Application of MS Project to manage Design effort

[hlsodom]

We are a medium size civil design firm with project fees running from $5000 to $500,000. We would like to use MS Project to manage our own work i.e. monitor effort and cost of work in progress (WIP) on a weekly basis. This could turn into a burdensom job in MS Project for small projects, yet we need to keep both large and small projects within the same system.

Any experience in this would be greatly appreciated.

 

[RDK]

Most projects, large or small, have the same task components. You could have a template for inserting the durations of those tasks that are involved in any specific project and expand or collapse the work breakdown structure as required. Don’t reinvent the wheel every small project.

Don’t think of this as a burden for the small projects. Use it as a training aid for the junior engineers so that they can gain experience with Project on smaller projects. Think of it as a marketing tool where you can demonstrate to small clients that you have a handle on the management of the design process and are worthy of being considered for larger projects.

You can role up all current projects into one master project for a complete overview of the firms workload. This will greatly help in evaluating the competing needs of different departments and allow for rational judgments in resource allocation. (for example, which project gets drafting time first and how many draftsmen should be assigned?) This will make your firm more competitive in the marketplace. (or allow you more profits by keeping costs under control.)



Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[IRstuff]

You might also think of it as a means of validating your bid and cost database. The better the documentation of your hours spent and the associated earned value, the better your chances of making money or knowing how much money you will lose when you "buy" in.

If you're off by 10% on estimating your hours, that could be half or all of your margin. While this is often made up by uncompensated overtime, the less you have to exercise that option, everyone will be happier and more productive.

Obviously, the planning aspect must be followed up by the bookkeepping; there's no much point in doing the planning if you never find out if your plan was actually on the mark or not. The earned value aspect is tough to thing to instill, but long-term benefit is an better understanding of where every hour of work goes. Additionally, it can provide you a better picture of program progress as well as potentially giving you an earlier indication of trouble.

This means that your tasks need to be segmented into small enough "chunks" with clearly defined products so that problems with schedule or productivity are readily apparent.

TTFN

 

[hlsodom]

Suggestions are great. I am looking for actual experiences and the historical results/dificulties. The question comes down to this: the more detail that is included, the longer the delay before reports can be issued and acted upon. This is particularly true in accounting. Has anyone found an appropriate means to determine how to integrate Project with accounting (Soloman and Win2 in our case) and get weekly reports that tell whether to work over the weekend?

hlsodom

 

[IRstuff]

Your question is rather awkward. Why would you expect or need a project management program to tell you something that your team leads should already know?

The best you could reasonably hope for from a tradeoff of effort vs efficacy is a once-per-week snapshot. Your team leads should have daily visibility. That's what they're for and that's what they should be doing. Even if you could get it integrated with an accounting program, there would be no new information that couldn't be gotten from Project anyway, since all the input data comes from Project.

TTFN

 

[hlsodom]

The problem in a midsized design firm is that the leader estimates are usually very rough unless the work can be tracked by deliverable units, say sheets or survey miles.

Time is generally lost while various skills/disciplines wait on one another. There is always too much or not enough work load for all to balance. In order to prevent slack the someone must work overtime. This can be done daily. If daily extra time doesn't get the project on track the weekend is still available. That requires a weekly report. Sadly, months do not have days off at the end, so monthly reports are useless for control of projects that are billed out monthly.

Thanks
hlsodom

 

[IRstuff]

I understand what you think you're trying to do, but Project and other program management tools are simply data display tools. In order to display the data, you need to have the data to begin with. If you have the data, you already know that you're behind. Putting it into Project simply provides a means of displaying what you already know.

TTFN

 

[hlsodom]

Now we are getting close to one another's perception.

The accounting department gathers and produces payroll information. The PM produces estimates and statistics of percentages of milestone completions. In order to communicate the condition of the project the two have to use a common tool. Percentages of completion don't mean much until they are matched with percentages of budget cost. Do Project not bring the two together and communicate whether or not they are in line?

hlso

 

[IRstuff]

Not necessarily. Again, most of this is and should be done by the project lead(s). They are or should be responsible for the expenditure of the budget, they are or should be responsible for monitoring both progress and hours charged, they are or should be responsible for reconciling actual cost and earned value. In the end, whether or not accounting is reconciled rest solely on the project lead.

Accounting is merely provides the weekly status of charges expended against various accounts. It's solely the job of the lead to verify the charges and update the documentation.

Our usual practice is that accounting provides a name run every Monday morning that the IPT leads review. Normally, the hours charged data is then entered into either Excel or Project and totals are updated.

The only catch is when the value of an hour changes, which then requires that the leads rebalance their budgeted hours to account for the loss in available budget hours.

TTFN

 

[hlsodom]

I am extending this dialog to the more general Project Management forum.

Thank you for your valuable assistance.