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"Don't worry, we've got plenty of time."
Those are some words we’ve heard all too many times from both Clients and Contractors, and you can be sure that ‘plenty’ of time either wasn’t long enough, or it got left to the last minute.
At Hadron, we believe that time is the most valuable resource for a project. Financial aspects of a project are usually considered to be the most important, but money is a resource you can always negotiate, unlike time, which once gone, cannot be recovered.
The potential impact that a minor slip can have on a project can be underestimated, and result in unexpected costs and key deliverables for a project being missed. Without understanding what is not only on the horizon, but beyond it, a project can easily drift off course and only focus on the short term, rather than providing a strategic plan for delivery.
So how do you prevent that from happening?
The primary tool project managers use to manage time is a programme (also called a schedule) which sets out the individual activities of the project, their duration, sequencing, and key milestones. It is used to track progress for each item, allowing an easy way to track actual progress against planned progress. When a change is made to an activity, the programme should implement that change across all elements of the project allowing it to instantaneously demonstrate how a day delay in February can lead to a week lost in April.
These task durations and dependencies are visualised in the form of a Gantt chart to make it digestible and trackable. Scheduling software such as MS Project, Asta Powerproject, and Primavera P6 are widely used for fit-out and construction projects, and they all basically perform the same function but in different formats.
You could have on your hands what appears to be a very well populated programme, but what others often forget is that a programme is only as accurate as the tasks and dependencies that constitute it. For example, if the IT manager said that a task will take four weeks but neglected to tell anyone until the day before that the task is dependent on a someone else’s task completing first, you’re going to run into a problem.
It is imperative that the whole project team sit down together at the outset of a project to develop and agree the programme. The Project Manager is ultimately responsible for the programme, but if everyone contributes and owns the programme, it is certain to be more accurate and those involved can be held accountable for the durations and dependencies that they advise. It also allows a clearer understanding from everyone on their role in the wider project.
There are things that a client won’t typically know, like how long a 10,000 sq. ft fit out should take; how long it takes to develop a design from RIBA stage 2 to 4, and why you should get on top of that internet line wayleave agreement immediately (because they take forever). That’s where Hadron comes in; with our wealth of experience delivering fit out projects, we can produce and run a programme that will see a client through a project with efficacy and efficiency.
Get in touch with us at jonathan.clark@hadronint.com if you would like to know more about the services we offer.
If you’re already a seasoned programme aficionado and want to become a programme master, we recommend reading CIOB’s Guide to Good Practice in the Management of Time in Major Projects: Dynamic Time Modelling.
