One of the key strategic objectives for many countries across the globe including those in the Gulf Corporate Council (GCC) countries is to provide their nationals with affordable and decent housing. Those could be by either by offering plot of land and zero-interest loan to build the house or provide read-to-live houses or apartments. Regardless of the chosen option or combination of options, there always need to have real-time single version of the truth reporting on the performance of all projects required to achieve this strategic objective.
Usually, the monitoring of those projects needs to be associated with a map that shows location of those projects, with the option of displaying the project location as a point or a polygon showing the project boundaries. For each project, there will be a need to display the planned and current start and finish dates, completion date delays, approved budget, approved adjustments, revised budget, pending adjustments, anticipated budget, actual funds spent or released to date and balance to complete. In addition, each project will have fields to identify the project delivery method and a status field to identify if the project is on track, on-hold, not started, completed and if facing issues. The projects displayed on the report will be color coded in accordance with the progress status.
Of course, additional details such as progress achieved, issues affecting project, current progress photos as well as other needed information will be also reported on. Nevertheless, what is important to note is that this report is mainly intended for executive stakeholders who are assigned the responsibility of monitoring, evaluating and reporting the performance of the housing strategic objective.
If the housing projects are built in areas where there is a requirement for infrastructure projects for roads, electricity, sewerage and water supply as well as facilities for schools, clinics, multi-purpose halls and parks, then details of those projects need to be added to the report. Those infrastructure and facilities projects are required to make those housing projects livable. The information for those projects will be limited to planned and current start and finish dates, and completion date delays. In addition, if this option was selected, then all projects need to be displayed as polygons showing the boundaries of each project.
Using a Project Management Information System (PMIS) platform like PMWeb, a single repository of all housing and residential projects can be managed, monitored, evaluated and reported on. The project module will be used to capture the details of all those projects including their geospatial details and boundaries. Data that relates to each project built-up area, floor levels, delivery method among others will be also captured.
PMWeb can be used to manage every single business process needed to manage a capital construction project delivery life cycle stages. Nevertheless, the objective of this performance report is to provide senior executives with an overall status on how each project is performing and in particular whether they will be delayed, running over budget and the issues affecting its performance regardless of the project maturity level that an organization has in managing capital construction projects. In addition, the execution of those projects could be managed by entities other than the entity that those executive stakeholders belong to.
Accordingly, PMWeb visual custom form builder will be used to create a template that each entity involved in delivering those housing projects will be given access to. The progress report header will include the project name, progress report number and date. It will also include the approval status of the progress report. In addition, the report will include the progress data date and the project’s performance status which will be selected from a pre-defined list of values. Those values will include progress issues, on track, on-hold, completed and not started.
The report will also include a section for progress narrative as well as four tables to capture the details of the project schedule, physical progress, financial status and top 5 issues affecting progress. For the schedule table it will include the fields for planned and current start and finish dates and delay whereas for physical % complete, it will be planned and actual % complete values for the which the variance % complete will be automatically calculated. For the financial status, it will include the input fields for original, approved change orders, pending change orders and actual cost to date whereas the revised and projected cost values will be automatically calculated. The issues table will be used to capture the top 5 issues that could be impacting project progress.
Similar to all other business processes managed in PMWeb, supportive documents that are usually associated or required for each monthly progress report business processes transaction can be attached to the template. It is highly recommended to add details to each attached document to better explain to the reader what is being attached and viewed. In addition, links to other relevant records of other business processes managed in PMWeb can be also linked to the records of those change order related business processes.
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.
To ensure that the submit, review and approve dates of each monthly project progress report business process transaction submission are captured, a workflow will be assigned to each one of those business processes. The assigned workflow will map the submit, review and approve tasks, role or roles assigned to each task, task duration, task type and actions available for task.
When any of the progress report business process transaction is initiated, the workflow tab available on the relevant 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. The captured workflow data will include the actual action data and time, done by who, action taken, comments made and whether team input was requested.
The performance report will enable the reader to select projects by their performance status which could be progress issues, on track, on-hold, completed or not started as well as projects by delivery method which could be plot of land and zero-interest loan to build the house or provide read-to-live houses or apartments. Of course, there is no limit on what selection filters to add or the design of the report.
In addition, there is option to create a progress card to provide details of each project progress that will display the progress narrative and progress photo. Of course, the content of the progress card can be designed to display the needed information and details. The card will automatically when it is hoovered to any of the housing projects displayed on the map.
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 550 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.