Planning Planet News: March 2011

P
PP Admin 👤 Member for 17 years 4 months

Editorial

Welcome to our first Newsletter for March!

There are a number of new initiatives currently affecting our Community and perhaps the best way is to categorise them and give you the details!

Your Guild

There are meetings and interest Groups being formed all over the world - all of this can be seen here on the site – however we are making a start by forming Guild officers firstly in the UK.

A number of individuals have put their names forward and interviewed for roles in the Guild. We have changed the name of ‘Membership Committee’ to simply ‘Officers’ and there are the expected quality individuals who are helping establish joining criteria and subscription levels for membership. Our idea is to originate in the UK and template in the other areas of the world so please IF YOU ARE IN THE US, ASIA, AFRICA or MAINLAND EUROPE please get in touch! Our goal is to establish the membership process BY THE END OF MARCH.

Thanks to many of you for applying this is being sorted!

Individuals profiles will be on PP soon and please remember, we need Officers and Senators! Please apply and become a figurehead of your community by putting something back and finally help us all to establish a true career path for the industry we all love….it’s going to happen and the GUILD IS THE BEST WAY!

Meetings

We are all busy, (the benefit of online communities after all is the convenience) however, you cannot beat the ‘put the name to a face’ option of a formal meeting. If you wish to organise one OR start an interest group (such as BIM, or Claims etc) CONTACT: [email protected] and we’ll do our best to support their initiative – wherever in the world!

Suppliers

Many of you have written in asking us to improve our supplier listings – we’re working hard to do so! If you have a supplier in mind who can recommend contact [email protected] and we’ll pursue it. Conversely, If you wish to advertise to the largest community of Planners and Project Controllers IN THE WORLD contact us! We’re a community and if you are good we want to hear from you!

Corporate Sponsors

We are finalising our list of the first twenty supporters of the Guild initiative. There will not be another chance to be part of the original supporters of the Guild – we know the package is outstanding – and above all you are supporting the efforts of your employees to continually improve! Please contact us if your Organisation wishes to be involved as A FOUNDER SPONSOR.

Guild Secretary

We are seeking an applicant for this huge role! You will be a member of the PP team and will form your own admin team for the Guild. Please contact [email protected]

Contributors

Enjoy the rest of this Newsletter and please be reminded we are quite prepared to print articles or suggestions from you. Send them in!

The PP Team.

Events

PP is on the road this month attending The Primavera Conference 2011 (23rd March)

PP is also manning a stand (NO 64) at Project Challenge (30th and 31st March) situated at the NEC. We would like to meet you – if you want to hear about Your Guild, partnering with PP in any way or even voicing your opinion – come and talk to us!

Thank you for the continued support! PP Team

Skills Assessment Centre

As some of you may know, the PP Team has been coordinating with some of the leading planning managers from within our community to discuss and develop a suite of 'areas of competency' that are the first step to giving an indication of what aspects we should have exposure to in our daily lives as planners, schedulers and project controls professionals (we have been asked, many times, to also include the trusty 'cost-engineer' in this description too).

As a result, the team have devised a snap-shot reporting tool to allow each of us to see where we sit in terms of our skill-sets in relation to other planning professionals. It can be the first step to pre-qualifying yourself into the INTERNATIONAL GUILD OF PROJECT PLANNING, CONTROLS & DELIVERY (PPCD) if such membership interests you.

By taking these (self assessment) tests, we can see a rough overview of our skills, from a self-assessed perspective.  The Skills Assessment page now has a nice table to indicate our respective results and is interesting in that is shows areas of potential strengths and perhaps weaknesses.

Check out this link - Assessment Centre

We have a suite of reports in the pipeline and these, which, in conjunction with feedback we are receiving from the community members, will be rolled out for comment and development as time goes on.

Rest assured, other PPers (members) will not be able to see your results, so have a go and let us know your score.

Oracle

Our friends at Oracle Primavera have two online webinar's in March. 

We recommend you take a look.  As usual, please let us have your feedback and ideas etc.

Guild of Project Planning, Controls & Delivery (GPPCD) User Meetings

Please be advised that the following user groups are meeting within the coming weeks.  Please check out the links, or enquire of [email protected] if you are interested in getting involved, attending an event, and / or have questions with respect to any of the following:

  • London, Madrid, Qatar, Bangalore, Mumbai, Shanghai, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur - read more

We have others in the pipeline;

  • Ireland, Sydney, Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Frankfurt and Paris, so watch this space or get in touch with [email protected] if you would like to be involved or attend a meeting.

Pinoy Planning Planet Community

This is one of the latest online groups created by planners within the community, one that was created, completely committed in joining altogether independent Filipino Planners, Schedulers and Controllers in their journey to an enhanced Specialized Profession.

The plan of Pinoy Planning Planet Community Group is to associates Filipino Planning, Scheduling & Control Practitioners in different area of Professions and to promote solidity & sharing informative ideas for the advancement of all of us.

Join now!!! And be part of the community. 

Enjoy and Keep on Planning with the unending support of Planning Planet buddies!!!

Asta Development

Tekla and Asta Development are working together to improve interoperability and enhance information flow between Tekla Structures and Asta Powerproject software. 

Whilst users of each software solution can already exchange information, Asta and Tekla are now developing a bi-directional link which will enable task and schedule information to be brought from Asta Powerproject into Tekla Structures to visualise and manage activity progress in the 3D model. Users will be able to more effectively manage the supply chain, identify schedule and constructability issues, obtain accurate quantities for QTO and create 4D visualisations in a highly detailed model environment.

To find out a little more about this new initiative, please read more

Our friends at Asta have also provided this link to an interesting paper that explains more about resource loading in programmes / schedules - read more.

Record Breakers

Did you know that on 22 February, Planning Planet broke is current record in terms of new-joiners to the community?

We have a function on the website (refer top right corner of every PP page) that counts the number of new members who join the team and averages this over the previous 7 days.  On 22 February, the average time interval between new joiners was 48 minutes.  That means that every 48 minutes of the day and night, our global community receives a new member.

How great is that?  We believe that, at the time of writing, the time is 57 minutes.

Production Rates & Build Times

Did you know that on PP we have a small, but growing section that houses production rates ands build times - read more.

We are asking for our community members to invest a few minutes and post a production rate along with some explanatory narrative such as usage or gang size etc.  Here are a few examples:

Get involved, contact [email protected] to help build, manage or organise the data.  We have a growing number of new posts that require organising into the relevant sections and books within the Wiki, why not help the team?

Synchro

Did you know that our friends at Synchro are working with MACE?  They are actively involved in providing, amongst other things, an excellent visualisation of the Shard in terms of time-phased construction.  Mace recently summarised why they think the Synchro tool works for them:

  • The software was able to integrate all aspects of design with site infrastructure and display it back in a flexible way
  • The ability to improve the quality of communication with project stakeholders at all levels
  • Its ability to link the dynamic scene with different timelines and display the ongoing consequences of different strategies for building out the various structures
  • Its ability to bring in all the logistics implications of the programme to help position cranes, roads, parking, earth stores in a city centre site where logistics play a crucial role
  • The opportunity to compare visually different strategies to understand flaws and wins for one route over another and share these with different trade specialists
  • The interoperability with other planning systems
  • Speed and simplicity of the approach.

If this interests you in your role as planners, schedulers and project controllers - read more.

Well, it's that time again.  It's the end of the newsletter.

We hope that you found some of it to be of interest,  but please do keep up the most excellent feedback etc.

Be proud of your planning.