Why is your Baseline unrealistic?
Why do many planning engineers focus on progress monitoring over plan development? Planning engineers often seek to improve their skills in the progress reporting area. It makes sense because we spend most of our time monitoring the progress in the execution phase. However, if you don’t have a realistic plan, your progress monitoring will become […]
4 common mistakes planners make in Power BI
It is very easy to make mistakes and generate tons of misleading data in Power BI if you don’t know what you are doing. Data analytics is a specialization area in which many people pursue a whole career. Planning Engineers are encouraged to focus on improving their P6 and Excel skills to prepare their reports […]
A practical approach to improve your planning career
Developing a successful career requires a significant investment of time and effort, yet engineers face limitations in terms of the amount of time and effort available to them each day. Many engineers struggle to progress in their careers not due to a lack of ambition, but rather, as a result of ineffective approaches. This article […]
Earned Value Mindset
Why do we need to establish earned value metrics based on both cost and manhours? Why do we need to develop a cost and resource-loaded schedule? If your answer is something like: Because it is a part of the contract or the client’s requirements. Because it is a part of my company’s procedures. Then you […]
You should be different
I believe that many planning engineers have a misconception about what it takes to excel in their careers. Remember, you can’t learn everything and you will always have knowledge gaps in some areas. The problem is that planning engineers put too much emphasis on the wrong priorities. This article will demonstrate how you can get […]
Bored from your planning task routine? Think Again!
As a planning engineer, you probably follow the below routine every week. 1- Collect progress data. 2- Update the schedule. 3- Prepare the weekly report and dashboards (input data in the same fields, apply the same formula, do the same formatting, etc) 4- Review the outcome. 5- identify project delays. 6- Prepare progress presentations for […]
Don’t spend time preparing progress reports
Planning Engineers are mainly hired to prepare progress reports. Well, this article will demonstrate why planning engineers should NOT spend any time preparing progress reports. In fact, this task is what limits planning engineers’ ability to add value to their projects. Early in my career, I was told that preparing progress reports is the main […]
Automate formatting for progress reports and presentations
Formatting is one of the most time-consuming low-impact activities for planning engineers. Although formatting is necessary, it is not considered a key value activity compared to delay analysis, schedule update, etc. In other words, if you have limited time during the day, you would better spend that time on high-impact activities such as claim submission, progress analysis, highlighting delays to the site […]
Variance Analysis in Project Control
The determination of Early & Late Planned %, Actual % and Variance % is one of the key components in project control. Many planning engineers spend the time and effort to determine these percentages in every progress update cycle. They calculate and report these percentages for the overall project and the key project areas. However, variance analysis should […]
The Power of ONE
Planning Engineers are overwhelmed with so many tools and files. They use different tools such as Primavera P6 for progress review, excel for progress analysis and PowerPoint for progress presentation. Moreover, they use many excel sheets for different purposes which may include: Variance Analysis, Breakdown Analysis, Trends, Dashboards, Progress Curves, a Progress Matrix, Gantt Charts, etc. You can apply […]