With the growing trend of capital project owners’ preferences to adopt the fast-track approach for project delivery, the chances for disruption events that could occur on the project are on the increase. This is due to several reasons including but not limited to the release of tender documents before the design is fully complete which increases the chances of contractors’ raising an extensive number of requests for information to clarify ambiguities and issuance of revised drawings to incorporate changes, failing to have proper coordination between the multiple prime contractors as well as actions of those of contractors that could result in damaging the work of other contractors. Contractors, and in particular, contractors for interior finishes usually get affected the most because of those disruption events and need to have a proactive process for documenting all those events as soon as they occur.
Daily reports are considered one of the most important formal communications to document what has occurred on a project construction site. PMWeb daily report module allows capturing the details of site activities and events in addition to the resources, labor, and non-labor, deployed on the construction site. In addition, it allows capturing weather condition details as well as safety incidents that have occurred on the job site. Of course, PMWeb has a separate safety incident module to capture and report on the detailed particulars of any safety incident.
When a disruption event occurs, the daily report form must be used to record the details of this event. The details will include the location of the event which will be dragged and dropped from the predefined location breakdown structure. In addition, the Company field will be used to record the project entity that was responsible for the disruption event whether it was the consultant, contractor, or any other entity. The disruption field will include the type of disruption event that has occurred and which will be selected from a predefined list. The list includes Improper Inspection, Delay of Approvals, Destruction of Materials, Destruction of Work, Lack of Information, Late Drawings, Stacking of Trades, Lack of Access, and Interference. The Description field will be used to provide complete details of the disruption event while the notes field will be used to describe the impact that this event is causing the contractor activities where the event has occurred. For each disruption event, the contractor needs to select the project schedule activity that relates to the originally planned works that were disrupted. In addition, the contractor needs to provide the start date of the disruption event and the end date when it will end.
For each reported disruption event, the contractor must attach pictures of the disrupted works, disruption area as well as other documents that are relevant to the event. It is recommended to have all those pictures and documents uploaded and stored in the PMWeb document management repository. In addition, links to RFIs and other PMWeb records that are related to the disruption event will be linked including imported emails from MS Outlook.
A workflow will be assigned to the daily report to ensure that details of the daily reported progress, as well as disruption events, are communicated to the right project team members such as the commercial team and the project manager. To avoid communication overload, the daily report category field can be used to identify daily reports that include disruption events from those that do not. The category can be added as a condition to the workflow for which only daily reports with reported disruption events should be sent to the commercial team or other project team members who should be made aware when a disruption event occurs.
In addition, the PMWeb notification command allows sharing the daily report with other PMWeb users and non-PMWeb users to solicit their input or to make them aware of the disruption event. The notification command will send an email notification to the user’s email system such as MS Outlook.
To formally communicate the daily report, it needs to be printed in the format set in the project’s site management procedures. The layout and format of the daily report will be designed in the exact format and branding required for each project. The daily report will include the disruption events along with the details of progressed work and resources deployed.
PMWeb allows copying the details of the daily report of the current date to the following day to avoid the effort needed to re-input the work in progress and disruption of event details that have already been captured. Of course, the existing content that was copied can be edited and updated. This will not only expedite the process of completing the daily report but also ensure the continuation of the disruption events history where the end date will be only added when the impact of the event ends.
The disruption events data captured in the daily reports will become available to be reported on in the desired format. One of the recommended options is to group the disruption events that have occurred by each floor level or zone. The report is shown below as an example and includes a table that lists all disruption events that have occurred at a specific floor level, the location of disrupted areas on the floor layout drawing, and visuals to summarize the occurred disruption events by area and by type. This report can be used by the contractor to support their request for additional compensation and an extension of time analysis.
About the Author
Bassam Samman, PMP, PSP, EVP, GPM is a Senior Project Management Consultant with more than 35-year service record providing project management and control 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, 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.