Project Controls blog

In this article, I will run through all the steps required to produce an elegant Engineering Progress Report.

The intent is not to delve into the manner in which the progress or schedule are updated. I have assumed you have a schedule and progress status for each key area. It is quite amazing how easy is to generate this dashboard, and also the extensions available to use this not just for engineering, but for fabrication, material deliveries, major milestones, contractor key activities, etc.

I will outline the format for our 2 key datasets and then follow with the creation of 2 dashboards: An Overall Status Gauge, and the full detail EPR Dashboard

P6 Schedule Data

Below is our data set we want to use. This data set has been specifically tailored to our resulting visual. Thus, instead of linking directly to an XER, importing into a data model, and performing perhaps too much data work, a nice trick is to instead define specific VIEWS inside P6, so that you can easily copy-paste directly into Excel, then import directly into your dashboard. Thus, the below can be quickly generated each schedule update cycle.

A very nice aspect of this data set is the field “TYPE”. It is good practice to tag activities of a specific type (this ties into my belief about using a framework approach to approach controls). Thus, in theory, you can export the entire schedule, and drive many different dashboards by just filtering on different TYPE fields. In this example I have used

• M090 = 90% Model Review
• M100 = 100% AFC

Although, consider tagging every concrete pour Activity in your schedule with C010. You can then use that code to drive a similar dashboard for concrete pours: Or you use F100 for Module Fabrication, where we tag the completion activity for each module for use in dashboard. Ultimately you create a catalog of TYPE codes and can go dashboard crazy with how easy this turns out to me.

This data does not have all the fields we will need in our dashboard. Specifically we will want to create a several measures that will allow for a few metrics. We will need to know if an activity is “FINISHED”, “NOT FINISHED”, and “Critically LATE”. Because these fields are dependent on your target audience, its best to leave the generation of these to code (because everyone can code right!). If you wanted to display metrics on “Started”, then your source data would need to include the start date and perhaps the activity status field from P6. Again, its important to understand the relationship between your visual and your data. In this example, I am treating these activities as effectively milestones in which case the concept of “started” doesn’t apply. key conceptual discussions such as this are vital.

Progress Data

The progress data in this example is only overall progress. The intents is to just show an overview for the entire project and quick metrics for model reviews. Ultimately, you would want a “WBS Specific” dashboard that would display more information over the entire lifecycle of that WBS. In that view, you could present the engineering curve and perhaps EVMS metrics.

Strategy – Do not do everything in one place- keep focus

Too often, I see users pushing design features into dashboards, for what appears to just be whimsical value. Dashboards are not meant to answer 100 questions. Its easier to have 100 dashboards each displaying a key metric, as opposed to 1 dashboard displaying 100 metrics. Keep your approach CLEAN and FOCUSED.

Ideally, our progress data will include fields such as Area, WBS. In this example I have pulled data with just 1 data date and only 1 dataseries (Engineering_Overall). Your backend progress data will likely have data from multiple cut off dates and for multiple series.

Our progress data will look like this. The full data set will also contain a series for “Construction_Overall” too. This will be used on our summary page to outline the power in using this approach to progress data.

Linking our Data into PowerBI

In this example, both data files are simply Excel based files with the data converted to table. This allows for the easiest importing (and also allows for quick refresh of data). Housing the data in the excel files can also facilitate a movement to a more digital way of thinking (more on that in another article)

VISUALIZATION 1 – SUMMARY GAUGE

I am a firm believer in Overall Project Flash reports. So, when we think about dashboards we should have a starting point our overall project status. Thus, the elements presented here are only a key subset of metrics and visuals I would expect on a Project Status Report dashboard.

In this example, looking at engineering progress, we want to see what Percent % Complete we are and how that compares against our Planned % Complete.

A Gauge is a good way to provide a quick visual (Bullet charts are other, and really, the skies the limit)

To generate this we need to create 2 measures: Actual % and Planned %. This is where you really need to understand how dashboards work and how databases work. If you feed a computer a data source, it is no innate way of know something as simple as “What is the current %”. Therefore, we need to write some code.

Because of the format of our progress data, we can search for the maximum data date, then find the value of our actual % field on that date. We can follow an identical approach for the Planned %. Depending on your data, you would need to custom build these measures.

Code to generate our measure for Current %

Code to generate our measure for Planned % (similarly we could also pull in our Plan late)

The required fields for the gauge are obviously these 2 measures.

• Value = M_Progress_Actual
• Target Value = M_Progress_Plan

We will also need to provide a filter where Series=”Engineering_Overall” (note that this gauge can now be easily reproduced to showcase planned vs actual for all Series inside our data source. Obviously in the image above you can see I created 2 gauges each with a filter for the specific data series. Ultimately if your back end data has multiple data series for progress sliced and diced different ways, all you have to do is adjust your filter and you can display an endless series of graphs. Of, you can fancy with smart slicers too.

VISUALIZATION 2 – Engineering Progress Report

This is perhaps the most easy to read, interactive and intuitive view into engineering I have ever seen. We can immediately filter into what areas are complete, what areas are critical, scroll to see upcoming deliverables and see an overall graph.

It might seem we have a lot going on here, but again, this is all driven off 2 quite simple data sources, and for this page, mostly everything here is from 1 schedule driven table.

The Data Table

The Table is just pulling from our Schedule data (although I have inserted a page level filter to only include activities with the TYPE = M100 and M090). Our fields are as

In the above image, you can see I have had to insert a few measures. I don’t want to go into them all. I’ve inserted some conditional formatting into the Actual/Forecast date column. To achieve this, I created a measure Activity_Status_Num

Then, with these values I can select a formatting specific just for that column in the table. This is very nice feature of the tables in PowerBI that can add nice level of polish.

The Donut Charts

A nice feature of the donut chart is the count metric in the middle. It is generated from a nice little bit of code as seen below. We have 2 Donut Charts. One for our 90% activity and another for the 100%. Thus, all we need to do is place a visual level filter on each.

The real power of the Donut Chart is to allow for very quick sorting – after all we want to see the critical late activities right! Just click the red 90% or 100% section.

Progress Graph

We have a progress graph too. This is effectively a dumb page level graph. It is not linked to a specific progress series for each WBS. So it will not auto update, and our data model does not link these tables. Although, the graph should add context to the overall page. Deviations from the plan curves, should be viewed by a growing number of critically late packages.

Care needs to be made whenever we look at schedule dates and progress graphs. We do not typically create progress graphs at an activity level (although, you can certainty consider it – I would offer caution against going down that route).

EXTENSIONS

This example has show the power simple data sets can have to improve visibility into our projects. This only showcased a few engineering based activities. However, if you read between the lines, you will understand there is nothing “engineering specific” about what I have done. This approach is completely universal. Given this example also included a progress data set for Construction, obviously, the easiest extension will be to link in a few construction activities in the same way.

Recently, it has hit me, just how poor our project management world is. The ability to clearly communicate and understand what is occurring on a project appears completely lost. Planners have absolutely amazing schedules (I do believe this), cost engineers have incredible detail about the cost build ups sliced and diced every which way, our document management systems are full with every manner of communication – BUT we are still left sitting in meetings where everyone is confused with various key information either not available, or buried inside someone own excel file, bounced off 100 emails threads, or a million other permutations.

Issue – Visibility into our Projects Sucks

Why has this happened? In my view, our leadership teams have failed at pushing good practices of project management. Leadership teams have transitioned from “manage the work” to “manage the people” (thank you Edin M for this quote).

Solution – Get Back to Basics

Project Management is task management (you can argue, but even all the new people management issues – are still tasks and can be managed in the same way).

We are building something – lets focus on the activities required to build (and engineer, and contract and procure). All the activities that exist in our Primavera schedules! We need these activities front in center and OWNED by project management. Honestly, how can we even have a management discussion and NOT have the schedule front and center. The schedule says what we should be working on, the schedule says when we should finish something, the schedule says what comes next!

I believe that schedules have been forgotten in project management because they are too unwieldy, to abstract, can only be run by P6 jockeys and not the project at large. We need to get our schedules into the hands of those that actually manage the scope.

In the past, our leadership were more in-tuned to schedules and this synergy was easier. However i fear in today’s world, our leadership have lost the tools and dealing with our schedules (no thanks to our reliance on antiquated tools like P6 that perpetuate the need for designated planning teams to operate the software in pure isolation to the real PM teams).

Issue – We need better Project Management tools.

Answer – They exist everywhere!

Commercially built, off the shelf project management software has risen to be one of the dominant fields of software development. The construction world needs to embrace the tools and get back to basics. It is odd in that 20 years ago, the leaders in project management was the construction world. However, when the technology world sprung up, they didn’t have the knowledge we did, so they built their own tools and approaches. I now believe the tide has turned to the point construction project management now severely trails the rest of the business world.

So How Does This Work?

First, the corporate strategy teams need to decide on a platform (hint – USE JIRA).

JIRA Quick Demo

Here is an example of a JIRA typical managemetn page using JIRA.

This is a short quick example of some substation work. I have populated JIRA with a few activities that might mirror what you currently manage inside your existing schedule. The difference here is that these activities are not updated by a planner, they are activity managed.

This process to push the ownership of schedule tasks to those that actually manage and deliver the scope is where immense value can be gained. Additionally, each activity allows for commentary and discussion. The ability to insert comments and discuss an activity or its relationships with other activities also brings teams together an allows for a focus on touch points to be activity managed.

OpenProject.org Example

However, really the choice of software isn’t that critical, its the work processes you are going to change – the new online PM tools are structurally all the same. What we are pushing is simply “clarity in what we are doing”. We are pushing the management oversight of what we do, into the hands of those that actually manage the scope. Don’t hide your schedule, don’t hide weekly and daily reports inside your document control system – embed everything into what is effectively a social media platform.

In this example, I am using OpenProject.org , however, keep in mind there are a lot of systems that all work similar.

Add activities

The starting point for me would be to add you P6 activities to your tool. This is the natural place to begin. You schedule already has a structure and usually a very good balance of level of detail.

In the above, I have added a typical task that will exist in our P6 schedules. Immediately off the bat, we can see we are operating in a distributed web based environment. We have a nice detailed description for this activity and we have the ability to assign this task to a person.

Up to this point, we are a little overlapped with P6. However, what is lacking in P6 is the ability to really discuss and communicate and UPDATE information associated with a task. The ability to pull the task into a proper project management discussion.

The above example says more than you can find in any weekly or monthly report. A picture tells a 1000 stories! The picture is also properly assigned to the activity it represents. The activity has a clearly visible Finish date than can be live edited 24/7.

Our new tools are not meant to replace P6. They are meant to force our discussions into properly structured slices of the project. They are meant to clearly communicate the status of activities. They are meant to get everyone onto the same playing fields when discussing something so that 5 different people do not end up with 10 different dates.

An activity only has 1 start and finish date, an activity only has one percent complete. It is maddening when a project manager asks me to insert the contractual dates into a report. Honestly, when you are building something, the contract date is useless in helping you decide “when will this finish”. It was only the starting point. When you get people out of their office view, in into “I need to manage this scope” you quickly understand that the contract date, or even contractors weekly reports are useless. You have to make a determination of when an activity will finish based on what you know at that time – and be proactive in actively editing the dates when required

Empower people to update activities!

This is So Simple?

I sit and look at this capability of something I built in 30 minutes on a Sunday morning and really wonder why our Project Management is leading us down what may not be avenues of real improvement to projects. Does our Project Leadership have the vision to accept such simple solutions to improve our communication?

Digital Transformation?

I have discussed this before, digital transformation is all about Keywords – not project management. Real digital transformation is about altering the way we work – not building a dashboard or a database. This is why digital transformation is not working. Provide tools and process to manage the work, enable your staff to manage their own scope, and clearly communicate and update their tasks.

Really think about how you manage your scope and how implementing a more social platform to break down the walls of communication. Understand how this is disruptive to our old ways of working (not updating schedules). Get people talking off just one play-sheet!

Twitter in Construction

I’d like to end this with what I thought was the most amazing application of this new management approach.

Mersey Gateway Twitter Site

I kid you not. During construction, these guys posted nearly daily pictures and updates.

While working on this project from the home office, I got better updates from the project twitter site, then I did from the project manager. Yes, are you finally able to see that solutions exist, creative solutions exist, that can bring construction in the new digital world!