Regardless of how responsibility is shared in a project, building owners bear the ultimate risk. They write the checks for overruns. They feel the pain of delays in the form of lost revenue opportunity. Finally, they pay the additional costs of a facility built for project profitability rather than long-term operating efficiency. Everyone but the lawyers will agree that litigation won’t recover these costs.
Before your job got rolling, you built a detailed schedule you thought would help you manage the project to completion. Now you’re waiting on permits, two of your subs haven’t showed and your available resources are strained. You’ve got a stack of daily reports that are too overwhelming to sort through before your next OAC meeting. That faded project schedule on the wall is looking pretty useless.
Project managers need a schedule that is dynamic, just like their jobs. Unfortunately, most project managers are too busy to update their schedule based on every event that arises and they spend too much time tracking down other people to gather the data they need. Moreover, most project managers are using separate systems for project control and project scheduling. The change orders, submittals and daily reports tracked in one system aren’t being reflected in the scheduling system that manages the critical path.
Still estimating the old-fashioned way? Pen, paper, and bare-bones spreadsheets still comprise the cost estimating “systems” of the majority of construction firms. Why is this so, when just about everyone uses accounting and project management software applications? We hear lots of excuses, ranging from “I’m the only one who really knows the material and labor costs in my region” to “It’s easier to do it by hand than to learn a new program”. (more…)
