It is very interesting. It has a very rewarding career. It adds great value to any project. It doesn’t have a universal framework. It is more like an art than a science. It requires an excellent knowledge of different software tools. Yet, many engineers struggle to master it. This is Project Control.
After I earned my engineering degree, I found that my knowledge cannot be practically applied in the job market (for the most part). It is a story that we can all resonate with. But I am an engineer so I thought that I can figure everything out on my own. Well, it didn’t really go this way.
I started my career with a series of ambitious but failed attempts to pursue a career that I have always been passionate about – Project Control.
I pursued a postgraduate diploma in project management.
I couldn’t improve my practical skills. It didn’t work.
I earned PMP and PMI-SP certifications.
It didn’t work.
I read books.
It didn’t work.
I improved my P6 and excel skills.
It didn’t work.
The list goes on…
Don’t misunderstand me. I learned something from the above for sure but I wasn’t satisfied with the results. I wanted to achieve more and add value to my projects. I spent a lot of time and money doing the above. I mean, come on, if I spent the same amount of time and money on programming courses and even YouTube videos, I would have become a superior App Developer. This wasn’t the case in my project control career.
Why does this happen? Why do we struggle with improving our project control skills? In this article, I will explain the top three factors that prevent planning engineers from improving their skills.
Limited “practical” training
If I want to become a programmer, I can watch high-quality practical tutorials on YouTube and it won’t take me too long to see results. The majority of the content out there explains theories or concepts only. Moreover, a master’s degree or project management certifications don’t teach the followings:
- Review the contract requirements and prepare a practical baseline program step-by-step.
- Avoid the common “fatal” mistakes in the schedule update.
- Prepare a progress curve or KPIs.
- Prepare comprehensive interactive dashboards/reports using Power BI.
- Prepare a professional practical claim step-by-step along with the concurrency calculations.
The job market needs the above skills. It doesn’t need someone with any skills that don’t add value and get the job DONE. Such skills have become obsolete and irrelevant. They are immediately disregarded by many hiring managers. You must give the market what it wants, not what you want.
Limited Tools
This part is not actually your fault. Unlike banking or healthcare, construction is one of the least technology-dependent industries. To execute your project control tasks effectively, you need to perform certain tasks including but not limited to:
- Collect the progress data for engineering, procurement, construction, etc.
- Identify and report project delays.
- Prepare comprehensive progress reports and dashboards on a regular basis.
- Analyze the delays, send notices and prepare extension of time claims.
- Prepare progress presentations and attend meetings.
- Draft or provide inputs to contractual correspondences.
Similarly, other industries such as banking and healthcare require a huge amount of work too. The challenge of having “too much to do, so little time” exists in many industries. The only difference is that these industries developed many effective user-friendly tools and methods over time to get the job done. In construction, this isn’t the case. When Primavera P6 is introduced to the world, it helped us overcome many of the project management challenges back then. We don’t have many similar tools to make our project control life easier. I don’t claim to be the best but I am aware of this fact. I am still learning and improving. I use tools such as advanced excel and Power BI that have already helped me a lot but the industry needs more tools.
Universal Frameworks
“1 + 1 = 2” is a universally agreed outcome. It is easily accessible to everyone. In project control, there is no universal way on how to EXACTLY perform project control tasks. There are common principles but the execution is different for everyone. It is impossible though and I don’t personally recommend having a universal framework because project control is based on logic and common sense which is hard to make a standard for. I love it this way and that’s the beauty of it. You can innovate unique methods and combine different tools to achieve the desired outcome. The sky is the limit. The better you do that, the more competent you are and the more you stand out from the competition. That said, if project control had standard procedures, the distribution and accessibility of this knowledge would have become quicker and easier for everyone across the globe. Again, this is not the case and I don’t think having a standard framework is convenient.
Conclusion
If you want to master project control, you must continue to innovate and integrate different software tools to account for the technology deficit in the market. Make sure that you consume practical content, educate yourself about data analytics and learn any “relevant” software that helps you create better systems and improve your workflow.
Regards,
Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP
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