Teams are central to project delivery, but the current situation of ‘living with COVID’ presents a series of challenges including the challenge of acquiring and supporting teams and team members, and dealing with the residual issues of the pandemic such as anxiety, loss of control over the work product and re-negotiating work-life balance. New modes of working create advantages and disadvantages from the perspective of both workers and organizations. But, how best to manage teams in the new hybrid mode, based on the learnings from the previous decade’s use of virtual teams and deal with the urgent emerging issues such as, shortages of experienced staff, and how to reform training, acquisition and retention of project team members.
PGCS 2022 is done and dusted. Feedback shows the event was an outstanding success with the final delegate numbers well over 400.
We are starting work on the program for PGCS 2023 to be held in Canberra in mid-August. If you are interested in more information (or want to participate) feel free to contact me. 2023 will be our 10th Symposium and we are planning to make this one even better!!
I will be busy helping run PGCS 2022 in Canberra next week (16th to 18th August). It is shaping up to be a great event with over 400 people signed up to attend: https://www.pgcsymposium.org.au/ Then my focus will shift to Project Controls Expo Australia 2022! https://projectcontrolexpo.com/aus/
Project Controls Expo Australia 2022 will run in Melbourne from 29th to 30th November and has a packed program totally focused on project controls. I will be busy on both days:
On the 29th in the ‘back to basic’s zone’ my session is: EVM – it’s not as hard as you think! This session will look at establishing and operating and running an EVMS, based on Australian Standard AS4817:2019 (the Australian adoption of ISO 21508), using simple tools. The session will briefly cover: – Understanding EVM, what it is, and what it is not. – Define the key elements and objectives of EVM – Demonstrate the creation, and use of EVM on a small bridge project.
Then on the 30th I will be looking at a major challenge to traditional CPM and forensic assessment in: Scheduling Challenges in Horizontally Distributed Projects
The challenges of scheduling, managing, and claiming delays in, ‘horizontally distributed projects’ are not well supported by traditional project controls paradigms.
Horizontally distributed projects have two dominant characteristics, the majority of the work is comprised of a series of physically separated units that are similar or identical in design, and the logical dependencies between the different units are either non-existent or minimal (think of an off-shore wind farm).
In this type of project, most of the components are identical and can be used anywhere, which means the work can be planned in almost any sequence, and that sequence can be easily changed at almost any time. This type of project is not well supported by either traditional CPM, or ‘line of balance’ scheduling.
The primary consideration in planning is optimizing resource flows, and the consequences of re-sequencing are not based around traditional CPM logic, rather the loss in resource efficiency which is much more difficult to assess and measure. Particularly when you need to separate productive efficiencies under the control of the contractor from disruption caused by re-sequencing.
This presentation will define the concept of a ‘horizontally distributed project’, and then based on some practical examples, highlight the challenges of assessing delay and disruption based on traditional paradigms of CPM scheduling. It will conclude by offering suggested ways to adapt project controls and contractual requirements to provide a sensible assessment of project delays. As soon as PGCS is over, finishing the research and writing this presentation is my next challenge.
This paper looks at the creation of earned value management (EVM) in the 1960s and its development and evolution through to the 2020s. However, the concept of EVM did not suddenly appear, the foundations of EVM were laid by previous generations, this paper demonstrates EVM is a synthesis of ideas and concepts some of which are hundreds of years old. The four precursors to EVM are the use of computers to calculate time schedules (CPM and PERT), sophisticated engineering cost controls, the use of breakdown structures to aid management, and the emergence of the concept of modern project management.
The use of computers to analyze project schedules in the late 1950s brought science to the management of time. There was a strong desire in the US Government for similar levels of sophistication to be applied to cost management on defense projects. This was the catalyst for the development of EVM in the early 1960s. The development of scheduling is traced in the papers listed in The History of Scheduling.
The discipline of engineering cost management was well established in the early part of the 20th century and its roots are much older. The limitation was the process of cost control using paper based manual systems tended to be retrospective. The development of cost engineering is traced in The History Cost Controls.
The idea of using breakdown structures to define, and then control, work also has a very long history. The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is at the heart of EVM. The development of the WBS is described in The Origin of Work Breakdown Structures (WBS).
Finally, a project controls system needs a defined project to control. The concept of modern project management is relatively new, although again its roots are very deep. Its development is traced in Origins, and trends in, modern project management.
When these different strands of development were brought together in the USA in the 1960s, EVM emerged. Tracing each of the histories outlined above has been a fascinating journey. The papers and many of the source materials are freely available to download from the history section of the Mosaic website: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-ZSY.php.
The problem with studying history is every time you look at something, there’s other interesting facets to analyze and research. I have identified two areas where I’m likely to go next (but not for a few months): – Documenting the early mainframe computer software that was used for CPM, PERT and EVM. – In March 2023 Earned Schedule will be 20 years old, its development and the challenges will make an interesting story.
Following on from a post by Raphael M Dua (Raf) in LinkedIn, the number of people posting about their ‘new’ way to solve project scheduling and controls issues seems to be expanding. The problem is most of their claims are false and misleading.
Some of the most frequent claims are around lean construction management the advocates claim they can solve your project scheduling problems (for a fee) because:
Lean construction management has introduced the concept of using input from the first line supervisors to plan the work. While this is a really good idea it is far from ‘new’…. Go back to 2009 and the concept of ‘last planner’ was floating around (and making the same claims), see The Last Planner and other Old Ideas. Go back even further to the 1970s and major construction companies such as Bechtel and Fluor were applying schedule levels. The Level 5 schedules were short-term ‘look-ahead’ schedules developed every couple of weeks that considered in detail the work for the next month. These schedules were developed by the foremen and subcontractors responsible for the work, based on the resources available on site to do the work. See more on Schedule Levels.
Lean construction management considers resource availability and CPM cannot analyze resources. This is a blatant lie. Every CPM scheduling tool from Microsoft Project to Primavera has the capability to analyze resource. Most have multiple options for scheduling activities against resource availabilities. The image is from a Primavera (P6) training course. The simple fact is CPM scheduling tools have included resource levelling since the mainframe scheduling tools of the early 1960s.
I’m not sure if the proponents of lean construction making these claims are simply ignorant of the existing capabilities, or making dishonest claims for commercial gain. But the problems they are claiming to solve are significant and won’t be helped by this type of false narrative. The core issues appear to be:
A large number of CPM schedules don’t include resources and the projects fail (the USA GAO is addressing this by demanding a resource loaded schedule on all government projects above a defined size). The root causes are untrained schedulers (being taught how to run software is not the same as teaching people how to be effective schedulers….) and the contractor’s management being unwilling to invest in developing the skills and allocate the time and resources needed to develop a comprehensive resource loaded schedule.
The inability of main/head contractors to rely on subcontractors supplying adequate levels of resource at the time needed. This is a price and supply chain issues that has been around for decades – see the Latham report from 1994. .
Until people actually address these core issues spending money on another fad solution won’t change anything.
I cannot do much to solve the cultural issues outlined above, but my Book Easy CPM goes a long way towards providing the knowledge framework needed to develop a skilled scheduler after they have learned to drive a scheduling tool: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/shop-easy-cpm.php
We now live in an age where Google search is ubiquitous, and the ‘find’ function in Word and PDF documents is almost instantaneous, but this was not always the case. This article traces the development of indexing from its start some 800 years ago in the 13th century, through to modern times as well as and providing links to a number of specialized search engines that are free to use.
Pat Weaver
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