HASMIZA BINTI HADZIR

 dan Salam Sejahtera.. 

First of all, I would like to thanks our beloved lecturer , DR.Rozana  as they taught and guided us to explore and understand the knowledge related to Construction And Project Management.   

My first impression and in my thinking, I was afraid and feel worried with this subject. It seems that many professional schedulers prefer the functionality of MS Project.

 From this workshop, it really useful for me because I have get experience using project management principles, methodologies, and tools. I have provided project oversight and created project plans to manage and control projects throughout their lifecycle, including preparing, justifying, and/or administering the budget for an assigned program area that is complex and changing rapidly. I have provided guidance/training to other staff on effective use of Microsoft Project to assist in project management. 

 We in the team included members from a variety of professional skill and have difference experience. By that we learn more from each other, sharing knowledge and experience and so on. Other than that, I have been feeling the real project with responsibility for carrying out one or more projects or initiatives. These projects required me to plan and direct the work, maintain the schedule, report progress, and assure the quality of the work performed.

 Experience tracking schedules and monitoring project action items for multiple projects that have strict deadlines to ensure that projects are delivered on time and within budget. Besides that, I have assisted in planning, managing, and controlling projects to ensure successful outcomes. I have also conducted and documented assessments to ensure that project phases and deadlines were met.

 MS Project integrate and exchange data well with our Oracle based project controls database. I personally agree that MS Project can plan projects efficiently and reliably with it. From what I have learn from workshop at Tanjung Piai, MS Project can do everything that we need:

-Establishing a logic linked activity network

- Assigning durations and budget work hours to each activity

-Microsoft Project give us two option whether we want to have output in term of early start    or late finish first. After that, we can have the Gantt Chart.

- PERT analysis to establish optimistic, likely and pessimistic schedules

- Assigning and leveling resources

- Establishing a baseline schedule and budget

- Establishing the critical path

- Entering earned man-hours and actual costs

- Monitoring and analyzing progress against the baseline

- Performing earned value analysis

- Forecasting completion dates and costs

- Automatically re-scheduling incomplete work to beyond the status date

- Re-baselining and creating interim plans (up to 11 baselines are available)  

When I tell people that I’m a Project Manager, I often get an initial “Oh….neat!” response which is usually followed by a comment that is something along the lines of “So….what exactly do you do?” Occasionally if I’m speaking with a Software Developer I may get a mild snarl, a clear sign they’ve had experience working with a poor project manager; a topic I will address in future articles.What this tells me is that not only is there a ways to go before the practice of Project Management is understood; but even further to go before it is valued more widely than it is now. For how can something be properly valued if it isn’t truly understood?

This is of course not to say that the practice of Project Management isn’t widely appreciated in many organizations. Indeed, a large number of companies have implemented Project Management Offices, the Project Management Institute is exploding in popularity, and it certainly seems that the number of Project Management openings out-numbers the supply of Project Managers. However, it is often times larger organizations that have adopted this practice, and in an economy where just under half of the work-force is employed by small businesses there are a significant number of organizations that have never used Project Managers, and even more employees that have never worked with a Project Manager. Ironically, it is small businesses that could quickly and painlessly reap the benefits of Project Management.

So what exactly is Project Management an what does a Project Manager do? According to the Project Management Institute (PMI) “a project is a unique temporary endeavor, with a set beginning and end.” and that “More formally, PMI defines project management as ‘the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to a broad range of activities in order to meet the requirements of a particular project.’” This second part may not tell you much without diving further into the subject; but let’s focus on the former for now. In order to understand Project Management, it is critically important to understand that a project is a unique, temporary endeavor with a specific objective. Project Management is not Operations. And while a specific operational objective may be a project, and a project upon completion may be handed over to operations, the two are distinctly different.

Now that we’re clear on what a Project is, we can move onto the more formal definition quoted above. Essentially, this is saying that Project Management is the methodology used to achieve the objective of a project. Therefore, a Project Manager is someone that has the necessary “knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques” to manage a unique endeavor and ensure that it meets it’s objectives.

Even knowing all this, it still may not be clear to you what exactly a Project Manager does. A project manager is a little like the manager of a baseball team. They make sure that the objective is clear, that it is understood by everyone on the team, that all parties (stakeholders) have had input into the project, that all the required work is understood, that each team member knows what they are responsible for, ensures that risks are identified and contingency plans have been created, verifies that all work is being completed on schedule, etc, etc, etc. The list of course goes on and on. The reason I like using the analogy of the baseball manager though is because when some people hear what a Project Manager does, they feel they shouldn’t even need a project manager. They initially think that if everyone on their team did their job the project would be successfully completed even in the absence of a Project Manager. This can only be true however in the same way that a baseball team doesn’t need a manager to play a baseball game. It could be done, and they might even win some games, but they won’t win the World Series. The same is true with projects. In the absence of a Project Manager there are certainly some items that will be accomplished; it is certain however that there will be delays, cost overruns, quality will suffer, and that the end result may be quite different than what the project called for. Ultimately, Project Management matters for the same reason management matters in baseball; because whether it’s a baseball game or introducing a new product or service, winning matters.

In addition to assigning dates to project activities, project scheduling is intended to match the resources of equipment, materials and labor with project work tasks over time. Good scheduling can eliminate problems due to production bottlenecks, facilitate the timely procurement of necessary materials, and otherwise insure the completion of a project as soon as possible. In contrast, poor scheduling can result in considerable waste as laborers and equipment wait for the availability of needed resources or the completion of preceding tasks. Delays in the completion of an entire project due to poor scheduling can also create havoc for owners who are eager to start using the constructed facilities.

Attitudes toward the formal scheduling of projects are often extreme. Many owners require detailed construction schedules to be submitted by contractors as a means of monitoring the work progress. The actual work performed is commonly compared to the schedule to determine if construction is proceeding satisfactorily. After the completion of construction, similar comparisons between the planned schedule and the actual accomplishments may be performed to allocate the liability for project delays due to changes requested by the owner, worker strikes or other unforeseen circumstances.

In contrast to these instances of reliance upon formal schedules, many field supervisors disdain and dislike formal scheduling procedures. In particular, the critical path method of scheduling is commonly required by owners and has been taught in universities for over two decades, but is often regarded in the field as irrelevant to actual operations and a time consuming distraction. The result is “seat-of-the-pants” scheduling that can be good or that can result in grossly inefficient schedules and poor productivity. Progressive construction firms use formal scheduling procedures whenever the complexity of work tasks is high and the coordination of different workers is required.

Formal scheduling procedures have become much more common with the advent of personal computers on construction sites and easy-to-use software programs. Sharing schedule information via the Internet has also provided a greater incentive to use formal scheduling methods. Savvy construction supervisors often carry schedule and budget information around with wearable or handheld computers. As a result, the continued development of easy to use computer programs and improved methods of presenting schedules hav overcome the practical problems associated with formal scheduling mechanisms. But problems with the use of scheduling techniques will continue until managers understand their proper use and limitations.

A basic distinction exists between resource oriented and time oriented scheduling techniques. For resource oriented scheduling, the focus is on using and scheduling particular resources in an effective fashion. For example, the project manager’s main concern on a high-rise building site might be to insure that cranes are used effectively for moving materials; without effective scheduling in this case, delivery trucks might queue on the ground and workers wait for deliveries on upper floors. For time oriented scheduling, the emphasis is on determining the completion time of the project given the necessary precedence relationships among activities. Hybrid techniques for resource leveling or resource constrained scheduling in the presence of precedence relationships also exist. Most scheduling software is time-oriented, although virtually all of the programs have the capability to introduce resource constaints.