PMIS 469: Managing, Monitoring, Evaluating and Reporting the Capital Project Design Phase Performance

For capital projects, the design phase is crucial for the project success as the different end user requirements are captured to be developed into design drawings, specifications, contract agreement and bill of quantities for which the qualified contractors can bid on to execute the project’s scope of work. It is during this phase where the project realistic completion date can be established as well as the project investment budget can be finalized. In addition, the risks identification and mitigation actions will be performed during the design phase to ensure not only enough contingency been allowed in the project’ completion date and budget but to ensure that the contract agreement terms and conditions incorporated the clauses to transfer the risks to the successful contractor.

Using a Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb, organizations can manage, monitor, evaluate and report the performance of the project design phase. To start with, PMWeb stage gate module will be used to identify the project life cycle phases and the project management deliverables for each phase. For the design phase, those would include the project stakeholders, design deliverables, value engineering, project schedule, project performance budget, no objection certificates and permits, risk management among others.  

Stakeholder Management

Managing the stakeholders who could directly or indirectly influence the project’s successful delivery is very critical. The project team needs to identify those stakeholders and get them engaged in the project’s delivery in a positive way. PMWeb companies’ module will be used to capture the details of all those stakeholders including their authorized representative and other individuals who could have a role in the project design phase.

Design Deliverables

The design consultant needs to provide a complete of design phase deliverables which would include drawings, specifications, bill of quantity, contract documents among others. PMWeb drawing list module will be used to capture the details of all those deliverables. Those would usually include the relevant UniFormat? building system, project schedule WBS level among others. In addition, for each design deliverable, the project schedule activity that will reflect the duration and sequence for creating the design deliverable should be identified. The list of all deliverables can be imported from MS Excel file as usually the design consultant would use to create the list.

PMWeb drawing list module allows showing the revisions for each design deliverable which will include needed details. There is no limit to the number of revisions that a design deliverable could have thus helping the project team to view the complete history of each design deliverable.

For each design deliverable and design deliverable revision, the relevant design document which will be uploaded and stored on PMWeb document management repository will be attached to the drawing list item. This will allow viewing, adding remarks and notes, checking out and checking in documents design documents.

The information captured in PMWeb for the design deliverables will become the basis for the real-time design phase deliverable packages and items report. The report will detail the status of each design deliverable within each phase which would usually include Programming Phase, Schematic Design Phase, Design Development Phase and Construction Document Phase.

Design Drawings Formal Review and Approval

To avoid ambiguity and confusion that could lead to delays, misunderstandings and scope creep, construction drawings should be formally reviewed to ensure that they are complete and coordinated. Detailed drawing review checklists that are based on best practices and past experience will be created in PMWeb for each project discipline and category. Those would include roads, external works, structural, architectural, mechanical, HVAC, electricity, fire alarm, BMS, audiovisual among others.

The information captured in the design review checklists will be used provide a real-time reporting on planned, current and completed reviews. The dashboard will provide a donut visual to summarize the total number of drawing review checklists by discipline and another donut visual to summarize the total number of submitted drawing review checklists by status. The dashboard will include a bar chart that will display the status drawing review checklists by discipline. In addition, the dashboard will include a table that will detail all design review checklists and their status. The table will also summarize design review checklists by discipline.

Value Engineering

With the growing demand to improve the value of capital projects investment, the best practices of value engineering become a must to be part of any project delivery. The design consultant along with the project owner’s project management team need to formally implement the value engineering workshops to identify ideas that could improve the overall project life cycle cost. Those would result in VE proposals for which the advantages and disadvantages of each needs to be analyzed before deciding on either accepting or rejecting the VE proposals. PMWeb custom form builder will be used to capture all VE ideas and their evaluation as well as VE proposals with their advantages and disadvantages. This will not only ensure that VE best practices are formally implemented but will capture the VE knowledge across all projects delivered by the organization and make this knowledge available for future project investments.

Biddability and Constructability Reviews on Construction Projects

Constructability Review is a formalized process that utilizes a team with extensive construction knowledge to ensure that a design is buildable while also cost-effective, biddable, and maintainable, with reduced overruns and delays. A Constructability Review is to be conducted separate from and independent of the design team. The scope of Constructability Review is to be flexible to suit the individual project requirements. On the other hand, biddability Review is a review of contract documents to identify errors, omissions and conflicts in plans, specifications, quantities, work items/activities, operational constraints and appropriate basis of payment. Biddability Review is part of Constructability Review process.

PMWeb custom form builder will be used to create the constructability and buildability reviews checklist. The checklist will be used to guide the review team on all items to be checked and have the confirmation that is was done and remarks provided by the reviewers. The design issues register will include a table that will detail the status of all raised design issues along with relevant information. The register will include visuals to detail the status of those actions that need to be taken to resolve the design issues and the count of actions assigned to each project team member.

Design Coordination Checklists to Ensure Integration of Design Solution

Design coordination is a broad term describing the integration of designs prepared by different members of the project design team to create a single, unified set of information that can be constructed without clashes between components. Effective design coordination can help to reduce costs, delays and disruption that can be caused by problems on site and the need for remedial or abortive works and redesign.

One of the best practices for effective design coordination is to use predefined design coordination checklists. Those checklists can be used to ensure that the designers understand what they are responsible for, and in particular who is responsible for the interfaces and junctions between different design packages. In a more specific sense, design coordination checklists can help the design team to ensure that the design solutions can be integrated, in particular, mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) designs, which as they permeate through the entire building are frequently the source of coordination problems.

PMWeb custom form builder will be used to create the design coordination checklists for each discipline to be coordinated. Each form will include the design coordination reviewer name and title as well as the checklist which will list items to be checked, review response and remarks. The design coordination report will summarize the review results for all disciplines for which it will display how many items of the checklist items were verified, not verified and those that are not applicable. The report will also include a table that list the checklist items and their status by discipline. The report will include filters to select the disciplines to be reviewed.

Formal Design Review

Many of the change orders that occur during a capital project delivery are usually attributed to incomplete design, uncoordinated design, design errors, uncoordinated contract documents, faulty specifications among other causes that a complete design review process should have eliminated. The additional cost and project delays associated with those change orders far exceed the cost and time needed to carry out a comprehensive design review.

It is therefore highly recommended to have a formal design review which will be usually performed by a qualified third -party engineering consultant unless the capital project owner has his own qualified engineering department. Those organizations would usually have pre-defined checklists for each building or infrastructure system type, specification section and contract documents that need to be reviewed during the design stage. Those checklists will provide the assigned project review team with the items that must be checked when they review the design deliverables. Using PMWeb custom form builder, all those design review checklists will be created so they become readily available for the project review team to use.

Project Performance Schedule

With more information on the project’s scope becomes available, the project’s performance schedule needs to be progressively elaborated to include the WBS levels and activities needed to reflect the project’s scope of work. The schedule should also detail the design schedule activities to include all design deliverables and milestone dates. The schedule needs to be formally reviewed before it can be approved as the project’s performance schedule. The schedule review checklist created using PMWeb custom form builder will be used to ensure this formal review.

The approved project performance schedule will be imported to PMWeb to become available to be reported on as well as be linked to the relevant design management processes. PMWeb schedule import module will be also used to import the updated project schedule as the project’s design phase progresses.

PMWeb scheduling module allows maintaining the baseline schedule and follow on updates. This will allow creating schedule comparison reports to identify the variances between those updates. In addition, it allows viewing the project schedule as well as it provides the option to create the project schedule directly in PMWeb without the need to import it from Oracle Primavera P6 and MS Project.

Project Performance Budget

By nature, every capital project is an investment. It is very critical that new cost estimates are developed at the end of each phase of the design stage. For example, cost estimates need to be done the concept, schematic, 30% design development, 60% design development, 100% design development and construction documents phases. Each cost estimate version should be formally reviewed and approved.

The approved cost estimate will be the basis for generating the project budget. The budget will include provisions for contingency, management reserve, funding among others. Similar to the cost estimate, a performance budget should be generated at the end of each design phase which needs to be formally reviewed and approved.

One of the key requirements for the performance budget is to develop planned spending for the approved budget where each budget cost center will be linked to the project schedule to identify the start and finish dates of those items.

When the budget is approved, any adjustments or transfers must be done through a formal process known as the budget requests. Through this process, any increase or decrease to the approved budget needs to be detailed and formally submitted for review and approval. This also applies for budget transfers where funds will be moved between cost centers but without increasing or decreasing the approved project budget. As an example, this could be to transfer funds from contingency to concrete works.

The information captured in the project budget and budget adjustments will become the basis for creating the project budget elaboration report. The report will display the lowest level of detail for the current approved budget which will eventually display the level of detail that will be included in the Bill of Quantity issued for tender.

Communication Management

Similar to all other project phases, the design phase will include a number of formal communications between the different the entities that will be involved in delivering the project design. Those communications include technical queries (also known as Request for Information), Transmittals, Meeting Minutes, Correspondence among many others. The Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) will be used to identify role of the different entities responsible for submitting, reviewing, approving and sharing those project communications.

This will enable the project management team to define the workflow steps that need to be followed by the different project entities to ensure successful yet contractually binding collaboration. Those workflows will include conditions to ensure that level of authorities to approve communications is part of the automated workflow.

By automating project communications, the project team member as well as other entities involved in delivering the project will have real-time report of all actions that are due for them as well as the status of those project communications. The report can be designed to identify delayed project communications are red while those that are critical by not delayed as Cayan and non-critical non-delayed communication as Green. The report can also include visuals to group communications by status, type and the issuer.

No Objection Certificates (NOC) and Permits

For capital projects delivery, there is always the requirement to obtain no objection certificates (NOC) from local authorities like the municipality, water and electricity, civil defense, roads department among other permits. PMWeb custom form builder will be used to create a form to capture the details of all those NOCs along with their expiry and renewal dates. The current status of all permits and NOCs will be included in a tabular log report so they can be monitored and reported on. For each permit or NOC, the report will detail the particulars of the NOC, permitting authority, validity, planned and actual issuance dates, planned and actual fees paid, days due to be renewed among others. The report will highlight those due for renewal in red. The report could also include statistics on number of permits and NOCs per permitting authority and planned and actual permits and NOCs fees per permitting authority.

Risk Management

By nature, risks are part of every project delivery as it is about to delivering products in the future based on what is known today. Therefore, the project team need to make many assumptions to allow for those unknowns. The best practice of Risk Breakdown Structure helps the organization in enforcing a formal process for identifying project risks which could be due for many causes. For each risk, the project team member needs to identify the likelihood and impact that this risk could have on the project’s completion date and approved budget if it actually happens. This will help the organization to identify possible response actions to reduce the exposure of this risk. Those response actions include avoiding the causes of the risk, treating the impact of the risk and transferring the risk to a third party which could be the contractor for example. Managing project’s risk is an ongoing process and will continue until the project is completed.

Evaluating and Appraising Design Consultant Performance

In addition to the requirement for the project owner to monitor the design consultant performance throughout the design phase, there is a need to conduct formal performance evaluation at the completion of design phase. Using PMWeb custom form builder, a form for Consultant Performance Evaluation will be created which will include fields to capture the consultant name and comments made by the appraisal on the consultant’s performance. The form will also include a table that will include the categories that the consultant performance is assessed for as well as the specific items that the consultant’s appraisal is carried out. For each assessment item there will be a weight value assigned by the Project Owner and a field to capture the evaluation which will be based on a score of 10 where 10 is for superior performance, 8 for excellent performance, 6 for satisfactory performance, 4 for fair performance while 2 is for unacceptable performance. The output form for the Consultant Performance Evaluation will display the total weighted performance score and the breakdown of this score.

Monitoring, Evaluating and Reporting the Design Phase Performance

The information captured in the different design phase processes will become the basis for monitoring, evaluating and reporting the design phase. The format and layout will be designed in the form and format that meets the organization’s stakeholder performance reporting requirement. In general, the dashboard should include details of design deliverables status, project schedule and budget status, issues, risks among others.