Planning tips

Planning Tips A White Paper by: Saleh El Shobokshy, BSc Engineering, CPM- IPMA, PRINCE2 Practitioner

Project Controls Manager, Laing O’Rourke, Abu Dhabi, UAE +971 50 6531072, [email protected]

LOR-PCO-Dec08 Page 1 of 9

mailto:[email protected]

1. Introduction and Scope For the Planning Department of ALDAR Laing O’Rourke JV, the Project Controls Office thought

of preparing a paper to provide general awareness and to help planners in general and junior

planners in particular with developing their programmes.

This is not a procedure or a protocol document. This paper lists a number of useful planning tips, some of them are the resultant of personal

experience and the some were collected from different other professional sources. Further

good ideas are welcomed. Please email Saleh El Shobokshy [email protected].

2. Concepts • As the planner, what is your job? – To draw programmes, or to control and take

responsibility for all of the time related aspects of the project?

- People starting out in planning often think it is the first.

- Good planners realise it is the second.

- Great planners do something about it.

• The planning process is important (not just the plan itself) - Creating a project plan

forces you to think about how you will build your project - reducing the risk because

various strategies and approaches have been worked through and the chosen

approach the makes the most sense. The goal should not be to simply go through the

motions to produce a plan; it should be for the team to produce a realistic plan

against which the project can be successfully delivered and managed.

• Consider the use of target programmes – discuss with your colleagues if this is going to

be used. Make it very clear how this will work. Some people love them; some think they

are philosophically wrong.

• Every planner should experience planning and monitoring all phases of a typical

project during his professional career and not just focuses on tender planning or

construction planning etc.

3. Structure of the Programme • For a project, think of the intended structure and levels of your programmes.

• Before input, think about the required output - There maybe certain mandatory

reporting requirements, so before developing the plan it is always useful to think about

how you will structure the plan to suit the reporting requirements.

• Read the contract. It nearly always contains clauses that will influence how you as the

planner will have to do your job. It does not matter if you are the first or last to

programme the project, read it.


• Think about time slices, filters, extracts, look-ahead programmes – how are these

going to work?

• Consider very early on in a project, is an overall master programme going to be used?

Sub-contractors will be doing the details? Are you going to do all of the detail? Are

you going to import sub-contractors programmes?

4. Programme Set Up • Before starting a new programme, copy a previous programme and use it as a

template – programme retains all the previous settings such as holidays, resources,

costs, code libraries etc. Do not re-invent the wheel.

• Set up the calendars that you need early i.e. - whether whole weeks only or with official

holidays etc. Changing / amending calendars later is a painful experience.

• Thinking about the “look” of the programmes is important if you are producing a

range of programmes for one client or project and want to keep a high degree on

consistency in the programme format and presentation.

• The careful use of colour helps the reader understands the programme - too much

colour / too many bar styles can frighten the reader and lose the impact / message.

• Use notes and clipart (attach to bars) - Useful for highlighting milestone dates, certain

activity names etc.

• Before you start creating the activities, decide which additional info you need to add –

responsibility, resources, area / zone etc and add that info as you go.

• Set easy to remember key milestones. Remember that you are not the only one who is

reading the programme. Key milestones should be well understood / agreed by the

team. Depending on the project, try something like Completion of scheme design,

Scheme design presentation day, Enabling works complete, 1st pile driven, Structural

work complete, First cladding panel fixed, Building watertight, Plastering started, Plant

room MEP complete, Power on, lifts running, etc.

• Don’t have too many milestones (they lose their impact)

• It is a good practice to use the “Milestone” term for contractual dates and “Flag” term

for non-contractual dates.


5. Who Owns it? • It is not you, it is the team. Everyone on the project should have input into the

development and evolution of the project plan.

• The planner’s job is to collate the thoughts of many people into an agreed coherent

plan – not to sit on your own and create the plan.

• When a plan is created by one person and worked by another, they are less likely to

believe in it and more likely to blame the plan.

• A good planner spends no more than a third of their time planning. The other two

thirds are spent communicating information relevant to the plan.

• You have two ears and one mouth – use them in that proportion.

• Always get a second pair of eyes to review your programme.

• Get contractor or sub contractor “buy in / involvement” in to the programme at earliest

possible stage of development.

6. Developing the Programme • The stages of developing a programme (NEVER just draw it and issue it)

– Information gathering – All possible relevant information

– Options consideration (there is never only one answer)

– Produce an outline programme

– Options discussion and agreement

– Add more detail / draw pictures

– Testing with stakeholders

– Issue

– Monitor progress

– Mitigate and revise

• Before you start, meet the design team and ask them to present the scheme to you and

your colleagues. The designers know far more about the scheme than you do.

• Above all, if you do not understand, ASK.

• Get hold of the cost plan / BOQ asap – it is full of useful information.

• Create the programme in conjunction with logistics / phasing drawings.

• Use WBS, use WBS, use WBS. Your WBS should be derived from the project context

and from your organisation protocols.

• Always document constraints and assumptions. You will always make assumptions,

which might turn out to be wrong. List them, so others can tell what you have done.

• Clients often want work to start on site very quickly, sometimes too quickly. If they are

wrong, tell them – that is your job.


• When producing logic / relations, link a small batch of activities and reschedule as you

build up the programme rather than list the activities, set durations and then think

about linking them. It can be difficult to identify the link that pushes a bar out of its

desired position if there is a mass of logic links. It is easier to identify errors and make

corrections as you go.

• In many cases, using Finish to Start with –ve lag gives the same planned dates as when

using Start to Start with +ve lag for same set of activities. However, you need to ask

yourself, what is the actual dependency? That magic question will help you to use the

proper link and not the link that draws the programme only. Always note that links

might look ok when the programme has no progress, but once you start progressing

the programme, you may experience unexpected bar locations and that is always due

to using the wrong link type in the first place.

• Build seasonal variations in programmes, e.g. less working hours in Ramadan,

workforce productivity in summer.

• It is controversial, but consider adding additional “hidden float”. Your client will hate

you for this, but your project team will love you.

• Identify time risks. Do something about them. Most planners do not. Add notes on your

programme setting out what you think the risks are.

• Most planners develop procurement and construction programmes, but not design and

material submission approvals. Why? Programming them are just as important as

programming the construction, so make sure that somebody is developing a

programme for them.

• 'S Curve' showing the trend of work done against the baseline is a much more

persuasive and powerful visual tool for getting contractors to increase labour than any

bar chart ever will be.

• Establish and assign activity codes to ALL activities. It helps you to track not only where

you are, but also will provide you with a very powerful tool to manage your

programme using different sections, trades, levels, zones, etc.

• Do not use auto roll up’s – they are dreadful. They do not properly summarise the

detail below.

• Try to be consistent in the level of detail for different parts of a project. Most planners

have more experience of particular aspects, structures, MEP services, fit out etc. A plan

needs a consistent level of accurate detail for all aspects, so if you are lacking in

experience in one aspect, get help.


• Show a breakdown of lead-in periods. Never just show an overall period, as it is hard

to check against this. Design / approval / procurement / manufacture / delivery are a

good minimum.

• Consider and plan on the programme the temporary works requirements as you go.

Programme all of the work, not just the permanent work.

• Do not forget to programme the pre-assembly activities.

• Every week / month, before doing updates, save a copy of the previous programme

and archive it.

• Develop activity IDs that help you when linking, filtering and managing the

programme in general. Do not let the tool to number the activities for you. Do it

yourself. Examples 10000 for proc, 20000 for design, 30000 for construction, 36000

for block works, etc.

7. Production Rates • Look up similar project types, size, complexity to seek programme advice – your

colleagues have probably done it before.

• If uncertain of any aspect of your programme, use relationships with suppliers to

obtain in-practice rates & methods of construction.

• Consider your, your team and your organization previous experience with rates and

methods.

• Make best use of benchmarks and/or other example to check your own programmes

for a sanity check.

• Use the Internet as it is full of useful information

– Planning Planet

– PEO (Planning Engineers Organisation)

– PMI – COS (Project Management Institute College of Scheduling)

– The Association of the Advancement of Cost Engineering


8. Level of Details • Make sure the level of detail is appropriate – not thousands of activities un-necessarily.

People do not want detail. They want simplicity. They want to understand.

• What message are you trying to convey? Use a summary to present the overall context

with separate sheet to show the message.

• Many people cannot read a Gantt chart. Always consider your audience.

• Sequence is King - durations are a product of resources but the sequence is the most

difficult to change. Therefore, the planner should use whatever tools are available to

articulate the construction sequence. This could include cartoons. One of the most

powerful planning tools is PowerPoint.

• The three most important things about planning – Communication, Communication,

Communication. If the recipients do not understand it, it is useless and it is your

mistake.

• Normally this means producing sequence drawings, phasing plans, sketches, logistics

drawings, simple diagrams and charts.

• Always – Be – Clear.

9. Terminology • Stick to industry standard terminology and the project’s contractual ones and try to

avoid too many abbreviations in the descriptions.

• Try to use the same technical language as the specialist you are dealing with.

10. Scheduling • Utilise as mush as you can of the tool you are using for planning and scheduling.

Current tools provide planners with hundreds of functions that help developing more

realistic plans and help with performing analysis much faster.

11. Network and Total Float • One way of determining how well a network has been put together and how well the

network logic has been developed is to take the start activity of the network and move

it on one year. If the overall programme shifts a year and the completion date shifts by

the same amount, then a good deal of network logic has been input and the logic

should stand up to further robust interrogation. However, if the network is full of fixed

dates and constraints, with lots of open ends and high float values, then many activities

will be 'left behind' and the network will become distorted.


• You may also sort the programme by the Total Float to examine how logical and true

is its duration for all activities.

• Try not to be carried away with too many logic links and if you find many links

terminate in a single activity try to identify the important one(s). Some programmes

lose their clarity when there are too many links between activities.

• Set aside a reasonable amount of time for closing out the project. The last 5% of

construction activities is always the hardest. So plan your activities to include about

95% of workload and keep the last 5% on the closing out activities. In other words,

when you complete 95% of an activity, record it as 100% done. The remaining 5%

should then be done through the closing out activities.

• Understand the critical path and check if activities on that path really make sense. In

many cases, you find that you need to reconsider your logic to make the critical path

more logical. Example, painting a ground floor of a tower typically does not fall on the

CP, however, power connection typically is.

• If activity duration is longer than say 3-4 weeks, try to split it into shorter activities for

more control of your programme and to enable you to establish relations that are

more realistic. That of course applies to detailed programmes and not summary ones.

12. Constraints / Milestones / Key Dates • First section (top) of the programme to have key events / milestones – this enables

everyone to know the critical dates.

• Do not forget to programme the client’s (and others) deliverables and milestones they

need to achieve. Very often, they cause delay, so show what needs to be done when.

• Document all constraints and keep revisiting them every update to revise as relevant.

13. Updating / Progressing • Update / progressing the programme means recording actual dates, forecast

remaining duration and percentage of works done. After your schedule the

programme, you will know when the project is forecasted to finish.

• Try to use physical percentage complete instead to duration percentage complete, as

the earlier is more logical and represent the actual status of the project.

• Next task is to mitigate delays and that could be via many approaches:

• Splitting activities into shorter chunks – doing in parallel

• Cancelling activities that are no longer valid

• Changing methods

• Changing sequence

• Increasing resources – acceleration



• Subletting works

• You might not want to show the client the impact of rescheduling, but it is a reality.

• Remember, it is very easy to lose a day or a week on a project. Recovering a single day

might take weeks.

• Keep records and photos, you will need them. Record anything important. If it is not

written down, it did not happen.

14. The End • Do not use programmes. Use a schedule / list process that looks at “issues” – what

issues might stop you completing on time?

• Produce the As-Built programme. That helps you and your organization to retain your

experience in a structured and logical manner and you will use it when planning your

next project.

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