Many project managers who work on high-repetition projects tell us that they need to spend up to 50% of their time each week on heavy administrative tasks related to planning. Their program is stuck in MS Project and to update it they have to go through countless WhatsApp notifications, emails or phone calls. It doesn't take long for them to find themselves buried under a mountain of work that doesn't truly add value to their projects.
What does it really mean to add value? An activity is considered to add value to a project only when it meets three distinct criteria:
- the customer agrees to pay for this activity.
- the activity is performed correctly the first time.
- the activity has a direct and positive impact on the suitability, function or form of the final product.
The problem is that, in many cases, project managers and their teams tend to ignore these criteria, opening the door to waste. In a construction project, waste can be briefly defined as an activity that does not comply with the three principles mentioned above. This could be:
- unnecessary transportation of vehicles and materials from one place to another.
- materials being damaged in inventory because they were ordered too soon or stored improperly.
- downtime between on-site tasks.
- unnecessary movements (which may even mean spending a lot of time walking up and down the premises to other facilities such as the canteen, for example).
- doing more work than the quantity required from the customer.
- carrying out more tasks and activities before is necessary.
- rework and additional cost due to defects.
As can already be seen, there is a wide range of activities that do not add value to the development of a project and which, unfortunately, are still considered the norm, fueling delays, commercial complaints and a strong culture of blame.
To help you avoid ending up in this spiral, here are three questions you should always ask yourself before you start working on your short-term forecasts and master plan:
1. Have I integrated zoning into my planning?
One of the most common but crucial mistakes made by project managers, especially on projects that have a lot of repetition, is failing to integrate zoning into their planning. Imagine, for example, that you are managing a multifamily residential project where several separate identical units need to be built. Or that you are working on a large hospital project.
Either way, there are a series of specifications you must satisfy and a set of tasks you must perform for each unit/room. But you can't work on everything at once. Subcontractors need to be able to access each zone (i.e. room or apartment) at the right time and then move on to the next zone at the right time so that the next interested parties can also do their work.
To make this happen while avoiding chaos, you need to combine zoning with your short-term planning and subsequently be able to share the latest progress with your subcontractors in a dynamic, shareable location in the cloud. Otherwise, sooner or later you will run the risk of some of your collaborators losing sight of the project situation. Simply put, they will have no way of knowing when it will be their turn to show up on site to do their work. And that's how you can quickly face delays and inefficient workflows.
2. Have I clearly defined for my team when a task is considered “complete”?
Waiting for other subcontractors or team members to complete their tasks is typically one of the main reasons behind delays and downtime on a project. How could you avoid this? Defining as a team what the notion of “work done” is so that the next activity can begin.
Having a clear, standardized set of rules and practices about when a task should be considered finished is key to aligning the expectations of all team members and avoiding mistakes. When should a transfer be considered successful? Or when is the right time for the next material order to arrive on site and where?
These issues may, in theory, seem simple, but on a construction site they can be the fuel for delays, downtime or even commercial complaints that can put your margins at serious risk. That's why it's crucial that project managers and everyone else involved in a project have a single, central, live view of short-term planning. If people keep scrolling through the site holding information in their heads or in disconnected formats (prints, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets), they will soon be drawn into a constant game of firefighting, not knowing whether what they are doing actually helps or not.
Therefore, knowing when a task should be described as “done” and communicating its completion to the right parties in a collaborative cloud environment can make a huge difference. Otherwise, the inability or reluctance to standardize and connect your timelines and stakeholders will ultimately create silos and a distorted picture of project progress. In other words, more delays, more disputes and less peace of mind for you on a daily basis.
3. Did I focus enough on preparation?
A lack of focus when preparing a construction project is another area where there is a lot of room for improvement for many project managers. The only exception may be external events such as bad weather.
However, preparation should not start and end there. Most problems that arise on site can be resolved through better anticipation and preparation around orders, delivery, choices, designs and available workforce planning.
We often see problems arise if site work has not been thought through with the relevant parties or if preparation work has been carried out too late, leading to last minute work and errors.
For example, you may be behind on your project because prefabricated elements arrive on site too late. If this is the case, it is necessary to bring together all parties involved (engineers, suppliers, etc.) and together find the root cause and solution to the problem so that this does not happen again. This is how you can guarantee a proactive approach in terms of preparing projects and resolving constraints so that unforeseen events do not mean disaster.
4. Do I have a strong culture around planning?
One of your main responsibilities as a project manager is to create and maintain a regular rhythm for your project. To make this happen, you need to plan ahead and strategically schedule tasks into manageable chunks. As recent research shows, if you can deliver small tasks at least 80% on time and without compromising quality, you will likely deliver on time and on budget.
So instead of trying to schedule everything in detail from start to finish, or focusing only on the milestones you want to achieve, plan in the short term and start relying on continually updated 3-6 week forecasts.
A good way to start this approach is to connect your team around a shared, live version of the program and regularly update them on upcoming milestones (more than a month away) and dependencies between tasks. This way, you can keep everyone in the same direction and maintain a good pace of development of your project.
The method is an excellent weapon in your effort to increase on-site engagement and collaboration. This will help you plan all value-adding activities in more detail as teams get closer and closer to performing the actual work. The method integrates the values of “pull planning”, in the sense that the only work promised is that which can and will eventually be completed according to plan.
Because at the end of the day, the system is not a race of individuals, but a team sport where a vision of the system and the active involvement of all team members are required to ensure that the promises offered are credible.
5. Are my tools adapted for construction?
That's the million-dollar question if you want to increase productivity on your projects and ensure successful completion of your future forecasts.
Project managers tend to believe that the tools they use are fit for purpose and designed to collaborate with different teams on their construction projects. In many cases, the truth is very different.
Especially when it comes to tools like MS Project, WhatsApp, Email and Excel that are not designed for construction teams. These tools may be great for other occasions, but they may not give you the website visibility you are looking for. More analytically:
- They do not provide a local, shareable “live” view of the project.
- The data shared through them has no connection to the master schedule. This makes it difficult for people to see where things stand overall and which tasks are progressing, what's next, and who is responsible for what.
- Information is dispersed across many different platforms, making the reporting process difficult.
- They don't allow for collaboration between internal and external stakeholders, which makes your effort to connect all teams in the field much more challenging.
It quickly becomes clear that using the wrong tools can really impact your 3-6 week forecasts. Your teams don't have a real-time view of the project and there's no clarity on who is responsible for what, leading to slow and dysfunctional decision-making.
So next time at the venue, be sure to ask yourself this question. Otherwise, you will quickly feel out of control and have no visibility into your project.
