What is Project Controls or Programme Control?
I say “or programme control” as these controls can also be used at Programme level as well as Project level. Programme is generally referred to as a collection of projects for larger organisations.
So what is it?
The answer is……Meaningful measures that can be used to control the flow, direction, performance of a project or programme.
It sounds scientific, but it is really simple. Let’s start by exploring the Terminologies in isolation:
Project Flow –fast / slow, high / low, long / short
Project Direction – left / right, forward / backward
Performance – good / bad, better / worse, best / worst
Now, look at the 6 cores of a project:
Scope
Cost
Time
Risk
Quality
Benefits
Apply some of the measures to each of the core of a project; you may now come to questions such as:
Has the project Scope Changes too fast, is the project suffering by these changes and constitute to a higher cost than expected, and impact the schedule by longer project duration.
Is the project going the left (in Gantt Chart term meaning early) or going to the right, can we recover any delay by pulling work forward, or take a step backward and rethink a proper strategy to tackle issues and risks that now occurred in the project.
Am I still seeing a generally good and sound performance on cost, time and quality, or are we rushing to finish the project and quality will be worse than we anticipate, thus worsen the product of the project.
These are ‘Controls’ questions, which may vary from project to project. In order to turn these measures to “meaningful” measures, apply quantities to each of them, for example:
Scope Change (+ or - 20% from original scope)
Cost (+ or - £20,000 from original budget)
Time (+ or – 20d in overall project duration)
Risk (+ or – 5% of overall project value)
Quality (+ or – the element being measured)
Benefits (+ or – 3% on Return on Investment)
These are called ‘Control Tolerance’. In order to ensure that projects or programme are being monitored efficient, some tolerance must be allowed, otherwise, the PMO (Programme Management Office) may have a job on their hand, running around potentially smaller projects while maybe lose sight of the bigger projects. Tolerance level are generally set by PMO or Programme Directorate.
So should a project has their own Tolerance?
The answer is ……. Absolutely!!!!
Tolerance normally set at Controls account level, i.e. Level 3 Schedule.
For projects that contain level 6 or more details, which indicates that projects are on the complex side, the Project Controls Manager (PCM) should also think about setting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) with the Delivery Manager, agreed by the Project Manager.
These KPIs are moving targets based on phases of works currently undertaken, or due to be undertaken shortly, and generally spread through a period of time. Once the phase almost coming to an end, new KPIs need to be established and agreed, and start measuring when such phase begins. KPIs are measured in Planned vs Actuals
Take our “twin buildings” example from Schedule Capabilities page, the KPIs that maybe appropriate to this project are:
At Design Stage:
number of 1:200 drawings plan vs actuals
number of systems planned to be designed vs actuals
Design | Wk1 | Wk2 | Wk3 | Wk4 | Total to-date | |||||
| P | A | P | A | P | A | P | A | P | A |
1:200 Drawings | 5 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 20 | 14 |
Systems | 10 | 8 | 10 | 7 | 20 | 8 | 20 | 8 | 60 | 31 |
In both cases, the actual KPIs achieved were below planned, however, more of a trend can be seen in System design plan of 10 were never achieved and the plan for 20 will be overly excessive, and therefore a re-profile maybe required by the project to ensure that a realistic target can be achieved by the Delivery Manager, in this case, the designer. A mutual agreement may reach to either increase design resources, or lower system design target and concentrate on more pressing systems, ie long procurement leadtime items to be designed first. If the latter is agreed, then the System design KPIs may need to be split to differentiate the difference between priority systems and not-so priority systems. In this case, the re-profiling may look like this:
Design | Wk1 | Wk2 | Wk3 | Wk4 | Total to-date | |||||
| P | A | P | A | P | A | P | A | P | A |
1:200 Drawings | 5 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 20 | 14 |
Priority Systems | 2 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 10 |
Other Systems | 8 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 18 | 5 | 20 | 8 | 51 | 21 |
The Designer has actually over-achieved the target for Priority systems, and therefore now can focus on getting extra resources for just the not-so priority systems.
KPIs is an effective tool to measure actual performance, however, make sure these actuals are validated and not just numbers plugged out of someone’s head!!! Agree a method of who and how the data is being validated to save confusions in later days.
Be aware not to overload the Delivery Manager with KPIs, only choose the ones that mark the achievement of major milestone or ones that sitting on critical paths. Overloading KPIs could have an adverse effect to the Delivery Team, who may choose to prioritise works that are on the KPIs, rather than achieving works in the correct sequence, ended up re-working, or worse, forget to do the work that aren’t on the KPIs!!!
Other suggested KPIs for the twin buildings example could be:
Long lead procurement item order placed
Square metre of Tiling laid
Number of systems installed
Number of systems commissioned
Number of rooms / floors handed over
Primal Planning can facilitate your business to identify effective project KPIs, establish and design a comprehensive Project Controls Suite that suits your project needs. We can also help boosting the Delivery Contractors by up-skilling them, to ensure they understand and learn to apply effective model working without jeopardising project integrity.
One other important Control measure that a project can utilise is Earned Value Management, this will be covered in the Performance Management (EV) page in this website.