MSProject for Construction: Organized Fictional Chaos.
Planning leads to Budgets
The schedule is understood to be ridged, then we learn that real life is fluid. We are never going to be able to guess with 100% accuracy, you are only going to be as accurate as the lie we construct on paper. The schedule is supposed to be built on logic, or some understanding of the job that is about to be undertook. At the beginning of a job, only the completed task are imagined, not the issues that you encountered along the way.
I have been imagining construction projects with MS project for my whole construction career. What I have learned about the program is that it was originally designed for computer program design scheduled. We use it in construction only because there is nothing else. But, like all programs, once you learn it, she has all the things you need to show off.
How to be construction organized with MS project.
You don’t need to know anything about a schedule to schedule.
The amount of work in between Steps is as much as you want, extreme information or no information, you pick. …
You need to look at everyday, even the days when you don’t know how to do what you want to accomplish.
Definitions
Critical Path - THE TASK WITH NO SLACK TIME.
Slack Time - extra time between critical task, that doesn’t make the task critical.
BaseLine - The intended model of the project. (FICTIONAL LONGTERM PLAN)
Drawings - What depicts the work your trying to schedule/organize.
Delays - Date’s that where not your fault for being late on once’s planed goals.
Logic - The (invented) natural flow of construction; the rhythm of construction, mostly jazz.
Construction - Easily imagined, extremely more complicated experienced.
Step one: Fictional Longterm Plan. (FLP)
why is FICTIONAL.
Construction is art, it has a flow to it, a musical rhythm, a regimented-Jazz-opera. The schedule is at best a Fictional long term plan, why you ask. It’s impossible to know everything that going to happen when you start. You never imagine working in the coldest day of winter, but you do…. The schedule is only casted in stone when you finish your project. The purpose of a plan is that, to plan, you figure out what you need, the budget, the manpower, the cost, the profit, the issues you need to figure out.
MS Project, the program cannot tell the future, the program cannot predict conflicts(it can help here but not without work), the program cannot tell you how to make your job work. It will with effort show you how to improve the flow, when longterm lead items need to be on site to make it work. You use it to calculate the length of the project based on what you know and eventually the things you didn’t know become realized. If your new project is based on a deadline, you enter that as the finish no later then and fill in the blanks. If you know your rate of production, can create take offs from drawings, you can figure out a lot this way. This will also lead to the prediction of conflicts, issues, can help with the evidence required to present a delay based on time. The sooner you can predict a problem you can start working on a solution and a solution to the problem the better off you will be. You also have instant revisions, delay record keeping, predicting completion dates whilst you are delayed, can calculate a burn down, can calculate man power cost based on crew rates….. Imagination creates schedules.
If you’re able to input data into MS Excel, you have all the basic computer skill required. IF you know how to plan ahead and get guys on site as tight as possible, you have all the planning skills required. A good superintendent or project manager, who has seen the job site on a day to day basis is probably the best person to operate MS Project.
If you assume your schedule is a rigid law, it’s not. It’s a fluid thing, that evolves over time, it completely possible to never meet a date you set in the fictional part.
Minimum Requirements.
Drawings - Completed or incomplete; doesn’t matter this is fictional. A picture is worth a thousand words… literally, interpret them.
Basic understanding of the plans.
what you need for material.
What you’re required to do on the plans.
The amount of effort you’re going to need to complete the thing you’re going to do. Example; pipe culvert excavation with new granular materials, compacted with equipment, inspected and certified.
basic software for the use of the artificial Organized fictional Chaos.
Once day, to update schedule.
Fictional plan.
This is where the fiction happens, how the plan was to be before the plan started; before Murphy law became into view. The plan is the line you intended to follow, it’s the beat to your drum, the march to your band. This is more of an exercise of the mind, the planning of the plan. This part helps with the budget estimates, when you know how many people you need, material and time. You can also create crews to help your Sheduling assistant take over…
Once you start working on this process you start to get your estimates for the long term forecasted items. Girder delivery, asphalt paving dates all appear off the drawings but only use these as a forecast.
When you open the program and select a new sheet, you just started a new schedule. Now you need to input the data to start to populate the Gant Chart you have recently opened.
What to ADD.
Start with the project name as a title.
Start adding what you know. 2.1 Crew size. 2.2. Tasks required. 2.3. time each task will take. 2.4.
realize that you have to be detailed to get more accurate dates. So you start using math to calculate actual time it will take to get the job done. If one meter equal 2 guys at 10 hours and I have 20m to accomplish, I cross multiply and divide and Bingo 200 hours with 2 guys. 200 hours = 20 days with 2 guys.. or 10 days with 4 guys. ~ but you just shortened the schedule time, hope you have the 4 guys. ~
With time and adjustment at the beginning, this FLP will become the base line. What is a baseline. Well, a baseline is the part of the plan that shows off how right or how wrong you where with the Fictional Plan. As you add Actual Stat dates and Actual finish date, your plan will move forward (bad) or backwards (good) to show your progress.
SOME companies like to show every task as a “CRITICAL TASK” whit the belief that the whole project, regardless what was wrong, is the fault of other. That’s fine, but once the FLP is turned into a real plan, the information will show differently. When you dealing with claims, you can get lost in the dates, but the dates appear properly if the data is imputed properly.
Step 2: Adjusting form FLP to Oh God Reality.
Basics.
Well this is the part of the plan where you have your base line. Now you add actual start and finish date; and everything you forgot about in the fictional long term plan that delayed you. The updated schedule will auto-populate and adjust the FLP, each addition of information will show a change to the end date of the schedule if it was effected.
And this is what you do, ever once and awhile, you stare at the screen and try to correct what is wrong, missing, going right, when you will need more money to complete the project. …
The Goal
So now that you have start to update your schedule with actual date, you can start the plan outwards, in the near future. I call this the 3 week plan. 1 week for last weeks work and 2 future weeks of nearly perfectly estimated weeks.
The benefits of this is to allow the the schedule to start to work. When you add real dates, adjust the time each task is actually taking, it will correct itself. All of the FLP dates will sometimes approach quickly, sometimes you will be delayed, but this will help you forecast more realistic dates in the future. As you keep working at scheduling you will get better at planning, which will make your budgets better and more realistic also.
Make sure to add all the data, ADD everything you can think of, date you received drawing form engineers, dates you where delayed, additional work…. it’s all good information. It also helps to illustrate quickly what a cause was and when a solution was found.
Its’ the constant update to the schedule that will be worth all the effort. Little update such as monthly will greatly suffer compared to a 10 minute daily update. An hour a day, will keep the work at bay.