Communication to Improve Project Control: Solving the Information Gap

The pattern is familiar. The repetition is alarming:

Week 0: Yes, Mary’s confirmed we’re all on track to proceed with the installation next week as per the critical path.

Week 1: Unfortunately, Mary’s spreadsheet didn’t have the update in John’s spreadsheet that the container was delayed by a week, so we’ve rescheduled.

Week 2: We reallocated the team to a different task to avoid idle time, but, unfortunately, they used 5 of the widgets we needed.

Week 3: We’ve got all the parts now, but the raised platform hire had to be released to another booking…

The Problem

Project teams are working hard every day to prepare and plan project deliverables to meet time, cost, and quality targets. They are being held back by the disparate nature of their planning systems for preparing materials, equipment, and work assignments. The best laid plans fail at the point where work activities are scheduled to take place.

The cause: processes rely on multiple manual spreadsheets to track dates and information copied from diverse sources. This includes orders of materials to consolidators, coordination of plant and equipment hire, scheduling of owned equipment, and allocation of team members.

It all works at a basic level, but it creates fragmented information. The planner who owns each spreadsheet becomes the key point of contact so that everything fails if they’re not available. There are also information delays, because updates are dependent on planners copying in information cell by cell. Because of the volume of disconnected data, it is very difficult to gain a single overview of whether the project is ready.

Executive Level Impacts

The fragmentation and unreliability of data creates schedule risk, cost blow outs, and management blind spots.

Project managers make commitments to customers and suppliers based on work taking place on a particular timeline. Without reliable data to support their commitments, unpleasant surprises happen with alarming regularity. Missed commitments creates a cycle of mistrust of data and promises, leading to an expectation that future commitments will not be met. Everyone adjusts their activities accordingly and the cycle perpetuates.

This flows through to the organisation’s performance. Contractual risk, margin erosion, and marketplace reputation are all impacted by an erosion in trust and delays in scheduled works.

Why Existing Systems Don’t Work

Projects and planners revert to spreadsheets because of the weaknesses and limitations in conventional solutions.

Financial and project systems don’t work because their focus is on recording project financials and tracking, rather than on the activities of ensuring the right materials are of the right quality and used on the right tasks.

Inventory and distribution systems don’t work because they assume standardised and stable material and location definitions, whereas, by their nature, projects have many one-off items and requirements. Inventory systems also need to know the precise stock characteristics and don’t consider people, equipment, and ad hoc materials, whereas all of them need to come together at the same time for a successful activity delivery.

Lastly, custom coded solutions are very expensive to build and maintain. There’s only one shot at getting it right, and, even then, there will be patches and security updates for years to come, not to mention hand-built connections into other systems.

A Way Forward

What if you had integrated resource visibility across planning and execution that tracked all your resources and materials from project plan requirements through to site installation, layered across existing ERP/project systems?

Then your back-office planners could identify potential delays early and proactively address them, and your site supervisors could plan tomorrow’s work knowing that the resources and materials they need will be there in full in the right place.

For example, the critical path work activity in the opening story required 15 widgets. If a site supervisor can see they’ve already been assigned elsewhere, they can prevent them being used on another activity that’s not due until next week.

The Outcome

A single, shared source of truth:

• Project managers can make commitments based on an accurate picture of materials status.

• Business owners can trust the commitments that their project managers are making.

• Site supervisors can plan workloads knowing that they will be able to proceed.

• Management knows what is happening, the schedule risk is visible and managed, and costs are controlled to budget.

Recommendation

Take another look at your project delivery processes.

• Are they strong on planning but weak on execution?

• Is everyone working hard but it’s not showing up in on time delivery?

• Are unexpected delays a common occurrence?

Look below the surface to see whether the common thread is actually a communication disconnect.

The solution could be as simple as improved visibility.

CSM Business and Mobility believe that work happens on the job site, not in the office, and that meeting project goals is ultimately about empowering project team members to control and escalate as required, to have the right resources and equipment in the right place and time. Part of their portfolio is the WorksiteOps Accelerator for coordinating resource requirements from project plan to site installation.