What do you do if your Control Engineering projects lack efficiency and productivity?

Lessons Learned sessions are sadly unavoidable but they enable clients, vendors and partners to pinpoint where the inefficiencies began and how they could be better avoided next time.

There's a reality of having a Model and applicable Project Folder definitions that are repeatable or reusable. Collecting the same information over and over makes it even more real because we're no longer in the Lost and Found of project work. The efficiency comes because less time is spent analyzing or searching and even less time creating or final commissioning tuning (handing work off to trained Techs is also easier). As a FTE that replaced 9 engineers in a Fortune 50 Corporate downsizing exercise, 40(50) Projects year after year was "the Normal".

What you don't measure, you can't manage. Different projects go off the rails for different reasons. You should actually start by establishing a cadence of regular project reviews. The most important part of those reviews is getting to the unvarnished truth - too many people are afraid of being punished when things don't go well, so they will spin things to avoid getting in trouble. This just leads to delays in fixing things. You have to understand the status and the reasons for the status before you can intervene.

The key to the success of a project control system is to categorize your subjects according to the stage of the project and have plan of control for each category. This means that you must have different control system for Design, Procurement, Construction, Pre-commissioning and Commissioning. Each one of them requires its own expertise in project control. So, follow up each according to its required control paths. Otherwise you will be just gathering some statistics and some colorful graphs that look good on the bosses table or in presentations but are not worth much for project handling. If you are dealing a mega project, then have a specialist for each category. Remember, project control is a leadership job and not a clerical work.

Invite your boss or their boss to these review meetings. It helps to have the insight and guidance of upper management for future projects where you will need their support and direction.

Ask for outside perspective from a trusted colleague or peer. Sometimes it helps to have someone else share their stories and experiences so you can understand where things could have been improved for a better outcome.