Project progress monitoring

The heart of the control process is monitoring work in progress. It is your way of knowing what is going on and how actual compares to plan. With effective monitoring, you will know when corrective action is required. Common ways to keep abreast of project progress are ... 

As a project progresses and you monitor performance, there will be times when actual does not measure up to plan. This calls for corrective action. However, don t be too quick to take action. Some deficiencies turn out to be self-correcting. It is unrealistic to expect steady and consistent progress day after day. Sometimes you ll fall behind and sometimes you ll be ahead, but in a well-planned project, you will probably finish on schedule and within budget. 

The students used the Gantt chart to plan and monitor the project progress. Each team prepared a detailed list of tasks, milestones and deliverables. A timeline was constructed based on the completion time, delivery schedule and estimated time needed to complete each tasks. The Gantt chart enabled the students to identify dependency between various tasks and recognize potential bottlenecks in the project. The critical tasks, scheduled tasks, completion dates and delivery time were clearly labeled. Each week the teams met to discuss and update the Gantt chart, as old tasks were completed and new one started. 

Finally, the individual elements of the plan are put together and the strategic plan is readjusted to a more exact time schedule. The revised strategic plan which summarizes the major project parts can now serve as a useful master plan and project overview to present and justify the project in general. Reference to the sub-plans should be made to allocate the resources and for progress monitoring purposes. 

The involvement must be far more extensive than the mere review of the final product. The Project Manager must also review the basis of the estimate and the estimating approach to insure that the estimating efforts are commensurate with the information available and that the product will include sufficient details to satisfy the project s further need for planning, cost tracking and progress monitoring. 

Project control is the driving force behind progress monitoring and contract administration. 

The home office man-hours estimating procedure in Chapter 19 does not provide the detail of breakdown required for progress monitoring. However, once the list of required drawings and specifications has been prepared by the contractor, this information can be used together with Tables 15.3, 15.4, and 15.5 to prepare a simple monitoring system that will enable the Project Manager to ascertain the validity of the contractor s reports. 

The progress monitoring system, outlined in Section 15.9, is an excellent basis for schedule forecasting. It provides information that, when used in conjunction with daily field force reports and spot activity checks, will allow the Project Manager to make accurate schedule forecasts. The procedure for forecasting final subcontract costs in Appendix I is also a good tool for predicting the final projects cost. 

Having in place an effective In-house Progress Monitoring System to allow the project team to detect almost immediately any potential trouble spots. 

A simplified project schedule is shown in Fig. 25.8. Whereas it is the responsibility of the project manager to monitor project milestones, the workload shifts from R D to the pilot plant and engineering and manufacturing as the project progresses. Once regular production is initiated (in the example, three years after the first contact ), the project organization is dissolved and the business is transferred to the commercial functions of the partnering companies. 

Since information is collected throughout the fife cycle of a project, additional information is used to continuously update the risk-management plan. Risk-response control is a continuous effort to identify new sources of risk, update the estimates regarding probabilities and impacts of risk events, and activate the risk-management plan when needed. Constantly monitoring the project progress in an effort to update the risk-management plan and activate it when necessary can reduce the impact of uncertainty and increase the probabdity of successful project completion. 

Project monitoring also is used to set up ongoing channels of communication among project stakeholders. The major deliverables are project progress reports and status updates detailed work-plans (updated as necessary) and cost and schedule performance reports. 

Project evaluation review technique (PERT), was developed for use in predicting the expected duration of projects and monitoring the progress of the project s activities. It is based on using the most likely cost estimate, optimistic estimate (lowest cost) and pessimistic estimate (highest cost). These estimates are assumed to correspond to the beta distribution, which can be symmetrical or skewed left or right. Using the three estimates, a mean and a variance for the cost element can be calculated as... 

The three major tasks of overall project management were initial project planning, progress monitoring, and transition and maintenance planning. 

Monitor Project Progress and Take Appropriate Actions... 

Management-progress monitoring. On any project it is necessary to monitor progress of dehvery. With regards to the change safety... 

The implementation strategy should be congruent with the objective of the project and the company organization and culture. The plan should be presented in a clear and succinct manner so that all those involved can follow it and progress against the plan can be monitored. 

Provide an informative management tool for the monitoring and control of progress, including the effect of changing circumstances that so often occur in the form of extended delivery time scales, revised requirements and new external constraints on the project completion date. 

There are many reasons to do careful planning for project costs. To begin with, if you overestimate costs you may lose the job before you begin because you are not competitive. A good plan includes the identification of sources of supplies and materials, and this careful research assures that the costs are realistic. The main function of a good budget is to monitor the costs of a project while it is in progress, and to avoid cost overruns. 

Timeliness Time to complete any tasks of project may exceed schedule. By closely monitoring actual progress against schedule along critical path. Look for ways to improve efficiency, attempt to capture time from later steps, authorize overtime if budget permits... 

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