CEM
To keep everyone involved on track and in scope, you’ll need to create a project schedule that: prioritizes established goals, sequentially lists out the tasks required to achieve each one, and break those tasks down into sub-tasks and deadlines Pro Tip: One of the best ways to keep all the information associated with your project intact, up-to-date, and accessible by everyone is with the help of a powerful planning tool like Mind Manager. Identifying and securing project resources in advance is essential for preventing missed deadlines. Those resources may include: specialized materials, equipment, or knowledge assets, specific locations (your company’s conference room, for example), financing, and skilled personnel Your aim should be to assign a team member and/or resource to each project task. Pro Tip: You may need a separate plan for procuring resources that aren’t available in-house from third-party vendors, suppliers, or contractors. All resources associated with your project – both human, and otherwise – are likely to have a cost attached to them. Your budget should break these amounts down in detail and project them through project completion. It’s important to establish quality criteria and targets so you’ll always know where your project stands relative to your goals. Consider using metrics to track and rank key deliverables, and having management sign off on each one. Pro Tip: You may want to take advantage of project management software that makes it easy to view, update, and amend the status of time-critical tasks as needed. Few projects are risk-free – even if the biggest threat is the possibility of a team member falling ill. Make sure you have a risk management plan in place to assess potential hurdles, and to provide contingency strategies to offset them. You’ll need to design a communication strategy that keeps team members in the loop, and management and stakeholders up to date on your progress. Once your project plan has been mapped out in detail, it should be presented to everyone involved so oversights can be addressed and any changes can be approved before the plan is put into action. The bidding period is the time between the announcement of the project and the availability of the contract and bidding documents to the contractor, and the time when the proposals have to be submitted to the owner. During this period the contractors have to carefully analyze all the tender material, prepare his costs estimations for the construction and prepare his proposal for the owner. The results of these estimations should provide the contractor with an overall idea of how much work the construction project requires. It is quite common that during the bidding period the contractors finds errors uncertainties or miss some information in the tender material. It is contractor’s responsibility to identify these flaws to the owner so that the suitable modifications could be made. After the owner informs the contractors about the project, the contractors have to examine the information in the advertisement or the invitation to bid. If the contractor decides is interested in the project, he will receive set of bidding documents from the owner of the designer. It is up to the contractor to make sure that all the contract documents are clear and sufficient. In tender material the owner may include pre-qualification criteria in order to eliminate inexperienced, incompetent or underfinanced contractors. The contractors’ decision to bid involves many factors that includes his opinion about the owner’s designer, size and nature of the project which is related to company’s experience, machinery requirements, project location, seasons, duration of the project, the bidding period, terms and conditions in the tender material, possible competition, resource requirements and other aspects. The decision to bid and preparation of the bidding proposal requires considerable amount of time, effort and money, therefore the contractor will always try to bid on the projects that he thinks he will be awarded. According to the planning consists of two major components: risk management and schedule and budget development. Risk management and detailed planning are closely related to each other and can be repeated several times before the construction begins. With every review the project plan become more and more accurate. A risk management is the process of forecasting and evaluating financial risks and identification of the procedures to avoid them or minimize their impact. All construction projects carry certain risks and these risks can be managed, minimized, shared, transferred or accepted. These risks face all participants involved in the construction project. Generally, risks determine the practical, financial and contractual relationships between the stakeholders. There are certain risks are involved in all the phases of construction project lifecycle. In order to deal with the risks, it is necessary to asses them. This involves risk identification, impact analysis, probability estimations and prioritization. In order to manage the risks well it is important to balance the costs and benefits of dealing with them. For the contractor estimating is part of planning process. In order to make estimates, a project plan of works is required. In order to prepare estimates, the contractor has to use information acquired from the tender documents. During the estimating process, the resources required for each activity are considered. Also, the contractor identifies and allocates and calculates the costs for the work performed by sub-contractors. Estimation’s data is structured in accordance to the planning model. This is important because structured data later can be used for other purposes. Normally, in pretender estimations the units of work are expressed in weeks or days (Frank Harris, 2013). As stated by (Carmichael, 2006) according to the degree of accuracy the price estimations can be divided into three different stages: - Approximate (20-25% accuracy) estimations are used to evaluate size and duration of the project. Preliminary (10-20% accuracy) estimations are calculated by estimating every part of work in the project. This price estimate is commonly used to decide whether to start with the project. Detailed (5-10% accuracy) estimations are used for tendering or re-planning purposes. This type of estimation requires either accurate unit rates or bottom-up approach. A project scope is the list of works that need to be done in order to meet the project objectives. The project scope statement is a tool for managing expectations and dealing with changes. In case of disagreements on the project they often can be resolved by reviewing the original agreement on statement of work. However, the original agreement can be changed during the project. In this case it is important that all the involved stakeholders understand and agree on those changes. After the changes are made, they need to be included in project scope statement. Part of the project planning is defining a project scope. It involves defining and documenting a list of works that need to be done for completing the project. Project scope planning together with scope definition divides the project into different functions or sections. The project can be broken down to smaller parts which can be once again divided into even smaller parts where every lower level has a greater amount of details. This is called Work breakdown structure (WBS) and it is systematic decomposition of the work to be executed. The WBS identifies all the tasks in the project and sometimes can be referred as a task list. Creating a WBS assists project manager in numerous ways. Through making a WBS a project manager gets detailed information about the project scope and the tasks on WBS can be used later as a basis to monitor the project progress. It also helps to calculate more accurate the costs for labor, equipment and materials for each task and help with more precise schedule estimates. WBS can be used to build the project teams, giving them clear work assignments. Gantt charts, also called as ‘bar charts’ (Carmichael, 2006) contains an information about the project activities and levels. It is a graphical picture displaying schedule information. On the horizontal axis the schedule is displayed, while the vertical axis lists the activities to be done. According to (Richard H. Clough, 2015) the main advantage of Gantt chart is the simplicity of its’ visual design which makes it very easy to understand. It provides a convenient way to monitor the work progress, check schedule and equipment, material deliveries and follow project advancement. Resources can be people, machinery and other matters that are required to carry out the project tasks. They are separated from finances that can be used to measure their usage. Resource planning is deciding about the usage of the resources on a project. Part of the resource planning is leveling the resources. The project manager can desire resource leveling to keep the workers at consistent and reasonable rate (Verzuh, 2008). Similar to that it is also not desirable to use the machinery intermediately. Smoothing the material usage helps to avoid possible shortages in supply during the peak time periods. Resource constraint scheduling is a planning method that resource requirements would not exceed the available quantity. Some of the resources can be expensive or limited quantity (i.e., crane, skilled workers). A schedule is not realistic if it requires excess of the available resources (Carmichael, 2006). Essentially, evening out the resources peaks leads to higher utilization and more efficient usage of the resources it also helps to avoid the situations where needed resources are not available. Financial planning is related to every stakeholder who is involved into deciding how much money should be used on the project. The project budget is a detailed estimate of costs for all the activities and tasks required to complete the project. Initial project budget is based on the estimated project scope, effort, schedule and it represents expected costs over the life of the project. As the project is being executed the actual costs can be tracked and compared with preliminary estimated values. Changes in the project scope, resources costs fluctuations and other factors can negatively affect project costs. The designer can provide probable construction costs to the owner. Often the designer’s costs calculations are based on his experience with similar projects (American Society of Civil Engineers, 2012). In order to get more precise budget estimations, the owner can review the costs with a professional cost’s estimator and experienced contractor. A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a breakdown of all the work that will go into completing a project. A WBS a way for you to build out a flowchart that breaks all of the deliverables down into manageable tasks and provide your team with a guide for developing a product or completing a project. There are three general components that make up a work breakdown structure: Deliverables: Define the end products that make up the WBS at a high level. You’ll break them down into smaller pieces later so you can assign work to individual team members. Work Components: Group similar tasks and make some general milestones or work phases. You’re still not at the individual task level yet, but you’ll be able to conceptualize how the process will go. Individual Tasks: Also called “work packages,” these are the most detailed level of your WBS. They should be assigned to one deliverable and completed by a single person. A clearly defined work breakdown structure allows you to make sure every detail and phase of a project is accounted for before you begin. It visually communicates the big picture, and helps everyone stay on the same page throughout the entire project. When all of your deliverables are broken down into smaller tasks, it’s easier to establish dependencies and create a project timeline. You can also write a more detailed statement of work (SOW), which keeps the plan in scope and sets clear expectations for your team and stakeholders. Since the work to be done is already defined and broken down into manageable pieces, your team can get to work immediately instead of waiting for instructions. They can be more productive, and you’re able to hold them accountable for the work they do. Getting this kind of clarity at the beginning stages of a project will help you avoid being among the 25% of technology projects that fail outright, not to mention the 50% that need massive reworking by the time they’re finished. Although you can make work breakdown structures by hand or in flowchart tools, it’s often time-consuming and isn’t easily updated. Using project management software to build a work breakdown structure keeps all the information up-to-date and gives your team clarity while you have the flexibility you need to plan work. Following we have listed the steps you need to take to create a work breakdown structure from scratch: Step 1: Get your team together to identify the deliverables and sub-deliverables of the project. This would include the project managers and the subject matter experts. Step 2: Gather the necessary documents such as the project charter, project scope statement, and project scope management plan. Step 3: Identify the key deliverables of the project. These should come at the second level of your WBS. Key deliverables will be essential to the completion of the project and they will be carried out by independent teams – meaning the same team won’t be working on completing another deliverable. Step 4: With the help of the subject matter experts, break the key deliverables into smaller parts of work (work packages) or in other words identify the work that is necessary to complete each deliverable. Step 5: Create a WBS dictionary which is a document that includes the definition and the scope of the different elements in your work breakdown structure. The WBS dictionary would include information such as work package name and ID, name of the person it is assigned to, due date, estimated cost, etc. This will help the team understand work packages better. Step 6: You can create a WBS using different formats like text-based work breakdown structures, tabular structures, or more visual ones like flowcharts. Once it is complete, share it with the team. A work breakdown structure can be quickly shared with the rest of your team with a secure share link – once shared, you can collaborate on it in real-time. Activity list is a list of all schedule activities that are required on a project. Activities are the portions of work that must be performed to complete the project. They are the items that become sequenced for scheduling. They become estimated for budgeting. The activity list is simply a place to log all of the activities. The list presents the activity number or identifier, the name of the activity, and a detailed description of the activity. The description should sufficiently describe the scope of work so that all project team members can understand exactly what must be performed. It also tracks the person(s) responsible for performing the work. So where does it belong in the big picture? Typically, there are multiple activities in a work package, multiple work packages in a phase and multiple phases in a project. Activities are the very smallest units of work. When decomposing items into activities, the best practice is to involve the team members who will be performing the project work. Productivity refers to the physical relationship between the quantity produced (output) and the quantity of resources used in the course of production (input). “It is the ratio between the output of goods and services and the input of resources consumed in the process of production.” Output implies total production while input means land, labour, capital, management, etc. Productivity measures the efficiency of the production system. The efficiency with which resources are utilized is called productive efficiency. Higher productivity means producing more from a given amount of inputs or producing a given amount with lesser inputs. At the level of a plant or an industry productivity is an output-input ratio. But at the macro level, productivity is a measure of performance of an economy or country. From a nation’s viewpoint productivity is the ratio of available goods and services to the potential resources of the country. Productivity means an economic measure of output per unit of input. Output refers to the total production in terms of units or in terms of revenues while input refers to all the factors of production used like capital, lab our, equipment, etc. Productivity is a good indicator of the efficiency with which a factory is operating. If a firm has higher productivity, i.e., it produces more with a given amount of inputs, it means it is utilizing the resources properly. Productivity can be calculated as the ratio of the volume of output to the volume of inputs. Productivity = Output/Input Productivity has become almost synonymous for progress. The resources of a country are generally limited. Therefore, higher productivity is essential for improving living standards and for the prosperity of a nation. Higher productivity requires elimination of waste in all forms. Higher productivity leads to economic growth and social progress. Aspiring project managers must learn how to perform a variety of tasks in order to get a project started and estimating activity duration is one of them. It’s not always an easy task to estimate the project duration, because doing so needs a Project Manager’s knowledge of some theory, along with the application of some best practices and methodologies. To estimate activity duration is a lengthy process and it takes time for a long-term project. Ideally, you should involve your core project team in estimating the duration. You should involve the project team, who will work on the project to achieve the project objectives, project management team, and all the identified key stakeholders to make a consensus on the milestone dates, and delivery schedules. Depending on this duration, you can develop a schedule, with milestones for your project. Estimating activity duration can be for a project phase or product phase and is iterative in nature. It can be changed as work progresses and as new activities identified in your project. Initially, you can estimate your project based on the network diagram (sequencing the activities). It can be further modified based on the changes done in the project during the execution, controlling and monitoring the process. This is a very important methodology that gives you the entire duration estimation. Based on the information on past projects that are similar, you can get a ballpark idea of the entire duration estimation. You may be able to get this information from the Project Management Office or another project manager; you can use this template for your current project. Analogous estimating the activity duration is not so accurate in nature; however, it is less costly and less time consuming than other methods. You can frequently use this method when you don’t have sufficient time to do a proper estimate, and you have a deadline. Analogous estimating can be of a part of the project as well since you don’t have to estimate the entire project. You can estimate activity duration for a single phase of the project if the requirement /nature of the phase is very similar to the previous processed project. This kind of estimate is based on considering various options like the assignment of the resources, uncertainty, and the risk associated—such as best scenario-based and worst-scenario based. The three-point estimating concept is originated from the PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique). Through PERT, we generally estimate three types of duration: Most Likely (M) Optimistic (O) Pessimistic (P) Of these, Most Likely (M) is based on the resources assigned and Optimistic (O) is based on the best scenario-based analysis. And the last one—Pessimistic (P)—is based on the worst possible scenario-based analysis. Once you have these, you can use some very useful formulas to derive the expected duration. They are as follows: Here, TE is expected time, and O, M, P are Optimistic, Most Likely, and Pessimistic duration respectively. In this way, you can understand the importance of PERT in estimating the duration of your project. Reserve analysis is a type of contingency reserve. After fixing a schedule for each activity level depending on the activity attributes, you can create contingency reserve timing by adding some percentage in the derived schedule of each activity. It can be changed as work progresses; reducing or increasing depending on the situation. Sequence of activity Sequence activities is the process of identifying and documenting relationships among the project activities. In the project management, the key benefit of this type of process is that it defines the logical sequence of work to obtain the greatest efficiency given all project constraints. In the project management process groups and knowledge area mapping the sequence activities fall under the planning process group and project time management knowledge areas. The project schedule development uses the outputs from the processes to define activities, sequence activities, estimate activity resources, and estimate activity durations in combination with the scheduling tool to produce the schedule model. In the sequence activities data flow diagram, every activity and milestone except the first and last should be connected to at least one predecessor with a finish-to-start logical relationship and at least one successor with the finish-to-start or finish-to-finish logical relationship. Sequencing can be performed by using project management software or by using manual or automated techniques. Moreover, the schedule management plan identifies the scheduling method and tool to be used for the project, which will guide how the activities may be sequenced. This term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK. The three-point estimate is a simple yet useful approach to estimating the time or cost of work items. According to the PMI methodology, it is used in the process groups “Estimate Activity Duration” and “Estimate Costs”. The technique involves three different estimates that are usually obtained from subject matter experts: Optimistic estimate Pessimistic estimate Most likely estimate. The optimistic estimate is the expected amount of work or time needed to perform an activity assuming no impediments occur and everything is going smooth. It represents the so-called best-case scenario. The pessimistic point is based on the assumption that the opposite was true – it represents the worst-case scenario. Although both estimates are referring to the extreme points of the range of expected outcomes, the estimates are supposed to be somewhat realistic. The third point reflects the most likely case, it is the estimation of work or time that is deemed to be the most realistic. One could be tempted to simply use the mean between the optimistic and pessimistic points without giving it a second thought. However, this may not be appropriate for many cases. In practice, it is normally worthwhile to determine this most likely estimate properly, analogous the other estimation points. The result of three-point estimating is a so-called triangular distribution of time values or cost amounts, comprising of the three estimates.
Unit - 2
Construction project planning
Q1) What are the stages of Project planning?
A1) The stages followed in project planning are as follows:
Create a schedule:
Line up your resources:
Lay out a budget:
Plan for quality:
Manage risk:
Communicate your plan:
Q2) What considerations are taken before estimation?
A2)
Q3) What is Risk management?
A3)
Q4) What is Estimating?
A4)
Q5) What are the scopes in project planning?
A5)
Q6) What are Gantt Charts?
A6)
Q7) What is mean by Resource planning?
A7)
Q8) What is mean by Financial Planning?
A8)
Q9) Explain the concept of Work Breakdown Structure?
A9)
Q10) How to create work breakdown structure?
A10)
Q11) What is Activity list?
A11)
Q12) Explain the concept of Productivity?
A12)
Q13) What is the importance of productivity?
A13)
Q14) What is Analogous Estimating?
A14)
Q15) What is Three point estimating?
A15)
TE = (O + 4M + P) ÷ 6
Q16) Explain the concept of Reverse analysis?
A16)
Q17) Explain Three point estimate?
A17)
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