The delivery of capital construction projects usually involves large number of individuals who will be assigned with duties and responsibilities considering the specific goals and objectives assigned to the project team which are part of the project’s overall goals and objectives. There could be project teams for design management, construction management, health and safety, quality control, project controls, commercial, contracts, information technology, risk management, testing and commissioning, project closeout among others.
A project team could consist of full-time and part-time human resources supposed to collaboratively work on producing the deliverables and moving the project towards successful completion. Every team, regardless of the assigned goals and objectives has three roles These are the leader who provides leadership and guidance to the team and takes responsibility for the results of teamwork, the team member who is actually involved in doing assigned tasks and the contributor who participates in the teamwork but is not actually involved in performing tasks and carrying out project team responsibilities.
For each project team, there should be an organizational chart to outline specific roles, duties and responsibilities of the team members and to formally constitute how exactly they are expected to collaborate with each other throughout the project duration. The organization chart should be aligned with the project’s directory which should include the details of all project team members regardless of their role.
PMWeb is one of the Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) that in addition to its use to manage all the project management processes needed for capital construction projects delivery, it also has the module to create the project team organizational charts. There is no limit to the number of organizational charts that can be created in PMWeb. For each organizational chart, there is not limit to the number of user defined fields that can be added to better describe the project team including for example list the assigned goals and objectives.
After creating the organizational chart, human resources can be assigned to the different roles including those for the leader, team members and contributors. All resources need to be defined in PMWeb resources module and assigned to their relevant company defined in the companies’ module. The resources will be simply dragged and dropped in their relevant organizational role box. PMWeb allows creating revisions of the organizational chart to maintain track of all changes and modifications that could have impacted the organizational chart.
The attachment tab will be used to upload and attach the resumes of the human resources assigned to the project team and their other relevant details. In addition, links to PMWeb records and imported MS Outlook emails can be added. For example, those could be the communications sent to the project team leader, members and contributors assigning them to the project team.
Similar to all other PMWeb modules, the organization chart module could be assigned a workflow to formalize the review and approval of the proposed project team. The workflow will identify the workflow steps, duration, responsibility, available action types and sequence. The workflow could include conditions to ensure that the correct approvals are secured depending on the approvals authority levels set for the project.
In addition, PMWeb allows adding a scoring matrix to assess and appraise the performance of the project team. The scoring matrix would be usually aligned with the specific goals and objectives assigned to the project team as well as the deliverables that the project team were supposed to collaboratively work on to produce. The list of scoring items can be added manually for each organizational chart or copied from a predefined scoring lists that are created specifically for each category of project teams. For example, those categories could include design management, construction management, health and safety, quality control, project controls, commercial, contracts, information technology, risk management, testing and commissioning, project closeout among others.
In addition to the formal performance appraisal, PMWeb allows having subjective rating on a scale of 5 points to appraise the project team performance. This rating can be used by stakeholders and other individuals who could have interacted with the project team during it is operation.
Similar to other PMWeb modules, reports can be generated to report on the data captured in the organizational chart. One of those ready-to-use reports is the project team organization chart. The report will graphically detail the organizational chart roles and their assigned resources.
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.