Find out what is most critical for a particular project – Time, Quality, or Cost

For example, a sports event launch is not time negotiable. It must be on time, it cannot be delayed a few days like a construction project could.

Tagged with: critical

Filed under: Cost • Quality • Time

Spend a few moments to consider where your project fits in with the business.

Tiny extra costs may not be worth the time or effort to try to reduce. You might spend more money trying to reduce them than the savings in doing so.

Prioritise tasks in terms of your project and also for your organisation. You might have something important for your project to do, but if doing so will delay many other projects even more, maybe you should alter that item to benefit the big picture.

Tagged with: big picture • prioritise • tasks

Filed under: Cost • Planning • Time

It is the responsibility of the project manager to organise priorities for the team members.

You should provide direction on what is the most important task.

You should settle conflicts between activities.

Provide things like the network diagram and critical path of the project to clarify to team members what work is the most important.

The PM should also give their team direction on the requirements for time, cost, scope, and quality.

Tagged with: activities • conflict • critical path • direction • important tasks • network diagram • prioritise • priority

Filed under: Cost • Planning • Quality • Scope • Time

When ordering lots of smaller items (e.g. 50 x 40mm PVC ball valves) it is a good idea to order 5 to 10 percent more than required.

• This allows for breakages.
• This is especially important if the project is not well planned (e.g. the design is not complete at the time of order) .
• Ordering extras saves money because you get them at the bulk price instead of buying small numbers of extras later at a higher per item price.

Tagged with: breakage • bulk price • extras • order more • orders • smaller items

Filed under: Construction • Cost • Procurement

If your project site has potential graffiti problems (or has problems) consider hiring some street artists to paint murals on those walls with graffiti problems.

• When painted well, graffiti is less likely to be put there as there is already good art.
• It makes the site more attractive.
• If it discourages graffiti, it may work out less expensive than continually repainting the areas to cover graffiti.
• An example is the electrical boxes around Brisbane, Australia. They have all been painted with different topical, sometimes funny, always creative pictures. Very little graffiti is put on them now, and they make a very attractive addition to the street.

Tagged with: art • artists • graffiti • painting • repainting

Filed under: Cost • Design

Make sure to consider and allow for project commercial risks:

• Protect yourself with insurance
• Make risk plans (for specific risks)
• Evaluate possible risks (rate them)
• Work out likely percentages (probabilities) and build these in to the costs.
• Allow for loss of resources (team members sick, injured, quiting)

Tagged with: insurance

Filed under: Cost • Planning • Risk

Allow for rework and failure in budget costs and time.

In my opinion, you should allow 3-5% of the total project value to cover this. This will vary based on the type of project. Just make sure you allow for it.

Tagged with: failure • rework

Filed under: Cost • Planning

Clarify with all project team members what they should book their time to.

When they start working on the team they should be given a printout of the cost codes that they should book time to.
Don’t assume they will already know.
This will save time and provide more accuracy for cost accounting for the project.

Tagged with: accounting • cost codes • time sheets

Filed under: Cost • Human Resources • Time • Training

Good reliable internal and external network connections are important.

As an organisation, project office or program office, it is important that both internal and external networks work well.

It costs a lot of money in lost time if the office connection to the internet is offline or very slow. Managers, designer, drafters, procurement, and many others need external access to look up supplier information, maps, site info, government websites, standards, definitions, dictionaries.

Blocking access to sites using Net Nanny or similar is better than blocking all external access.

Although the company might have to pay high bandwidth costs for a faster connection, that is probably cheaper than the lost time of people having to wait for pages to load.

Tagged with: bandwidth • connection • download • internet • intranet • network • offline • online

Filed under: Cost • Time

Get your organisation to implement an electronic authorization system.

This is where each person that must regularly sign paperwork can instead authorize documents in electronic form.

This will reduce the time taken to authorize actions (forms)

The originator could prepare an electronic form and send the link to all the people that must sign it. Those people log on, review the document, and authorize it by ticking a box. Confirmation would then be sent to the originator on which authorizations have been attached.

This will save a lot of server space, bandwidth, and ink as people would not have to print in colour, sign, scan, and email back again.

It can also reduce processing time from weeks to hours or minutes.

It should reduce the processing costs. To chase signatures can take the full time work of a person for each type of form (if done regularly). By doing electronic authorization, I would estimate 90% of the coordination time and cost could be saved (excluding the software cost).

Workflow packages are often used to implement this function.

Tagged with: authorization • forms • paperwork • signatures • workflow

Filed under: Communication • Cost • Documentation • Time