Static Progress Reports Are Dead
While projects are getting only more complex, many planning engineers still prepare static progress reports. They spend most of their time performing calculations and working with many excel sheets. The outcome is an ineffective static report, whereas the value is not proportionate to the amount of time and effort that is spent to deliver this outcome. The […]
Why is progress reporting so challenging?
Have you tried so hard to prepare a comprehensive valuable report but you wish you could have done better? If yes, you are not alone. Progress reporting is one of the most challenging tasks that planning engineers struggle with but first, let us go over some of the planning engineer’s duties. Collect progress data. Update […]
Breakdown Analysis with Power BI
Breakdown analysis is essential to help projects move forward. If your project is falling behind by $1M that you should have collected by now, the next logical questions would be: “Where is the shortfall coming from?” “Which activities should I have completed by now that caused the payment deficit, and by how much?” A planning […]
Track activity performance with Power BI
Planning Engineers are so busy looking at the variance and the associated metrics such as the difference between the planned and actual %’s or SPI. We are so obsessed with analyzing where we are and where we need to go. Nothing is wrong with that but it limits our ability to identify the root cause of delay […]
Why do many planning engineers struggle with Project Control?
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 […]
4 ways to improve your planning skills.
A project control career can be very rewarding. You can be assigned on a new project or relocate to a new country and still use your skills to add value. Someone can take your job away from you but nobody can take your skills and knowledge away from you. When you repeat the same tasks […]
Interactive dashboards in project control
Here is one story that planning engineers are familiar with. You decided to identify the progress issues and determine the root cause of the delay. You start to do the following in an effort to pursue this dream. Open the XER file and add any relevant columns to your layout. Apply P6 filters Copy data into […]
Career Advice for Planning Engineers
For planning engineers, here is some advice I wish I knew early in my career. 1- Don’t spend all of your time figuring out how you can use P6 in every project control area. The role of P6 is limited. You will need to do a lot of work using other tools such as Excel or Power BI. 2- […]
Why should planning engineers connect the drawings with the schedule model?
If you have been following my content, you know that I am not really a big fan of the traditional P6/Excel type of work in project control. My mission is to change the way we plan and control our projects worldwide. Only then, planning engineers can add more value and become a huge success factor […]
How can Power BI help consultants add value in progress meetings?
As the Contractor is the constructor of the project, a lot of work is typically required from the Contractor. This includes the execution, preparing the engineering submittals, monitoring the procurement activities, collecting progress data, preparing progress reports, analyzing the project performance, proposing recovery measures, and creating progress presentations – just to name a few. For […]