Reporting the performance of capital construction projects is a must requirement regardless of the project type, size, phase or even project delivery method. To have trust-worthy, credible and traceable performance reporting, the reporting should be bottom-up where Detailed Reporting or Level 3 provides the necessary input for Level 2 Project Management Reporting which in turns provide the input to Level 1 Executive Reporting which provides the performance status as an overall. For senior executives who need a performance report for the complete projects’ portfolio that the organization is managing, Level 1 Executive Reporting will provide the reporting input for Level 0 Senior Executive Reporting.
The input data for Level 3 Detailed Reporting will be the data captured from the tens of thousands of transactions and documents generated from the hundred plus business processes needed to manage the capital construction project delivery. Those business processes include the business processes needed to manage the project’s schedule, cost, quality, health, safety and environment (HSE), communications, site activities, risks, procurement, contract, sustainability and claim management. For each business process there will be a predefined template to capture all data required to enable managing the business process in accordance with the approved project management plan (PMP).
In addition, for each business process, the tasks to be followed in submitting, reviewing, seeking advice, approving and sharing needs to be identified and assigned to the project team members. This assignment of responsibilities needs to be aligned with the roles of those individuals and the entities they represent including the authority approval levels set in the Delegation of Authority (DoA) Matrix.
To ensure that the performance reporting is comprehensive and covers all important aspects, events and actions that need to be communicated to the recipients of those performance reports, the project management team needs to have a checklist of items that need to be reviewed and confirmed before the performance report is issued. The PM Handbook for EPC by Frank-Peter Ritsche https://project-team.org/ has recommended a detailed list of questions that provides a structured approach to ensure comprehensive performance reporting. The sixty-five questions were grouped into twelve categories including Summary, Costs, Time, Risks, Scope, Contracts, Documentation, Procurement, Quality, Health, Safety and Environment (QHSE), Resources, Lessons Learned and Action Tracking.
A Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb will be usually used to digitize the hundred plus business processes by providing the input template to capture the needed data and the workflow to enforce formal collaboration as defined in the project management plan while incorporating the authority approval levels associated with each business process. In addition, PMWeb can be also used to create a template to formalize the review of the sixty-five questions for the monthly progress report.
PMWeb custom form builder will be used to create the Progress Report Checklist. The report will have twelve tables for which different access permission rights can be assigned for each table if required. Each table will include the items to be checked, checked by who and confirmation of the check was done or not.
Similar to all other business processes managed in PMWeb, the Monthly Report Checklist should be also attached with all documents that supports the response to the sixty-five questions that are part of the checklist. This even more needed if PMWeb was not used to digitize all business processes needed to manage a project. In this case, the MS Excel files and other business processes registers captured in other applications or PDF files need to be attached to the Checklist.
It is highly recommended to add comments to the attached documents to better explain and detail their content. In addition, links to records of other business processes managed in PMWeb can be also linked to the Monthly Report Checklist if needed.
It is highly recommended that all those supportive documents, regardless of their type or source, get uploaded and stored on PMWeb document management repository. PMWeb allows creating folders and subfolders to match the physical filing structure used to store hardcopies of those documents. Permission access rights can be set to folders and subfolders to restrict access to the uploaded and stored documents.
To ensure that the Monthly Report Checklists are properly completed and approved, a workflow will be assigned to map the submit, review and approve tasks, role or roles assigned to each task, task duration, task type and actions available for task. If the twelve tables of the checklist will be done by different project management team members, the workflow can be used to map the sequence of the review process for which each project team member will only have access to the tables he/she are assigned to.
When the Monthly Report Checklist business processes is initiated, the workflow tab available on the process template will capture the planned review and approve workflow tasks for each transaction as well as the actual history of those review and approval tasks. PMWeb will capture the actual action data and time, done by who, action taken, comments made and whether team input was requested.
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 Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering (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.