My Project Management Lessons » Documentation

Processing Purchase Orders Efficiently

michael — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:14:12 +0000

If you work on an alliance project or any project where some tasks are done by a collection of organisations, make sure there is a clear and simple procedure for making purchase orders.

A designated group of people should be responsible for this and should know the system. That group should be able to process purchase orders for work even if that work will be paid for by the head companies and not the alliance.

For example, I needed to get some external design work done. I had an external person who could do a set of designs for a set price. Yet it took ten weeks to actually make the purchase order so that work could start, including 10 hours of my time in going backwards and forwards trying to sort the system out.

The process included these steps:

Try to find out which head company was paying
Get the correct forms for the purchase
Find the sub consultant agreement forms
Wait until the head company could send me the right forms
Fill these out and sending them to the head office accounts department
Get them returned to me saying they were wrong and a different form should be used (different people thought different forms should be used)
Send the agreement forms to the sub contractor to agree to.
Get them back with alterations.
Send them to the head office corporate solicitor to check and advise.
Get a new form recommended and send them again to the sub consultant for agreement.
Get agreement and then get signatures from alliance managers.
Send the signed form to the head company for signatures.
After agreements are all signed, give these and sub consultant details to accounts department for a purchase order to be made.
Get this purchase order signed by alliance managers
Get the purchase order signed by head company.
Alter purchase order and agreement because different designs are now required (because of the time delay some internal staff had done some designs themselves as they were needed urgently)
Get signatures again (alliance, head company, sub consultant.
Send purchase order and agreement to sub consultant for work to be commenced.

Many of these steps took one or two weeks for review and responses. It would have been cheaper, quicker, and easier to get these designs done internally and pay overtime to get them done.

Management cost to get these processed $2000

Cost of designs $8000

These costs do not include all the purchasing and accounts department time and costs, only the direct design management costs (my time and my manager’s time).

If there was a division in the alliance office who could do all this, I could have taken the sub consultant details and price to them and they could have done this whole process in less than one hour, at a cost of perhaps $50.

They would need all the correct forms and agreements from the head companies.
They would need to know who authorises these forms and have easy access to these people.
They should know what forms and agreements are used for each purpose.

Alliance Communications Efficiency

michael — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:06:42 +0000

Although alliance systems can lead to great cost and time savings, it is important to pay particular attention to internal communications and authorisation systems.

It can take a lot longer to get information circulated or authorisations done properly compared to if everyone was from the one company.

Verification of designs can be particularly time consuming as the designs may need to pass between lots of departments.

It can help to indicate clearly on the communications or forms who is responsible for replying or taking action, when that action is due by, and who they should return it to or pass it on to when they are completed. For other people copied in the communication, make sure it is clear that they are only copied for information only and do not need to act or reply.

Keeping urgent or important labels for truly important communications can speed the process.

If necessary, make a, simple to follow, one page procedure for processing documents (so that people can know what to do easily).

Allow Enough Time for Design and Drawing Approvals

michael — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 02:04:07 +0000

Make sure you allow enough time in your project plan for designs and drawings to be approved, internally as well as by the client.

It is common to need 1-2 weeks for each step of FDR (Final Design Review), IDC (Interdisciplinary Check), Verification, IFC (Issue For Construction) etc reviews and approvals, especially if more than one person must approve these.

It is important to keep track of the approval status of these and follow up on people to review and sign them. I often find that although people get notified, they overlook signing the reviews or it sits on a desk waiting and gets buried.

If all the approvers are collocated, it is often worth having someone walk the documents around personally to each person for their approval, this can dramatically reduce the time taken and stop the documents being buried under other work or being forgotten about.

Document Folders

michael — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 02:01:15 +0000

Document storage and retrieval is a vital aspect for most projects.

If your company doesn’t have a good file storage system then I would suggest you make your own.

For an electronic system, storage needs to be easy to use and logical.

I suggest you make a system of folders or similar with a standardised approach to their use.

E.g.

Correspondence
Design
Suppliers etc

I find that if there is no system or if it is badly organised I may spend about 25% of my time trying to figure out where to store files I made, or where to find files I am looking for.

Using the Word “Float”

michael — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:04:42 +0000

Using the Word Float

It is a good idea to avoid using the word “float” in a schedule or cost report to a client.

Instead you could use phrases such as “Critical Evaluation of final commissioning items”, or something similar.

Using the word “float” usually leads to management or the client wanting it reduced.

Of course only use the alternative wording if it is a necessary float and the words reasonably describe the use.

Outdated Specifications

michael — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:36:20 +0000

If a specification is older than 5 years, it is probably outdated or inaccurate.

If you are reusing specifications from old projects or tenders, make sure you check that the information in them is still current.

Sometimes a client will send you a specification that is from their files from previous projects. It can often be outdated information and needs to be checked that it matches the current standard or expectation.

For example, the electrical wiring might be specified to be a certain colour, yet new standards call for different colours. If you are supplying those specifications to a contractor, you would be responsible for specifying the correct colour; otherwise the contractor may install the wrong colour and ask for a variation to rectify it.

Scan Large Specifications

michael — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:57:10 +0000

When reading a large specification, to avoid inducing sleep, scan it by key words.

If possible, when given a specification by a client, get the it in electronic form. This allows faster scanning and you can easily come back to important parts by a quick search function

If you have it electronically, use the find command to search it by one word to focus on one area at a time.

For example, search for pipes to find all the mentions of pipes areas of specification (colour, size, joints, type, etc).

Lessons Learned

michael — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:45:44 +0000

Make sure to write the lessons learned for each project. This should include what has been done right, wrong, and what you would do differently if you could redo the project.

This is for your benefit as well as for other project managers.
When starting a project, it is useful to be able to find a similar project your organisation has done and look at its lessons learned.
It should include both technical and management areas.
It should be added to your organisations database to be easily searchable by project type, project manager’s name, key functional areas, etc.

Common Responsibilities Template

michael — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:05:20 +0000

Find a template showing the common responsibilities on your type of project. Your organization may have one. This helps with assigning responsibilities and makes sure nothing is forgotten. Related Posts Project Organisation Chart Templates for your WBS Clear Roles and Responsibilities.

Produce Performance Measurements

michael — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:30:00 +0000

As a project manager you should produce performance measurements of your project.

These could be measurements such as:

Planned Value
Earned Value
Actual Cost
Budget At Completion
Estimate At Completion
Estimate To Complete
Cost Variance
Schedule Variance
Cost Performance Index
Schedule Performance Index
Estimate At Completion
Estimate to Complete

Many of these can be automated outputs (depending on your software tools).

They are important to supply to management and are the easiest and most specific way of presenting your project status to management.

They help you know if your project is over or under budget and also ahead of or behind schedule. They should be checked regularly (at least once a month for long projects) to spot problems.

In some cases you should present the schedule measurements to the client.

The Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK) from the Project Management Institute (PMI) (www.pmi.org) has details of all of these performance measurements in its “Cost Management” section.