Application of MS Project to manage Design effort
Application of MS Project to manage Design effort
(OP)
We are a medium size civil design firm with project fees running from $5000 to $500,000. We would like to use MS Project to manage our own work i.e. monitor effort and cost of work in progress (WIP) on a weekly basis. This could turn into a burdensom job in MS Project for small projects, yet we need to keep both large and small projects within the same system.
Any experience in this would be greatly appreciated.
Any experience in this would be greatly appreciated.





RE: Application of MS Project to manage Design effort
Don’t think of this as a burden for the small projects. Use it as a training aid for the junior engineers so that they can gain experience with Project on smaller projects. Think of it as a marketing tool where you can demonstrate to small clients that you have a handle on the management of the design process and are worthy of being considered for larger projects.
You can role up all current projects into one master project for a complete overview of the firms workload. This will greatly help in evaluating the competing needs of different departments and allow for rational judgments in resource allocation. (for example, which project gets drafting time first and how many draftsmen should be assigned?) This will make your firm more competitive in the marketplace. (or allow you more profits by keeping costs under control.)
Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng
Construction Project Management
From conception to completion
www.kitsonengineering.com
RE: Application of MS Project to manage Design effort
If you're off by 10% on estimating your hours, that could be half or all of your margin. While this is often made up by uncompensated overtime, the less you have to exercise that option, everyone will be happier and more productive.
Obviously, the planning aspect must be followed up by the bookkeepping; there's no much point in doing the planning if you never find out if your plan was actually on the mark or not. The earned value aspect is tough to thing to instill, but long-term benefit is an better understanding of where every hour of work goes. Additionally, it can provide you a better picture of program progress as well as potentially giving you an earlier indication of trouble.
This means that your tasks need to be segmented into small enough "chunks" with clearly defined products so that problems with schedule or productivity are readily apparent.
TTFN
RE: Application of MS Project to manage Design effort
Suggestions are great. I am looking for actual experiences and the historical results/dificulties. The question comes down to this: the more detail that is included, the longer the delay before reports can be issued and acted upon. This is particularly true in accounting. Has anyone found an appropriate means to determine how to integrate Project with accounting (Soloman and Win2 in our case) and get weekly reports that tell whether to work over the weekend?
hlsodom
RE: Application of MS Project to manage Design effort
The best you could reasonably hope for from a tradeoff of effort vs efficacy is a once-per-week snapshot. Your team leads should have daily visibility. That's what they're for and that's what they should be doing. Even if you could get it integrated with an accounting program, there would be no new information that couldn't be gotten from Project anyway, since all the input data comes from Project.
TTFN
RE: Application of MS Project to manage Design effort
Time is generally lost while various skills/disciplines wait on one another. There is always too much or not enough work load for all to balance. In order to prevent slack the someone must work overtime. This can be done daily. If daily extra time doesn't get the project on track the weekend is still available. That requires a weekly report. Sadly, months do not have days off at the end, so monthly reports are useless for control of projects that are billed out monthly.
Thanks
hlsodom
RE: Application of MS Project to manage Design effort
TTFN
RE: Application of MS Project to manage Design effort
The accounting department gathers and produces payroll information. The PM produces estimates and statistics of percentages of milestone completions. In order to communicate the condition of the project the two have to use a common tool. Percentages of completion don't mean much until they are matched with percentages of budget cost. Do Project not bring the two together and communicate whether or not they are in line?
hlso
RE: Application of MS Project to manage Design effort
Accounting is merely provides the weekly status of charges expended against various accounts. It's solely the job of the lead to verify the charges and update the documentation.
Our usual practice is that accounting provides a name run every Monday morning that the IPT leads review. Normally, the hours charged data is then entered into either Excel or Project and totals are updated.
The only catch is when the value of an hour changes, which then requires that the leads rebalance their budgeted hours to account for the loss in available budget hours.
TTFN
RE: Application of MS Project to manage Design effort
Thank you for your valuable assistance.