all you real pro Project controllers are going to hate this. ;-)
I've been a scheduler at my refinery (get me ... MY refinery!) for the last 8 years. In this time i have been (rather loosely) overseeing the work of 2 other schedulers whilst scheduling my own blocks. We do about 75m worth of work a year on average. Recently the pace of incoming work as well as management expectations of management professionalism have increased significantly and I find myself in charge of 6 schedulers (perhaps 7 from next month) and expected no longer to schedule blocks but to concentrate on what my boss is terming "a more Project Control" kind of role. There's another role that's been created to look at preperation work method and tools, but that function has not been filled after 6 months of trying so I expect I'll catch some of that as well.
now, I was a project manager back in the day (outside of oil and Gas) so I have some incling what project control is but I would not call myself a project controller and I rather need to become (at least a facsimile of) one in short(ish) order. I have some reference materials (PMBOK etc) but I was wondering if there is a central resource (perhaps a text book or something) that you would consider a good concise reference for project controllers (4 years of study is not a constructive answer!).
Especially in Oil and Gas Maintenance turnarounds (rather than EPC / CAPEX)
many thanks
James
typically there are three major categories of work that fall under the Project Controls umbrella which are:
estimating
scheduling
cost control
Hi James
I also wanted to order this book, but hesitated after reading these reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Project-Management-Oil-Gas-Industry/dp/1420094254
It seems to not help a whole lot specific for oil and gas project management.
Did you order the book and what is your view on it ?
thank you Stephen, that's exactly the sort of stuff I'm looking for!
Hi, James.
There is a book called Project Management for the Oil and Gas Industry: A World System Approach from CRC Press in 2013, to which I contributed Chapter 6, on critical path drag and drag cost. The book is a 750-page tome, and I have not read anything in it except my own chapter. But it looks as though it might be useful to someone whose fulltime job is in oil and gas.
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781420094251?source=crcpress.com&…
But if all you are interested in is my chapter, it is actually a reprint of this article in Defense AT&L Magazine that you can download on-line for free:
http://www.dau.mil/pubscats/ATL%20Docs/Jan_Feb_2012/Devaux.pdf
If what you are primarily interested in is either value control or earned value management and control, then I'd recommend ordering my new book Managing Projects as Investments: Earned Value to Business Value also from CRC Press to be released in ten days. It contains two chapters on earned value of which I'm kinda proud -- I think they cover, in succinct fashion, both basic and advanced metrics, their benefits, shortcomings, and how to improve their implementation.
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781482212709
Good luck.
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan