For those involved in the construction of high rise-towers, usually like to have an easy-to-understand report that shows the overall project performance on a single page. Of course, by doing so, they want to sacrifice the quality and trustworthiness of the reported performance data. There also could be the requirement to review the project’s performance status at any past period. Although MS Excel can be used to create such a report, nevertheless, there is the challenge of verifying the reported performance status as well as viewing past periods’ performance unless those are printed and saved.
The posting was made on LinkedIn by Eng. Raed Alrabadi, the Senior Planning Engineer at Al Hamad Group of Companies, UAE, provided a perfect example of such a performance report. The report shows the project floor levels listed on the horizontal axis while displaying the different project trades on the vertical axis. The intersection cell details if the work was completed (blue color), in progress with reported percent complete (yellow color), no progress, or does not exist as blank. In addition, there is a green line that details the planned progress during the reported performance period. In other words, where there are blank cells that fall behind the green line, means that the trade at that floor level is late. In other words, blank cells could be for delayed trade works or trade work that does not exist at that floor level. The report was created using MS Excel.
Using a Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb, an organization can formalize the process for creating the desired high-rise project performance status report. To start with, PMWeb will be used to import the approved baseline project schedule for which it will be the basis to determine the start and finish dates of the project’s activities that will be displayed on the performance report. The imported schedule data will be also used in the PMWeb daily reports module and other modules that require the link with the project schedule. PMWeb import function allows importing the activities description, duration, start and finish dates, percent complete, total float among other project schedule data.
The next step is to create the progress report that will be used to capture the project’s performance data. The form will include the project system and trade to be reported on, the name of the subcontractor responsible for this trade performance if any, name of the contractor’s representative responsible for reporting the selected trade performance among others. The form will also include a table that will capture for each building level, the actual start, and completion dates, percent complete for those in progress, and the relevant project schedule activity which will be picked from the imported project schedule. The table can be expanded to include fields to report any disruption events that affected the progress of this trade at the specific floor level among others.
The progress form attachment tab will be used to attach all relevant supporting documents such as progress photos and other documents that could have been related to the reported progress. All those documents will be uploaded and stored in the PMWeb document management repository under the specified folder for documenting the project’s actual progress. In addition, links to relevant PMWeb records like RFIs. Daily Reports, Meeting Minutes, Change Order Requests, Change Orders, Confirmation of Verbal Instructions, Inspection Requests, NCR among others can be linked to the progress report as well as link all imported MS Outlook emails.
For example, the default PMWeb daily report module allows capturing the details of work completed for each trade at each floor level along with the number of works completed on that date. The Daily Report location breakdown structure will be used to map all floor levels and areas within each level and the classification field will be used to have a predefined list of all trades to be reported on. Of course, the daily report also captures the resource, labor, and equipment, hours spent on completing the reported works for that particular day.
To formalize and enforce accountability on reporting the performance data for each project trade, a workflow will be assigned to the form to identify the needed review and approval steps and who will be assigned to those tasks. PMWeb conditional workflow allows having different individuals involved in the review and approval process depending on the selected project trade value, e.g. False Ceiling Closing Wet Areas among others.
For approved progress reports, for the next follow-on progress period, the project team member will copy the last approved progress report and add the new progress report data. When copying a form in PMWeb, the status will become “draft” instead of “approved” by default.
The data captured in the progress report will be used to create the high-rise tower visual progress report. Instead of the green line used to report progress, the project team member responsible to report the performance for a specific trade will add the value of 1% in the percent complete field for those floor levels that were planned to commence but did not. This enables color code those levels in red as shown below. Completed trades at each floor will be colored in blue while those still in progress, will be having shades of yellow depending on the reported percent complete. This can be adjusted to be just yellow-colored while work still in progress.
The same reported performance data can be reported by project building level showing the status of each trade performance. The same color-coding will apply to the new performance report layout. Of course, there could be other reports that can be created on the captured performance data such as the list of areas planned to start but did not start, another report could be created to report on events that could have disrupted or impacted the progress of the different trades at the different floor levels.
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 over the 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.