Dear All,
Proud to be a member of planning planet, this is my first question.
I am used to maintining 2 resources in my schedules - Manpower and cost. In baseline, both are converted to percentage (10000 points) and are updated further in agreement with the client. Physical progress is based on earned weightage - manpower.
In procurement phase, instruments which are manufactured abroad has no manpower impact on schedule. They have no significant contribution to physical progress (Based on manpower) whereas it has huge impact on earned value cost.
By the end of procurement phase, physical progress is lagging behind earned value cost.
By definition of physical progress, should it reflect the progress in procurement phase as well by loading it with manpower prpoportional to cost?
Please advise.
Mahir
Hi Mahir
Physical percent complete is very simple.
You have a column that takes a percent value and converts that to progress along the bar.
So if you have a task for piling that has 100 piles you walk along the site and count the number of piles complete and put that in as a percentage.
If you have a task that comprises all of piles - pile caps - ground beams etc then you are stuffed.
Best regards
Mike Testro
Jose Frade: Thankyou so much for the explanation
Mahir,
One thing is relative weightage of activities and their contribution for the overall project progress, another thing is activity progress measurement.
In a project, your budget reflects on a common unit (money as mentioned before for a EPC) all necessary tasks/work to accomplish it. Therefore this common unit has to be transfered as weighting factor and relatively distributed among all planned activities. Usually I use the Non-labor fields (units/cost) in order not to have it mixed with other ressources/costs. When you deal with just one discipline or project phase many other units are possible (Tons, 2m, klm, M/H, etc) but in a EPC all this units have to be translated into a common one for work weightage purpose.
Once the show starts (the project) then you have to measure the progress of individual activities in many different ways (number of eng. docs produced, purchase orders placed, equip. manufacturing from suppliers, tones erected for piping, m3 of concrete poured, klm of cables pulled, number of loop checks, number of systems commissioned, etc). from Your description I think this is known to you but just to make it clear. Then the % progress measured in the field gets inputed in the progress of the activity (units %). Then, the system will use the relative weight previously registered and compute the progress of the project (or phase, or location, or lead engineer, or supplier, etc)
During the project development budget (used for relative weightage) might change, One common rule is if changed more than 10% you should revise also the weightage of your activities accordingly in order to reflect the new reality..... (of corse this means new progress curves, new baseline, etc; which can occur only with client consent and approval...
Regards
JMFrade
Jose Frade & Mike Testro: Thanks for the quick response.
Forgive me if I'm wrong,
Jose Frade: Ideally, If I load costs for Labor, Non-labor and Material, I can use the cost curve for a convincing progress measurement, is that right?
Mike Testro: Using 'physical' as percent completion type, can I change the units by changing 'Physical % completion'?
Regards,
Mahir
Hi Mahir,
When dealing with projects EPC type you have to find a common unit for representing the weight of each activity. Man/hours are usually not good. The suppliers will never tell you how many man/hours they require to manufacture a certain equipment, instrument or raw material. Nevertheless you have to account for the progress ot them- afterwards the project is not only construction. Everything required to complete your project (things you do, things you buy, things you rent, things you sub-contract, have to be properly represented since all of them contribute to project progress) needs to be represented in this global unit - Usually cost (or selling value if used to report progress to clients).
Very often on a EPC project (Petrochemical, Oil and Gas, Energy) the procurement represents more then 50% of the project and it would be a disaster not to report that progress - it would mean spending more than half of the budget and not achieving any progress ???.
So, I recomend to use Man/hours for the resources you need to employ in order to control histograms / work loads etc (it will allow you to mobilize the necessary crews, demob, etc); and Value as weighting factor for computing project progress. The weight distribution between the activities should not distort the relation between the project phases of your budget.
Hope it helps
JMFrade
Hi Mahir
Welcome to planning planet.
Another way of recording progress is physical % complete.
So if you have a manufacturing task of 100 days and you have learnt that the supplier is 60% complete you should be 60 days along the duration at your data date.
Best regards
Mike Testro