YOU CAN’T MANAGE WHAT YOU CAN’T MEASURE.

One of the key challenges most contractors, even more, so consultants grapple with is time estimation of projects. Time estimation of projects has been eternally hindered by the human bias of inherently overestimating our abilities.?Coupled with the planning fallacy syndrome, most projects are predestined for delay even before ground breaking. That aside, another Achilles heel of many projects today is poor management of projects. While the built environment in many admirable jurisdictions has metamorphosed into professionalized management of projects, we are still involved in a rat race debate on whether we really need it. Other ‘big brother’ professional colleagues do not want to accept that times and seasons have changed with the dawn of the project and construction management profession. ?They still want to hang on practicing as quack project managers. But for how long? We shall see…

The epitome of project management is the old saying; “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” I mean I could apply this to every component of project management but more so to time management. If you are ever going to have a shot at completing a project on time, by the way, it is not an easy task, then you must – must – have measurable tasks. Be deliberately detailed while doing the work program. Look, it is not enough to say, “I want to run 10km every week.” That is not measurable. If you’re going to manage this target, then a measurable plan would be something like this; “I want to run 2km daily from Monday to Friday from 5 am to 6 am.” Do you get it? If you are going to successfully manage a project, it must be deliberately measurable.

Having generic activities in the work program like say; Tiling work for five months is good for overall master planning but such a program cannot be well implemented on site. I vehemently insist on such an activity being broken down into measurable tasks say; Tiling Block A, first floor, unit A1C. You could further even break that activity down to the specific room(s) to be tiled. Now that is measurable – that’s how you will be able to manage your project on time. Unless you can accurately measure an activity, you wouldn’t know whether it is better or worse. If you are going to have a quantum leap in project time management or any project management component for that matter, the secret is to have the activities measurable. Always remember…

You can’t manage what you can’t measure.

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Good luck!