CHAPTER 6

Good Practices for the Cyclic Project Control Steps

Planning, Monitoring, Reporting, and Analyzing

Introduction

The second set of good practices included within the PCIM project control methodology relates to the project control cycle (planning, monitoring, reporting, and analyzing). Project control is not a one-time event; it usually involves several distinctive steps as explained in previous chapters (see Chapters 1–3) and summarized below.

• Planning: This is the task to determine project objectives and activities needed to achieve these objectives. Time schedules are decided by sequencing the project activities, with interim milestones. At the same time, detailed cost estimates and cost plans are also produced. A WBS (see Chapter 9 for more on WBS) is also produced to plan the scope of work that is to be delivered. In addition to the time plan (schedule), cost plan, and scope plan, other types of plans are developed for a project such as the PEP, quality plan, communication plan, and stakeholder management plan, and so on (see Chapter 2 for more on planning).

• Monitoring: Once the execution of project plans starts, progress of the project needs to be monitored to verify that activities are carried out as planned and costs and spending occur for the correct amount, at the correct time, and for the right scope of work. Any variations to cost, scope, and time plans need to be identified.

• Reporting: The information gathered during the monitoring step will need to be presented in some agreed format and transmitted via the appropriate medium to the appropriate department or personnel for further action, for example, analysis. The report contains the information collected during monitoring and an analysis of this information shows the status of the project as described below.

• Analyzing: Having gathered the data, the team must determine whether the project is behaving as predicted, and if not, calculate the size and impact of the variances.

It is important to note that this is a simplistic view of the project control steps as project control is a complex process that requires human interventions, decisions, and practices as explained in Chapters 2 to 5. The PCIM project control methodology asserts that it is not enough to develop a framework for project control without supporting it with a comprehensive set of good practices. To this effect, the PCIM project control methodology is accompanied by several good practices including many that are deemed important to the major steps of the project control cycle (see Tables 6.1–6.4). Additionally, this set of good practice checklists also contains the relevant tools and techniques recommended for the practices where relevant. It is important to point out that despite the fact that the PCIM project control methodology emerged from a construction/infrastructure project sector, the good practices discussed in this chapter will be applicable to other industries, especially as they focus on the project control cycle steps which are universal and therefore generic to all industries.

The Delphi Process: Validating the Good Practices

The significance (critical, important, helpful, or unhelpful) of each of the good practices to the project control steps is also provided in this chapter. The significance of each of the good practices was determined using the Delphi technique during the research that informed the development of the PCIM project control methodology. The Delphi technique was named after the ancient Greek oracle of Delphi where omens of the future could be enquired (Flostrand, Pitt, and Bridson 2020). The modern-day Delphi is a statistical technique used to gain reliable consensus on a particular topic using rounds of questionnaires provided to experts in the field with controlled feedback to the experts after each round of questionnaire until a consensus is reached (Chalmers and Armour 2019). The questionnaires are completed anonymously by the experts and as part of the process; their responses for a round are analyzed and the result presented back to each expert to reconsider their opinion in the next round based on the group result of the previous round. This process continues until a consensus is reached.

The original Delphi method, according to Flostrand et al. (2020), was developed in 1948 by Norman Dalkey at the RAND Corporation, as part of a U.S. military intelligence project due to the cold war tensions which created a need for the U.S. military to predict the nuclear weaponry capacity and targeting strategies of the Soviet Union. Although it was originally used on military projects, Sourani and Sohail (2015) pointed out that the application of Delphi is now widespread and has been used in many areas including health care and medical research, academia, social policy, administration, agriculture, automotive, banking, criminal justice, economics, education, environmental studies, business and finance, housing, insurance, strategic planning, tourism, transportation, and utilities. The key characteristics required for a Delphi process have been stated by Shariff (2015) as use of an expert panel, iteration of rounds and controlled feedback, statistical summaries of group response, anonymity, and consensus building.

The success of a Delphi study is dependent on the collective expertise of the participants. Therefore, it was important that the PCIM research methodology utilized the appropriate people for the Delphi process. A purposeful process was used for the selection of experts for the PCIM research Delphi panel using the criteria below:

• Experts must have participated in the earlier interviewing process (see chapter one for an overview of the overall PCIM research process) so that they already understand what the research is about.

• Experts must have more than 10 years of experience in project planning, project control, and project management of construction projects.

• Experts must be committed to participate in all the Delphi rounds.

A total of eight construction project practitioners from the 15 that participated in the interviews from the previous stage of the research agreed to participate in the Delphi process. The Delphi does not call for experts to be representative samples for statistical purposes. The quality and experience of the expert panel are more important than the quantity. Therefore, the eight experts participating in this study were deemed appropriate.

The experts held positions that are relevant to project control within their respective organizations. All the experts held senior positions in the planning, project control, or project management departments of their organizations. The expert panel was made up of very experienced practitioners, with six of the eight experts having more than 25 years of experience. The total experience of the eight experts was 227 years (average experience of 28 years).

The good practices developed as part of the PCIM project control methodology for each of the steps of the project control cycle, any accompanying tools and techniques, and their determined level of importance are presented in Tables 6.11 to 6.4 and discussed in the following sections.

Project Control Cycle “Planning Step” Good Practices

Planning as a project control step is critical to the project control process; this is because planning is required to implement the other project control steps. Effective project control system relies on two fundamental components: (1) a plan against which progress can be measured (and any deviation assessed) and (2) timely and accurate information about what is happening (or likely to happen) on the project. The PCIM project control methodology includes many good practices to support the planning step of the cyclical project control process as detailed in Table 6.1. Many of the good practices that were put forward to support the planning step were also determined as critical to the project control process.

Table 6.1 Project control cycle planning step good practice checklist

From Table 6.1, it is also evident that effective planning during the project control process also relies on several tools and techniques as put forward by the PCIM project control methodology. Many of these techniques such as CPM and Gantt chart are discussed in Chapter 7. Some of the good practices identified for planning as part of the PCIM project control methodology are the development of a good schedule for the project using some of the scheduling techniques such as the common Gantt bar chart developed with planning software package such as Primevera P6. However, in parallel with the underlying philosophy of the PCIM project control methodology, it is recognized that just developing a project schedule is not enough for the success of this step of the project control process. As such, any developed schedule needs to incorporate good planning practices as suggested by the PCIM project control methodology such as involvement of key subcontractors in the development of the schedule if possible, and establishment of a clear and identifiable critical path on the schedule using the CPM. In relation to the cost element of the project control planning step, practices such as development of the cost estimate using quantifiable metrics, making sure the project delivery team understands the cost budget so that the work is properly managed later, and having an agreed price set in the contract that will be utilized for pricing variations are some of the practices put forward by PCIM project control methodology.

Project Control “Monitoring Step” Good Practices

Monitoring is the means of keeping track of all project performance metrics including spending, duration of activities, resource utilization, performance of subcontractors, progress toward important milestones, and so on. Monitoring facilitates the project management team to oversee all activities associated with the successful delivery of the project to understand whether the project is progressing as planned. However, the monitoring step during project control, as discussed previously in Chapter 3, can sometimes be overlooked, unsystematic, and informal. Yet, with dedicated effort and embracing some good practices, monitoring can be implemented effectively during the project control process.

The PCIM project control methodology for project control identified many critical and important good practices to support the project control monitoring step. Some of these include ascertaining that there is a formal and periodic monitoring regime embedded in the project. This will formalize the monitoring step and bring some structure into the monitoring step of the project control process. Good practices were also put forward in relation to what to monitor to enable effective project (cost, scope, and time) control. For example, monitoring time progress against the project’s critical path and monitoring design and scope changes (especially as design and scope change has been identified as the leading inhibitor for cost and time control by the PCIM research). The benefit of monitoring design and scope changes on a project is that it will highlight if the project is veering toward scope creep, which can lead to time overrun and cost escalation.

Monitoring short-term and medium-term cash flow is also considered important. The incorporation of some independence in the monitoring process (such as an independent review) is also advocated as a good practice for the monitoring step of project control. Having an independent review does not mean that the monitoring responsibility should be removed from the project delivery team, but the PCIM project control methodology suggests that an additional independent monitoring by someone outside the delivery team happens periodically to provide some objectivity, checks, and peer review of the project delivery team’s view of the performance of the project.

Project Control “Reporting Step” Good Practices

Reporting during the project control process is used to provide information about the project to the members of the project team and the project stakeholders as appropriate. The information shared during the reporting stage is mainly in relation to the progress (time), scope, and cost of the project, although other project metrics like risks, opportunities, issues, resources usage, key milestones, dependencies, procurement, forecasts, and so on are also shared. In project control, reporting usually presents a comparison of the current key performance metrics of the project against the goals set out in the project’s overall plan. Reporting also allows the current issues and problems facing a project to be presented to the project stakeholders as well as the management actions planned or already in progress to deal with them.

Table 6.2 Project control monitoring step good practices checklist

Table 6.3 Project control reporting step good practices checklist

The PCIM project control methodology has recommended many good practices that can be used to improve the reporting step of the project control process. For example, making sure that cost, scope, and time status metrics of projects are up-to-date and can be accessed by the senior management as close to real-time as possible. This is because if information about cost, scope, and time project metrics are delayed, it may be too late to act when the information is known eventually, and it shows that remedial actions are required. Putting in place measures and a culture that facilitates honest reporting reflecting the true status of the project is one of the critical practices advocated by the PCIM methodology. This is because honest and accurate reporting will lead to factual reports that will highlight the true challenges or opportunities of a project that require mitigation or exploitation, respectively. Additionally, the use of standardized project reporting tools such as reporting templates to bring consistency to the reports produced is also put forward. Similarly, the PCIM project control methodology also advocates, if possible, the use of computer software tools that are simple and noncomplicated to systematize and enable the reporting process.

Project Control “Analyzing Step” Good Practices

Analysis involves the review and use of various techniques as appropriate to establish the current trajectory of the project to understand whether the project is behaving as planned and predicted. Calculating and analyzing the metrics that have been designed to measure the performance of the project allows the magnitude of any variance in relation to the performance metrics to be established. Data gathered from the monitoring step can then be assessed to analyze the trends in relation to the effects of current effort and decisions on the project. The analysis step is also where the future performance of the projects can be forecast based on the current trajectory of the project and the forecast input (such as resources) to the project delivery process. This forecast can also be compared to the baseline metrics to establish the difference and unearth any potential problems awaiting the project in order to take remedial actions if required.

Table 6.4 Project control analyzing step good practices checklist

The PCIM project control methodology recommends many important practices to support the analysis step of the project control process. One of the most important practices advocated is ensuring that cost and time are integrated during analysis, because time and cost are both related and usually impact the cost of a project. Additionally, having independent personnel at the next higher management level to assess the analysis results to ascertain if they are optimistic, factual, or pessimistic is advocated as a form of due diligence to bring some assurance to the analysis step of the project control process. Many techniques and tools to support the analysis step are also suggested in the PCIM methodology. One of the most important techniques is the earned value analysis, which enables the integration of not just the cost and time as stated earlier but also scope. Other techniques for analysis recommended include cost–value reconciliation, S-curve, work breakdown structure (WBS), and cost breakdown structure (CBS). Finally, the use of modeling software packages was put forward by the PCIM project control methodology for use as part of the analysis stage of the project control process. For example, a good practice is modeling cost and time when analyzing using a 5-D model to visualize how the design develops (3-D), how time is being expended (4-D), and how the cost develops (5-D) based on the current trajectory data and information from the project.

Conclusion

Some 54 percent of the good practices that have been included in the PCIM project control methodology to support the project control steps have been rated by the Delphi experts as important during the PCIM project control methodology research. Some of these “important” good practices include ensuring there is a procurement strategy for buying all packages in the project at the tender stage; establishment of a structure within the project control process; aligning the cost breakdown structure with the work breakdown structure; specifying clearly what the deliverables of the project cost and time control will be to aid monitoring, and so on. Equally remarkable is the fact that some 29 percent of the good practices for the project control steps in the PCIM methodology were rated by the Delphi experts as critical to the relevant project control step. Some of these “critical” practices are obviously the life blood of the control process and it is little surprise that most of the expert panel within the Delphi process to determine the significance of the good practices of the PCIM project control methodology agreed that they were critical. Some of these critical practices include development of a schedule for the project time estimate; ensuring the project schedule is realistic; always monitoring the project time progress against the critical path; making sure the reporting is always honest and true, and so on. These practices are critical for an effective control of projects.

Some 17 percent of the good practices were determined by the Delphi experts as being helpful practices. These practices while not critical or considered important are useful good practices that should be embarked on during project control. None of the developed practices emerged as being unhelpful. This comes as no surprise because all the project control steps supporting practices put forward by the PCIM project control methodology are in fact good practices and were included in the list because they have been considered as having the potential to aid effective project cost, scope, and time control. Putting this in context, 83 percent of the good practices are considered as either critical or important in aiding project control and the remaining 17 percent were considered helpful. This high percentage of good practices Delphi rated as critical or important validates the practices and justifies the importance of having a good practice checklist to accompany the PCIM project control methodology. The significance attributed to these good practices would help to prioritize these good practices. This prioritization is useful so that, if for financial or other reasons, all the project control steps good practices contained in the PCIM project control methodology cannot be deployed by an organization during the project control process, then implementation should be in this order: good practices rated as critical, followed by the good practices rated as important, and then good practices rated as helpful.