One of the key challenges that is facing Municipalities, Public Works Departments and other public sector entities who are involved in delivering capital construction projects is managing the short-term allocation of available funds across their projects’ portfolio. Those are projects that were already approved and have approved budgets for which required funds were allocated and accordingly commitment contracts were awarded. Nevertheless, governments that were negatively affected by low oil prices, Covid-19 pandemic and other challenges are now faced with constraints on providing the originally promised funds for those projects. Therefore, public sector entities are now required to slowdown the delivery of some of their projects, suspend and terminate others to prioritize the allocation of short-term funds available to fund on-going projects. It should be noted that what is being done here is not project descoping that need to be managed using budget adjustments and transfers but rather slowing down the release of approved funds for already awarded commitment contacts for construction, site supervision, PMC, etc.
Although setting the priorities for which projects to receive fund allocation and the amount of the fund to be provided will depend on a number of factors that could differ from one entity to another, nevertheless all those entities share one common requirement and that is how to enforce transparency in documenting the allocated short-term funds for the on-going projects.
Using a Project Management Information System (PMIS) that is specifically designed for managing the delivery of capital construction projects and programs like PMWeb, the cost management processes needed for the fund allocation across on-going projects will be readily available out of the box. Mainly, there is a need to use the commitment and funding authorizations modules of PMWeb.
To start with, using PMWeb commitment module, each project manager needs to establish the expected spending projection for the next three or six months for each awarded commmitment contract. The project manager needs to determine what will be the minimum spending allocation to protect the contractual obligations of the Employer, or the public sector entity. PMWeb commitment module, and similar to the budget module, allows creating a spending projection for each commitment line item to provide what is known as the anticipated cost for each commitment contract. This anticipated spending need to be reviewed and agreed by the relevant Contractor to mitigate any contractual implications that could result from slowing down the already awarded contact’s execution should this be a requirement.
The amount of anticipated cost defined for each contract within each project will become to be reported on so it can be reviewed and approved. Using one of PMWeb 150 plus out of the box forms and reports, the “Committed Cost Per Month” report provides the details of the originally approved baseline budget, awarded contract value and the anticipated cost projection by month. By default, the report details the information by cost account level or cost breakdown structure for the selected fiscal year. The report can be modified to summarize this information across the complete projects portfolio with the option to drilldown to each project detailed breakdown level. This will require adding the project name field to the report. In addition the financial reporting period can be configured to 3 or 6 months window.
The “Commotment Cost Per Month” report can be also exported to MS Excel with all pre-defined hyperlinks to PMWeb. This is a very imported function of PMWeb as the exported data can be subjected to further “What-If” analysis scenario before it is approved. In addition, this will provide the project team with the ability to consume this data to create visual reporting using MS Excel or MS Power BI. It should be noted that any changes to the anticipated cost projection in MS Excel should be modified in PMWeb to ensure data consistency.
After approving the anticipated cost projection for each contract, the next step will be to allocate the providing funding for each line item in the commitment contract in accordance with the requested and approved fund. When the funding field is clicked at each commitment line item, the funding selector screen will popout. This screen will detail all funding sources including authorized funds available to the public entity to fund its on-going projects. Those funds could be funds available for all projects also known as portfolio, to a program of projects like education, landscaping among others and funding that is specific to a single project.
All fund sources that are available for the public entity including the funds that had been authorized for a portfolio of projects, program of projects or specifci projects wll be captured in PMWeb Fund sources module. The PMweb Funding Authorizations module will be used to capture the details of all those funds that had been formally authorized to be spent on the on-going projects. The form will capture the details of funding amount, funding authorization code and other needed details to keep track of what was authorized to spend.
Similar to all other project management processes managed in PMWeb, supportive documents can be either attached directly to the process or uploaded into PMWeb document management repository and then attached to the relevant process transaction. The latter is the recommended approach. In addition, links to other PMWeb records as well as imported MS Outlook emails can be added to each process.
The above proposed solution provides public sector entities such as municipalities, public work departments among others with a quick yet proven, auditable, traceable and single version solution for managing, monitoring and evaluating the allocation of short-term funds to on-going projects. The solution that can be easily configured to produce all needed output forms and reports that will respect the Employer reporting and branding requirements. A solution that is readily available and does not need the massive cost and time to reinvent the wheel. Finally, a solution that adheres to the best practices of lean construction management for eliminating wasted effort.
About the Author
Bassam Samman, PMP, PSP, EVP, GPM is a Senior Project Management Consultant with 40-year service record providing project management, project controls services and project management information system to over than 200 projects with a total value in excess of US $100 Billion. Those projects included Commercial, Residential, Education and Healthcare Buildings and Infrastructure, Entertainment, Hospitality 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 in topics relating to Project Management, Strategic Project Management and Project Management Personal Skills. Over the past 40 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 300 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.