Shahzad,

If so, then why big companies are looking for RICS candidates to do QS jobs? In the sameway in future it may happen to Planners..........

Let us think positively, If you are having membership in certain organisation(recognised Organisation) will have more advantage in addition to your recognised basic degree and experience.

Cheers!!!

Daya

Daya,Membership of any organisation does not assure persons ability and personalities . I agree it could be the criteria if you are looking for biginers. Once you fixed one criteria of education (bachelor/master)then I don’t think that it would be good practice to count number of certificates and memberships. An experience guy (with required education) can update himself studying relevant topics and books without having any memebership.And if you are filtering based on number of membership you might miss the chance of selecting best candidate.

Ed,

Yes, you are right, in this case Planners should have a membership in a recognized organisation(Like PEO, AACEI.......), then most of the problems would be resolved in the beginning/filtering stage and then call for an interview and select the candidates according to their ...........

Cheers!!!

Daya

Agree with all,

and the sad news is that many so called planners are only computer operators, who think if they learn p3 they are planners.

Planners need to know the guts of planning, are qualified to make a darn schedule with a pencil and paper, not only software.

go on the jobsite, walk through the mud, see foundations pour,and equipment errected, talk to instpectors, etc etc,
this is a way to learn planning.
MANY NEWCOMERS FORGET, A COMPUTER PROGRAM IS A TOOL TO AID IN PLANNING, NOT THE OTHER WAY ABOUT.

so much from the old timers (assume will get many yelps back)

bill

Ed,

have to agree with you, I am self employed and often working on several projects at once but for a single client - hence splitting the cost between them. There is a shortage of planners in the UK at the moment and this has led unfortunately to people being employed as planners who can draw pretty pictures with the software and prepare impressive looking reports, but don’t have the experience to interpret and use what the computers telling them.

Hey, but whats new, it’s planners in demand now, give it 12 months and it will probably be Project Managers or some other and the same will thing will happen.

Gents,

It should be considered an ideal situation where the engineers and project manager are controling there own (sub-)plans. The added value of pure planners (or consultants) is to improve the level and output of there efforts. But in most cases a full-time planning engineer is regarded to expensive, only valuable on "big" projects. In most cases they forget that a number of small projects are to be considered a "big" project where they often use the same resources (or budgets) whitin a company/department.

Effort from our side has to go to plan on department or company level and structure the way the engineers and managers use planning!

Another option is to work part-time on two (max. three) projects. I know this is not the way most agency like to work, but weve found out that when you make it more attractive (lower the cost) for your client and can offer back-office support they are willing to listen.

About 20% of our staff are working in this way. It is a benefit to both sides but puts a little more pressure/flexibility to the planner and his back-up team.

Were ready for it!

Bye,

Ed van der Tak
ARAM Planning Consultants
The Netherlands

That is the problem the role of the planner is being done by others, such as engineers, site managers, etc, but they are not pure planners and so do not appreciate our function.