Project Management Secrets

Grasp the essence of successful project management tools and techniques in less than 10 minutes, with concepts that stay with you for a lifetime. Grasp Project Management Secrets that can empower anyone to understand and undertake a building project from beginning to end in the most effective manner possible. Building can be a time and cost consuming challenge. At the end it can be a very rewarding experience. When one keeps in mind we have been building for several thousand years now the tools have changed little and the basic processes have remained the same. The essence of understanding the building process is to have a clear understanding of your needs before you start. You must have a clear understanding of the overall end result you are trying to achieve before you start and be able to effectively communicate this to the people you have working for you. Rebuilding or building from the ground up requires constant supervision, a sense of urgency combined with a tablespoonful of patience. One needs to keep everything in perspective at all times. View it much like climbing a mountain, where you have others helping you along the way. One needs to climb slowly, and stop every now and then to reflect on where you are and where your next steps will take you. Follow the process, drive the results. 1.Define the idea. 2.Who are the stakeholders? 3.Detail the resources available. 4.List the known tasks to bring the idea from concept to creation. 5.Identify the risks associated with these tasks. 6.Quantify the level of risks. 7.Is the level of risk and the resources available consistent with stakeholders culture, ability and expectations? 8.Compile information: Define tasks, apply resources, and define the timeframe. 9.Start project. Key tools to success What makes a successful project is a clear understanding of the project idea and the ability to clearly communicate to each stakeholder their specific role in helping bring the idea to fruition. 1.What is the idea? Has this idea been done before? Was it successful? Can it be reproduced with resources available? Do you want to reproduce the same? Does one have access to the information …past lessons learned? Incorporate the past into the new idea. 2.Who are the stakeholders? Stakeholders are the people directly involved or impacted by the project. These are the people who have something to lose if the goals are not achieved. Can you trust them? How much trust? If you have to work with them on a project, one needs to find an approach to effectively accomplish tasks amiably. What are they like to work with? How are they at communicating? It is VERY important to differentiate those who are stakeholders, and those who are not. Typical people that will cause the most havoc on every project are those that are not stakeholders and one way or another. They tend to steal something from the people directly involved in the project, (resources such as time, materials or money) to achieve their selfish objective. They may be the guy stealing copper water lines while you try to do the plumbing, or a family member who comes from out of town and suddenly wants to become involved and tell you how to spend your limited funds. 3. List the known tasks to bring the idea from concept to creation. Get history from others who have attempted similar projects. Compile parts of the tasks, and work packages taken from other projects that you can use in your project. Start with overall plan of action such as project start date and date project must finish. Then develop the action plan as best as one can. Come back to plan after accounting for risk, and reviewing resource constraints. “The best write is rewrite.” Communicate changes and adaptations throughout project process. The easiest way to get your plan together is to first put together a “shopping list” of everything you want in your house…from the carpet to the light fixtures. Just sit down and write down a rough idea room by room. Next, walk the spaces in which you would like the shopping list items or features and get a sense of how it would feel with these features in the individual spaces. Thirdly, go back now and organize the shopping list in a format that follows the General Contractor 16 division breakdown. Next, develop a list within this format. This list will form the basis for comparing apples to apples, contractor with contractor. 4. Detail the resources available. Your three resources are Money, Time, and Tools to get the job done. With enough of the first two you can always get the last. Unfortunately, we all have limitations for either money or time. This means it is imperative to have a realistic understanding of how money and time is required to undertake a project. If you do not know 100% what you don’t know about what items cost or how long it really should take to rebuild a home, seek advice from several professionals in different fields. You must listen to people in different fields, because people tend to tell you their view of the mountain from where they are…so a mountain may not be described the same if one is looking up from the valley versus looking down from the peak. A good example is a contractor may say it takes three months to rebuild a house…but he may just be talking about building walls and painting…while you may have concerns about custom cabinets. Money – how much and from where? It is very important to view money, that is cash as a volatile instrument used to make you or break you. It is like holding a handful of oil in your hand, and pouring the oil from one hand to another. Some of the oil will slip through; some will be absorbed through your skin. The eventual goal is to still have a little left over at the end to take care of the inevitable issues that will come up during any building project. Time – how much, and what are the milestones for what must be completed in a specific timeframe. With a construction project, time does not flow through the hourglass. Time flows more like draft beer through a keg, to your glass and through your system in 30 minutes or less. Time is a borrowed commodity like money. You are either going to dedicate time to being directly involved in the building process or handing off the responsibilities and risk to someone else. If one hands off the work to a stakeholder, then you lose control. When one loses control, one may lose control of the money and/or the time it takes to achieve your goals. An example of this can be taking the time to you yourself inspect the quality of work, or making sure the roof shingle you ordered is what is being installed. People – are the people readily available to work with you? Where is your project on their priority list of tasks to complete? Your home is probably going to be built much like your car…with components and people from the four corners of the globe. The person installing the sheetrock may be from Mexico, the plumber from New York, the flooring contractor from Brazil and your cabinets from China. Understanding this perspective, you can see the quality and consistency of a finished product may vary widely. Quite often if people give you a low price, they will not produce the same quality of work a higher price demands. As such, it is very important to know who is building your home, and what they consider a good timeframe, or a complete product. Before and especially during construction one ought to inspect the work, and then and there bring up problems you see with installation. Do not be passive and wait until the end. If you do, both of you will lose time and or money, and neither party will be happy. Information / Historical data – find what resources other projects have had to manage. Learn from this and plan ahead when budgeting your resources. Get on the internet and go to your local library or the best of all…..go to your local bookstore. Look for the books the contractors use such as “Means” estimating tools, etc. These books can help you get a grasp of what it takes to build. They have both labor rates and more importantly how long it takes to perform a specific task. Goto your local hardware and check the prices of “big” items you may not be familiar with such as a 1000 ft roll of #14 wire, or a length of copper. The overall goal is for you to have an understanding of the scope of work to rebuild, and a basic understanding of the vocabulary of construction without the use of potty words. Once you better understand how contractors put their prices and timeframe together it makes for a much more amiable understanding of why one person charges what they do compared to the next guy or gal. 5. Identify the risks associated with the tasks and resources.  Risk – what level of risk was taken in the past by each stakeholder? What is their perspective of risk? Can they handle the level of risk with the current project? Discuss risk with the stakeholders by creating a risk log from the beginning planning stages of tasks or issues that come up during meetings with stakeholders. Try to alleviate, budget, but most importantly deal with these risks on a regular basis, incorporating the risk log as part of the process such as in weekly reports. In the building process, there are always the same basic risks. In a rebuilding process one needs to tack on a few more. To help one identify these risks, break them out into a checklist of the major milestones in your project. Here is an example of a flooded home that needs to be raised: 1)Gut the home 2)Remove any mold / mildew 3)Raise the house...how high? Raise with what materials? Check the contractor’s experience. 4)Replace the roof? What kind of roof? 5)Remove and replace all electrical. Did the existing meet code? If not, it needs to now…to not simply replace existing. 6)Plumbing – does all need to be replaced? Is it all going back in the same place? Have you changed the layout of the kitchen? Are you using copper or Pex®? What complies with the local/city code?   Quantify the level of risks. Level of risk: risk versus amount of resources required for risk. Quantify the risk log. Look at the likelihood of risks occurring; apply a resource value to this in terms of cost, time or otherwise. Determine the impact of these risks to stakeholders and the overall project. Examine the risk of possible “communication issues” between stakeholders. Define in writing the role of each stakeholder, and their roles and responsibilities to help alleviate conflicts. 6. Is the level of risk and the resources available consistent with stakeholders culture, ability and expectations? If you answered yes to #6, go to #7. If not, go back to #1. 7.Define tasks. Define overall processes. A process will illustrate what it takes to accomplish a task. It can be much like a “shopping list” of what it takes to accomplish a goal. It really helps when communicating to stakeholders building your home so you have an understanding of what it takes to accomplish their portion of the project. One example is the process to buy a kitchen sink: 1)Where is the sink going to go? 2)Will it fit in the space? 3)Will it fit in the cabinet? 4)Is it going to be above or below the countertop? 5)What kind of countertop do you have? 6)What color is the countertop? 7)Do you want a double or single bowl sink? 8)What color do you want the sink? 9)What is the price range you want to spend? 10)Drive to store, don’t spill coffee in the truck console while driving there, go look at the sinks in stock. 11)If 1-8 is all resolved, and is within your price range, purchase sink. Define what has to be done. Define the timeframe; Hours, Days, weeks, define calendar. Apply resources. Break up tasks into work packages; Work packages are – 40 work hours of a typical crew size in building construction within a typical shift or series of shifts. (On more critical timeframes, reduce the work hours, on projects more than 6 months, increase work hours timeframe as high as 80 work hours.) Note, some people will work 7 days/week, while others just on weekends. Get it in writing when and how the contractor’s crews will be working. If/when they do not comply, state in writing how much it will cost them to not show up... at all or on time. Special note: Higher risk tasks will require closer management. Allocate appropriate resources and communicate this clearly to stakeholders. All parties need to understand the need for: - more detailed accounting of resources. - more scheduled status reviews - more communications. - more follow ups - more check / recheck and rework processes. Revise Processes if required. Draw up contract documents. Compiling & consolidating; Create estimates, a schedule, compare experiences with stakeholders. Look at hard data versus opinions. Communicate, revise until comfortable. Minimize grey areas / minimize risks. Do not back burner high risks…apply time and money resources to these risks. Try to project possible conflict resolution solutions before they occur. 8.Start project. Communicate Dissipate (information) Follow up Check against the plan Revamp Tighten up Drive forward 9.At scheduled milestones, redefine 1 through 8 for the length of the project. Key tools to success Organize information that follows a systematic thought process, in line with stakeholders thought processes. Document the project progression from initiation to the end. Communicate, dictate, and reciprocate information to all stakeholders. Learn from failures…every failure should be a lessons learned to grow from. A failure should only be measured from the level of where was it in the risk category. Make the information a manageable monster to control, through leveraging with others to help in the process.  Bring people and their ideas together, incorporating the best in both to drive your projects’ success. About the author: Ian A. Cockburn PMP is a certified Project Management Professional. He currently holds a Louisiana Commercial General Contractors License and is a licensed Realtor ®. He has worked with clients throughout the United States including the US Corp of Engineers, Bechtel Corporation and the Smithsonian Institute. About the artist John A. Cockburn is a graphic artist creating advertising logos and illustrations. To schedule training or consultations contact Coburn Investments, LLC Call: (504) 615-2333 E-mail: ian70119@yahoo.com