For those involved in delivering capital projects, there is always a need to set date reminders for actions that must be taken on selected project records. For example, those could include the processes for the renewal of insurance certificates, warranties, no-objection certificates, meeting business items, and others that are not managed through a workflow where reminders for actions can be set in the workflow process by setting several days to trigger reminders for overdue actions.
PMWeb is an example of a Project Management Information System (PMIS) used to automate the project management processes that must be performed during the project life cycle phases. In addition, PMWeb is used to capture all types of project documents and records, such as insurance certificates, warranties, no-objection certificates, and meeting business items, among many others.
PMWeb comes ready with many forms needed in capital projects, like meeting minutes, RFI, submittal, budget, commitment, and change orders, among many others. For those processes that PMWeb does not provide a ready form, PMWeb custom form builder is used to create those processes and include the needed fields to capture the required data.
PMWeb allows setting date reminders on the data fields included in the default or custom-built forms. For example, when the user right-clicks on the area “Current Expiry Date,” the reminder screen will appear. To trigger the reminder, the reminder screen allows the user to set how many days, weeks, months, or years before or after the selected field date.
The reminder allows selecting the PMWeb Users or Contacts (not necessarily to be active PMWeb users) who will receive the reminder. The form also allows providing the reminder message to be sent as an on-screen reminder or via email. By default, the email’s subject will be the name of the selected field unless this needs to be changed.
Of course, having date reminders does not replace the need for having a report to monitor, evaluate and report the overall performance of the different processes that need to be managed during the project life cycle phases. For example, the Insurance and Bond Certificates Tracking report will be used to monitor and track the status of all insurance and bond certificates issued on the project. The information will use the same custom-built form to generate the reminder to report on the process performance.
The most important field on this report is the Days to Expire field, a calculated field that will calculate the difference between “Today’s Date” and the certificate’s “Current Expiry Date.” This field background will be in “Red” for those certificates that are due to expire in 60 days or less, “Cyan” for those that are due to expire in 90 days, and “Green” for those certificates that have more than 90 days to expire.
About the Author
Bassam Samman, PMP, PSP, EVP, GPM, is a Senior Project Management Consultant with over 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, Telecommunication, and Information Technology projects. He is thoroughly experienced in 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 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 six years. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI), a certified Planning and Scheduling Professional (PSP), an Earned Value Professional (EVP) from the American Association of Cost Engineers (AACE), and a Green Project Management (GPM).
Bassam holds a Master’s in Engineering Administration (Construction Management) with Faculty Commendation from George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA, Bachelor in Civil Engineering – from Kuwait University, Kuwait, and has attended many executive management programs at Harvard Business School, Boston, USA, and London Business School, London, UK.