Before the final signing of a contract with a supplier or contractor, review their status to make sure they are still capable of delivering as originally discussed.

They may have tendered or quoted a long time ago and things may have changed (such as their workload, delivery schedules, material costs etc).

Even if you are still within the validity of the quote, they may have now booked a lot more work and may struggle to meet your expected delivery schedule. Suppliers or contractors may have said they can meet the price, but often the delivery time will slip. So check if they are still capable.

Tagged with: delivery schedule • price • status • supplier • workload

Filed under: Contractors • Cost • Procurement

Provide each new team member a one to two page summary of the project.

• Include an outline of the objectives, scope, size, and benefits (to the organisation, community, person)
• Possibly include total budget and budgets for individual areas.
• Status of project (over/under budget, behind/ahead of schedule)
• Significant problems
• List of main tools for that person/role
• Role and responsibility of that person
• Who they report to

Could split all above into two parts. One part for everyone, one part specific to each person.

Tagged with: benefits • objectives • project summary • status

Filed under: Communication • Human Resources • Training

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.

Tagged with: performance measurement • status

Filed under: Communication • Documentation

Your company should have regular projects review meetings. This should include all the head project managers, production managers, installation managers, purchasing manager, tender manager, etc.

The aim of this meeting is so that everyone understands what is happening, how busy teams are, and what resources are committed or available. This shouldn’t go into too much detail of problems or issues unless the group is small.

Set a maximum time limit to each manager’s comments or report.

Should report on:

• Realistic projected completion date.
• Budget over runs or savings.
• Problems or issues that could be company/industry wide (e.g. jumps in steel prices, long lead time on booking cranes).
• What resources your project will soon need, or be releasing.

Minutes should be kept, but old notes should be updated, not left for a long time on the minutes list when they are irrelevant. PM’s who cannot attend a meeting should be encouraged to send in a brief report before the meeting so that it can be read out to all. It is important to set a start and finish time and that this is kept to. Everyone is busy and will more likely attend a meeting if they know the meeting times are reliable.

Don’t let this become a meeting that people want to avoid. It should be a time for the project managers to get an idea of what is happening in the company and in other projects and how these may affect their project.
It should not be a status meeting (something which will seem like a waste to most of the PM’s as they will just be waiting until it’s their turn to talk and not listen to the rest).
Any status type info could be briefly mentioned, but only focusing on things that may affect others (such as running over schedule, thereby using resources expected by others to be available).

A regular meeting like this is important. Emails sent around instead will not be read or will get pushed down a long list.

Tagged with: resources • review meeting • status

Filed under: Communication • Planning • Principal Posts