Golden rules for Complex Design and Construction Project Success

Understanding how your company creates value, and looking for ways to add more value, are critical elements in developing a competitive strategy and establishing a continuously profitable company. You must manage your company with integrity and hold people accountable for their roles. Your crews must know?the basics rules, standards, values, and fundamentals that?you stand for as a company. By following these 10 golden rules, you can conduct an Engineering or Construction business and represent your company’s values and standards.?

1. ENGAGE IN PROACTIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Establish a clear Project Management strategy to manage all projects.?Having a system integration team or PMO is imperative. It will help the project manager?for the success of?project from start to completion. Without a PMO organizational structure, communication can get staggered, Program Managers (Vice-President) and CEO?does not have a solid overall picture of the health of their business at a grassroots level. Establishing a PMO will benefit your company as follows:

• GOVERNANCE : Setting best practices for developing programs across your organization. It focuses on procedures by standardizing PMO methodologies needed across departments with tangible, long-term benefits to an organization.
• STRATEGIC PLANNING : How to prioritize based on long-term strategic goals. Centralized and coordinated management of all projects, it oversees all projects while ensuring that they're run in keeping with the company's strategy
• CONTROL RESOURCES : The PMO manages the interdependencies between projects, minimizing resource waste and errors as well as repeatable work that was accomplished already. It also contro costs, crew production scorecards, look-ahead schedule, quality,?and safety.
• COMMUNICATION: Define vertical and horizontal communication to manage your projects aligned with your company′s values. It Ensures senior management is aware of what projects are at risk and potentially highlight missed opportunities with the intent to put an action plan in place to correct the downward trajectory of the project. Communication processes become streamlined across programs, allowing increased collaboration among teams.
• IN GENERAL: It Improves efficiency, better quality, and reduced risk, offering standardized use of project management tools and software.

After having in place a PMO, putting in practice these golden rules will be easier, as the PMO will be in charge of executing, controlling and monitoring them.

2. EXECUTE ACCORDING TO THE CONTRACT

Establish your requirement management as per the contract and subcontracts, and all related contracts. Include a contract team in your PMO for documenting, analyzing, prioritizing, and agreeing on requirements, so the construction and engineering teams always have current and approved requirements, they understand the project scope and ensure product development goals are successfully met.?

• Avoid exceptions: do not perform additional?items, unknowns, verbal promises, or other items that are not?clearly called for in the contract.
• If the work is not detailed in writing, don’t do the work.
• Work?diligently to train your crew and subcontractors to follow the contract.
• To set expectations and align teams with company processes and goals, it’s important to see those?requirements through execution at every stage of the design phase.

3. PROVIDE ACCURATE ESTIMATING?

The PMO must Develop detailed estimating templates with every trade, work item or requirement to ensure there are never any missed items. Always get input from your crew members prior to completing crew hour estimates and review every bid or estimate over a threshold amount prior to submitting final proposal.

estimating techniques:

a).in-house estimating data files: historical info and experience. If you do not have it, your PMO must collect this information from your engineering departments and all crew members, focusing on crew and equipment production, and quantity installed per hour.

b).Outside estimating services: use an external firm

c).scale of operations:used empirical equitions to obtaine estimate of approximate cost.

d). Ratio or factor methods: -Hand factor, lang factors, multiple equipment cost, physical dimension, parametrics.

4. PROACTIVE CHANGE MANAGEMENT

for every project your PMO must establish a production schedule baseline, cost baseline, requirements (contractual) baseline, and track , monitor every change that impact each baseline. Your client, subcontractors and stakeholders will notice you have an strong?project management process in place.

Submit and get customer approval of all change-order rates, time and material rates, general conditions rates, delay charges, and extra move-in rates prior to job start.

No extra or change-order work will be performed without written approval or authorization to proceed prior to starting any extra work. Do not accept verbal agreements. Document delays and always request additional time and money with every change or schedule delay.

5. APPLY MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM?

Your company must establish a management information system that will inform the team about the overall project status and forecast compared to the Project Management Plan. This system should address team information needs, data sources and control elements for time and cost.

A comprehensive account of the project can be achieved with record keeping systems such as:???? General correspondence files (in and out)?? Periodic reports (daily, weekly, monthly)?? Drawing schedules, submittals (shop drawings, payments, samples)?? Transmittals?? Change requests and authorizations?? Procurement?? Material control?? Meeting minutes?? Confirmation of oral instructions and field directives?? Controlled inspections?? Notice of non-conforming contract work?? Weather conditions?? Scheduling records?? Progress photographs.??

6. ENGAGE IN HAVING A DIGITAL STRATEGY

Align your Project Management strategy with transformation digital strategy. Data and advanced analytics are becoming the core enabler of future success in the Design and construction industry. They are moving business decisions from reactive to predictive and could enable firms to outpace their competition. For example, technologies such as digital twin are using 3D data to generate building profiles and blueprints of building parts/components in real-time. Integrating these technologies with scheduling and maintenance systems could provide visibility and operational improvements across the building lifecycle.

7. ENGAGE IN RISK MANAGEMENT

Your PMO must design an effective risk management system which includes identification, quantification, and mitigation of project risks. It must estimate the effect of adverse events that can happen to your projects. Some steps to do it.

• Risk assesment starts with a revisión of project′s scope, cost and schedule. The review establishes base project conditions with the cost and schedule stripped of all contingencies. Review of scope ensures that project documents are consistent with project objectives and the customer’s needs are met.
• Identify all potential risks and opportunities
• Using appropriate mathematical procedures, the combined effect of risks on cost and schedule is calculated and represented in the form of a statistical distribution. Using this distribution, one can establish a reasonable and defensible contingency budget for the project
• Estimate the risk impact by specifying a range of values rather than a single number. These estimated values are documented in the risk register.?
• Establish a mitigation plan taht may affect insurance policies and contract clauses and terms.

To put in place previous steps, I recommend using a workshop as a venue where project participants can identify and assess risks. Examples of workshop approach include the Cost Estimate Validation Process (CEVP) and the FTA risk assessments. The major benefits of the risk analysis process is to promote the understanding of project issues among all project team members. Another major benefit is the creation of a ranked risk checklist that can serve as a means for the mitigation effort.?

Always remember: Total project estimate = Base cost + Contingencies

The base cost is the cost of project without contingencies, allowances are clearly part of project scope and hence should be included in the base cost.

8. ENGAGE IN QUALITY MANAGEMENT

You should understand all processes of planning, organizing, implementing, monitoring and documenting your product. It is important that all workflows are aligned with your digital strategy.

Implement a Project QUALITY ASSURANCE?QA / QUALITY CONTROL (QA/QC) Organization inside your PMO.

QC will review, certificate, inspecte and test of project components, including persons, materials, systems , documents, techniques. Perform on a day to day basis by implementing a system that relies upon on a manner procedures? operational techniques and activities used to fulfill quality requirements. You try to find defects and correct them while making the product. It is all about detection? product based approach to verify the quality of the product.

QA avoids the defect in the first place, it is all about prevention, process based on approach, it involves processes managing quality.?

QA/QC mus be independant from direct project budget and schedule responsabilities, given sufficient organization independence to identify, report and verify correction of quality issues.

9. USE PROFESSIONAL SUBCONTRACTORS & SUPPLIERS

Maintain enough qualified professional subcontractors and suppliers who can perform and are competitive. Make sure that qualified subcontractors man jobs properly, meet the schedule,? understand and manage per their subcontracts, document? changes and requests properly, are well financed and can handle the cash-flow? standards required on projects, and are able to represent you? well when attending a meeting with your customer on-site.

10. HIRE PROFESSIONAL PROJECT MANAGERS FOREMAN

When project budget allows, full-time project managers?is preferred to produce positive results — don’t under budget PM. Your PMO will assist and support them. They will be able to make project decisions and represent the company with customers.