One of the key challenges that face project planners is how to track and report the spent labor and non-labor resource hours at their project schedule activity level in a format that will be formally accepted by the different parties of the contract. Timesheets, labor cards, and other time attendance systems used by the contractors at the project site are intended for the contractor’s internal use to track the actual total resource hours spent on the project overall. Therefore, the only logical and practical way to track spent resource hours spent in completing the project’s scope of work is by using daily reports which are a formal communication requirement for every single construction project.
Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) like PMWeb should have by default a daily report module that can capture the spent resource hours at the project activity level among the many other types of information that a PMIS should capture. Since the daily report is a formal project communication, the reported category and quantity of actually spent resource hours will be formally reviewed, verified, and approved by the contractor and the project owner’s authorized representative. This means that the resources tracking report will become a report that will be formally accepted by all parties to the contract. The contractor not only will use the report to assess the actual productivity rates but also for claims of lost productivity, disruption, and acceleration among others by assessing earned resource hours to both planned and actual.
To establish the link between the daily report and the project schedule, PMWeb will import the project schedule that was either created in Oracle Primavera P6 or MS Project. The default import function allows importing the activity details including the planned and actual start and completion dates, and total float actual percent complete. PMWeb scheduling module allows maintaining a version of all project schedule updates and revisions.
In addition, it is important to define the labor and non-labor resources to be tracked in PMWeb. The information captured for each resource could include resource skills, resource name and the company the resource works for, resource contacts, resource rate, and resource default cost center among others. In addition, the specification tab can be used to capital additional details on each resource date of hire, nationality, and gender among others.
PMWeb daily report module is used to capture details of weather conditions, details and quantities of completed works, safety incidents, and spent resource hours. The timesheet tab allows capturing all needed data for each resource, labor, and non-labor, including hours spent, relevant activity, whether spent hours were regular pay, overtime, weekend, or another type of pay, description of work performed by the resource, notes among others. In addition, PMWeb allows the creation of ten additional fields that allow capturing more details for each resource.
Of course, the daily report can also capture the details of progress photos and other documents that need to be attached to the daily report. The daily report also includes the options for adding checklists, notes, and clauses. In addition, a workflow can be added to the daily report to ensure that it is formally reviewed and approved before its status becomes approved.
The contractor will usually be required to formally submit the daily report for the project owner’s authorized representation in a specific format that could vary from one project owner to another and even from one project to another. PMWeb reporting tool will be used to design the output form in the desired format.
Using business intelligence tools like MS Power BI, the daily actual resources data captured in PMWeb along with the planned resources data captured in Oracle Primavera P6 or MS Project will become the basis for creating the “Actual Spent Resource Hours at the Project Activity Level Tracking Report”. The multi-data source report will include a tabular report that details the total planned and spent resource hours per activity on daily basis for each resource category. The report will compare the total planned resource and spent resource hours per activity. In addition, it provides a summary of total planned resources and spent resource hours by resource category.
Other reports can be also created to provide the information needed by the project team. For example, there could be a need to provide a summary report of planned, actual, and earned resources per activity. The report could also summarize the planned, actual, and earned resources per resource category.
Bassam Samman, PMP, PSP, EVP, GPM is a Senior Project Management Consultant with more than 35-year service record providing project management and controls services to over 100 projects with a total value of over US $5 Billion. Those projects included Commercial, Residential, Education and Healthcare Buildings and Infrastructure, Entertainment and Shopping Malls, Oil and Gas Plants and Refineries, and Telecommunication and Information Technology projects. He is thoroughly experienced in complete project management including project management control systems, computerized project control software, claims analysis/prevention, risk analysis/management (contingency planning), design, supervision, training, and business development.
Bassam is a frequent speaker on topics relating to Project Management, Strategic Project Management, and Project Management Personal Skills. Over the past 35 years, he has lectured at more than 350 events and courses at different locations in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and South America. He has written more than 250 articles on project management and project management information systems that were featured in international and regional magazines and newspapers. He is a co-founder of the Project Management Institute- Arabian Gulf Chapter (PMI-AGC) and has served on its board of directors for more than 6 years. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI), a certified Planning and Scheduling Professional (PSP), and Earned Value Professional (EVP) from the American Association of Cost Engineers (AACE) and Green Project Management (GPM).
Bassam holds a Masters in Engineering Administration (Construction Management) with Faculty Commendation, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA, Bachelor in Civil Engineering – Kuwait University, Kuwait and has attended many executive management programs at Harvard Business School, Boston, USA and London Business School, London, UK.