Project Management: the Secrets of Success

By Philip R. Moncrief

Project Management is a broad subject and there have been many excellent books written on the subject. Some are encyclopedic in content. This book is not. Project Managers have little free time and they dont generally spend it reading books on Project Management. Project Management The Secrets of Success is a book of important topics and guidelines for the Project Manager - a book that can be read while traveling or referred to as an issue arises.

Project Management is THE critical skill in the engineering and construction world. Most Presidents and senior managers of engineering and construction companies are former project managers. Even in the Owner organizations, excellent project managers position themselves for senior management roles. Why? Because managing a project is fundamentally business management starting, staffing, running and shutting down a business - excellent preparation for company management.

Project Management can be boiled down to 10 Project Management Commandments. Following these ten commandments alone will not make a Project Manager successful; but, poor performance in any of these areas usually results in failure.

1. Safety first, last and always
2. Contract know it follow it
3. Quality good jobs have high quality
4. Schedule no excuses
5. Basic Project Data verify, then use
6. Be Completion Driven
7. Quantities manage them
8. Money guard it ours or the Clients
9. Lead clearly show the way
10. Client Relationship you have the responsibility

Project Management The Secrets of Success expands each of these topics in detail. The book is not a primer on Project Management; it builds on the knowledge of experienced Project Managers and provides them guidelines and coaching to improve project performance.

Project Management The Secrets of Success also discusses the skills necessary to become an excellent Project manager. They include:

Leadership - giving proper direction and following progress on a detailed level.
Insight being able to understand the status and direction of a project from limited data relying on experience and intuition to root out problems.
Consensus building - seeking alignment from your team and with your Client. Getting all needed input before making decisions.
Communication skills including oral reporting, written communications and presentation skills.
Building excellent Client relationships.
Project risk - how to recognize it and how to mitigate it.
How to keep a project on schedule.
Project costs - understanding them in detail and monitoring and correcting poor cost performance.
Knowledge of contracts - what the key issues are and how to roll down the prime contract terms to subcontractors and vendors.
Understanding construction and being able to drive engineering, design and procurement to support the field.
Knowing and championing Safety - in design and in execution.
Being an outspoken advocate for Quality.

Every experienced Project Manager will benefit from the lessons of Project Management - The Secrets of Success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 7, 2005
• ISBN: 9781462833399

Philip R. Moncrief

Philip Moncrief has worked in the global Engineering Construction industry for nearly 40 years. His experience includes Project Management of very large as well as small projects for world class engineering construction companies including Bechtel and Fluor. He has managed projects in Africa, the US and the Middle East. As a Project Manager and in senior executive positions, he has focused on what makes Projects and Project Managers successful. He is now President of Project Management International, a consulting firm focused on Project Management excellence.

Book preview

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

THE SECRETS OF SUCCESS

PHILIP R. MONCRIEF

Copyright © 2004 by Philip R. Moncrief.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

Section One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Section Two

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Section Three

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Section Four

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Section Five

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Section Six

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Section Seven

Chapter 30

Appendix

Checklist-Business Development Phase

Checklist-Project Kick Off Meeting

Checklist-Project Start-Up

Checklist-Project Organization Phase

Checklist-Engineering Phase

Checklist-Procurement Phase

Checklist-Construction Phase

Checklist-Agenda For Management Review Of Project

Project Manager Reading List

Endnotes

Preface

Project Management is the critical skill in the engineering and construction world. Most Presidents and senior managers of engineering and construction companies are former project managers. Even in the Owner organizations, excellent project managers position themselves for senior management roles. Why? Because managing a project is fundamentally business management—starting, staffing, running and shutting down a business—excellent preparation for company management.

Project Management is a broad subject and there have been many excellent books written on the subject. Some are encyclopedic in content. This book is not. In my experience, Project Managers have little free time and they don’t generally spend it reading books on Project Management. (Makes you wonder who the audience for Project Management books really is.) This is meant to be a short book of important topics to the Project Manager—a book that can be read while traveling or referred to as an issue arises.

My own experience as a Project Manager is nearly all as a Contractor Project Manager. Owner Project Managers have many of the same concerns and issues and do many of the same things as a Contractor Project Manager, and I have tried to generalize the discussions where possible. Nevertheless, I have a Contractor’s perspective and Owners will have to interpret my comments in light of their own environment. (Note: I have used the terms Owner and Client somewhat interchangeably. This is not always the case and an Owner’s Project Manager has the Owner’s business organization as his Client.)

In managing Project Managers, I have found a lot of pretty good Project Managers who just don’t seem to excel. I hope this book helps them discover the areas where their performance can be improved. I have also found a few outstanding project managers and have been lucky enough to have worked for a few, myself. To those Project Managers, I hope you enjoy reading the book, but you may not find anything new here. I’ve just tried to capture what each of you has taught me.

To those who see themselves in my examples, you may have been my subject, but the examples occur frequently enough that I have a number to draw upon. If you are offended by being an example, my advice is to improve in the area and no one will know you were my example.

Many issues are repeated in chapter after chapter. This is not a mistake and I make no apologies for my repetition. These issues are important. If I were able to coach you individually, I’d bring these things up again and again. Since I cannot, my approach is to repeat the issues hoping this will help you grasp their importance. I have generally used the masculine gender to refer to the Project Manager. I do not wish to display a gender bias but the clumsy approach of using he/she and his/hers or even worse, theirs, seems a waste of time. In every case, please substitute she/her/hers as appropriate.

I successfully resisted the temptation to call this book Project Management for Dummies (maybe this book already exists, anyway.) First, dummies don’t generally become Project Managers. Second, this is not a primer on Project Management. I have assumed that the reader already knows a lot about Project Management or is already a Project Manager and what he needs is guidelines and coaching.

I have received a lot of advice and encouragement as I have written this book. I want to thank my wife, Cheryl Moncrief, for her encouragement and patience. I generally got up early in the morning to write and she didn’t complain (or at least I don’t remember her complaining.) A number of friends helped with the review and editing of the book. My daughter, Vicki Hassman, helped with an initial review of the sections on Contract Law and Contract Management and my daughter, Tracy Mounts, who made valuable writing suggestions.

Others who helped include Don Cruver and Poornima Sharma. I would like to give special thanks to Melissa Park for her in depth review of the book, to my wife, Cheryl Moncrief who painstakingly proofread the text and corrected each spelling, grammatical, and formatting error she found and to Stew Heaton, a special friend who, in spite of everything going on in his life, took the time to read the entire book and make a large number of important suggestions to improve the content and the readability. To each of them, I say Thank You. You have made this a better book by your efforts. In spite of all their efforts, if errors have creeped in, I take full responsibility—for the content and for the format of the book.

Introduction

As a start to the subject of Project Management, let me lay out what I believe are the requirements for an excellent project. Probably no project meets all these criteria, but if your project doesn’t meet a large number of them, it probably needs serious attention.

Requirements for an Excellent Project

•   Safety must be practiced by the entire project team.

•   The Owner’s objectives for the project must be clear.

•   Everyone must be focused on the task of completing the project.

•   There must be a clear scope of work that is understood by all participants.

•   Scope must be fixed at the earliest possible opportunity.

•   Any unusual or restrictive characteristics of the project must be identified and communicated to all affected early in the project.

•   The Owner and Contractor must provide sufficient, qualified personnel.

•   Client needs must be well understood and the Client must be asked often, Is this what you want?

•   Client approval requirements must be understood and adhered to.

•   Client reviews must be timely and complete.

•   Cost and schedule must always be a consideration in project decisions.

•   Safety and quality must be topics at all project meetings.

•   Quality performance must be recognized and rewarded.

•   Team building must be an integral part of the execution.

•   Project objectives must be understood and personalized by each team member.

•   Each team member must understand their accountability.

•   There must be open and complete communications—up, down and sideways.

•   Healthy conflict on issues must be encouraged and accepted.

•   There must be respect for others’ opinions and trust in their performance.

•   Everyone must understand and adhere to the contract.

•   Team members must make and keep tough commitments.

•   There must be constant and rigorous forward planning.

•   Early planning must include project turnover and close out.

•   Project schedules must be prepared, statused and monitored as a religion.

•   Project environmental requirements and permits must be understood and followed.

•   Cost estimates must be prepared at each step of the project.

•   Cost contingencies must be established commensurate with the quality of project definition.

•   Budgets must be prepared and committed to by all parties.

•   Technical risks must be identified and managed.

•   Deviations to the plan must be noted and timely corrective action must be taken.

•   Cost trending must be started early and carried out throughout the project.

•   Engineering, procurement and construction must actually talk with each other.

•   Testing, cleaning, inspection and turn-over requirements must be understood from the first.

•   Project procedures must be established, approved and implemented at the earliest opportunity.

•   Everyone must exhibit a positive attitude.

•   Communication procedures and distribution requirements must be established at the start of the project.

A Project Management Work Flow Diagram, Figure 1, has been included as a guide to the rest of the book. It does not include all project activities, just the ones that need a lot of direct involvement by the Project Manager. Each of the activities is discussed in the following chapters.

My greatest advice to Project Managers is Don’t be a victim. By this I mean, take control. Think through each and every action and it’s effect. When things go wrong, put together a strategy to deal with the problem. Take action, don’t let the project and the problems you encounter overwhelm you.

Figure 1

Project Management Work Flow Diagram

Project Management Work Flow Diagram

Figure 1

missing image file

Section One

Project Management

Chapter 1

W

hat is a Project Manager ?

Really excellent Project Managers are rare individuals. No one is born a Project Manager and most of us develop only some of the skills needed to successfully manage a project. What are the necessary skills? They include:

•   Leadership—giving proper direction and following progress on a detailed level.

•   Insight—being able to understand the status and direction of a project from limited data—relying on experience and intuition to root out problems.

•   Consensus building—seeking alignment from your team and with your Client. Getting all needed input before making decisions.

•   Excellent communication skills including oral reporting, written communications and presentation skills.

•   Building excellent Client relationships.

•   An understanding of project risk—how to recognize it and how to mitigate it.

•   An understanding of how to keep a project on schedule.

•   An understanding of project costs (in detail) and experience in monitoring and correcting poor cost performance.

•   Knowledge of contracts—what the key issues are and how to roll down the prime contract terms to subcontractors and vendors.

•   Understanding construction and being able to drive engineering, design and procurement to support the field.

•   Knowing and championing Safety—in design and in execution.

•   Being an outspoken advocate for Quality.

•   BS/MS in Engineering from a recognized school. MBA helpful.

Where do you find such a person? Most Project Managers are developed from the ranks of engineering and construction professionals. At some point in their technical career, they develop an interest in the bigger picture and migrate toward project engineering and project management. Some companies have formal identification and training programs to seek out and train future Project Managers. Truth be known, most Project Managers probably benefited some from a formal selection process, but most are self made to a great extent. Their interest in Project Management was great enough that they took the first, second and third step to becoming a Project Manager.

What experiences should someone try to have in order to develop into a Project Manager? Since Project Management involves managing technical people, a good background is a solid grounding in one or more technical disciplines. This often, but not always, means a degree in engineering coupled with at least 5-10 years of engineering experience. ( Having said that, some of the best Project Managers come from general business backgrounds or worked their way up from a field construction background, without any formal technical training.)

A Project Manager is also a businessman—setting up, running and shutting down a business. A Project Manager should follow these good business practices:

• Learn constantly—extend what you know—aggressively.

•   Don’t try quantum leaps, it’s hard enough to make smaller leaps.

•   Delight your customers.

•   Take care of the small stuff—especially the financial small stuff.

•   Treat your employees the way you would like to be treated.

•   Hire and promote the best—don’t compromise. You will never be sorry.

•   Celebrate your successes. Show appreciation for positive results at all levels.

•   Learn from your failures.

•   Do only the right things and do them well.

•   Aggressively solicit others’ ideas and points of view.

•   The more you practice, the luckier you are.

•   Plan first, act second. If you can’t plan, plan to plan.

•   Never give up.

Project Sponsor

Everyone has to report to someone. In many organizations, the Project Manager reports to a Project Sponsor who represents Contractor Management vis à vis the Client. For projects executed in a joint venture arrangement, the Project Sponsor is normally the Contractor’s representative in the JV Steering Committee. While the Project Manager has full responsibility for the proper execution of the project, the role of the Project Sponsor is to maintain an overview of the project and to intervene in a proactive manner, by:

• Keeping in contact with Client’s management at least monthly in order to establish confident and positive relationships, to detect early enough any dissatisfaction of the Client and the reasons thereof and to defuse any tension/dispute which may arise between Project Managers of both parties

•   Approving the Project Execution strategy.

•   Monitoring the proper execution of the project (time wise and cost wise).

•   Guiding the Project Manager in critical phases of the work (contractual negotiations, submission of claims, etc.)

•   Ensuring the application of good project execution practices.

Chapter 2

10 Commandments of Project Management

I believe Project Management can be boiled down to 10 Project Management Commandments. (Excuse me for choosing the same number—there is no religious significance to my choice of 10). All of these are discussed in Expectations of a Project Manager but they are worth distilling to a short list that the Project Manager can keep handy and use to check his performance daily. The commandments are:

1.   Safety—first, last and always

2.   Contract—know it—follow it

3.   Quality—good jobs have high quality

4.   Schedule—no excuses

5.   Basic Project Data—verify, then use

6.   Be Completion Driven

7.   Quantities—manage them

8.   Money—guard it—yours or the Client’s

9.   Lead—clearly show the way

10.   Client Relationship—you have the responsibility

Much of the rest of this book will be devoted to expanding on these topics and others, but they are worth a word at the start. Don’t misunderstand, following these ten commandments alone will not make a Project Manager successful. But, poor performance in any of these areas will usually result in failure.

Safety

There may not be a magic bullet to make safety a reality, but safe projects start with the attitude and commitment of the Project Manager. As the project leader, the Project Manager’s commitment to safety must be visible and recognized by the other members of the project. The Project Manager must be seen to be leading the safety effort and following all the practices that make up the project safety plan.

Contract

Whether you are a Project Manager for the owner of the facility or the Contractor building it, you must know and enforce the contract. The contract is the bible of execution of the project and in the event of a dispute, it is the single document that will dictate the outcome of the dispute. No matter what verbal agreements have been reached, a court or arbitrator will look first to the contract for guidance in deciding a dispute. Many Project Managers rely on their lawyers to negotiate and understand the contract. This is dangerous and can lead to great misunderstandings in project execution. The Project Manager, above all, must understand his contract.

Quality

No successful project has quality problems. Projects that have quality problems almost always have other problems—particularly schedule, cost and safety. The Project Manager must advocate and enforce quality for it to be important to the other project participants. Poor quality engineering results in poor procurement and poor construction. Poor procurement impacts construction and project cost. Poor construction results in rework and can quickly lead to safety problems as workers try to shortcut the proper work processes.

Schedule

I have never experienced a project that was behind schedule that didn’t have other serious problems—cost overruns and quality issues. Keeping a strict schedule won’t ensure that cost and quality stay on track, but overrunning the schedule often has the opposite impact. Meeting schedule is one area where the Project Manager often has complete control over his fate. The best practice for a Project Manager is Keep Your Schedule. Projects that have schedule problems often were started poorly. See Chapter 5, If It Doesn’t Start Right, It Won’t End Right for more information.

Project Data

Basic project data comes from a variety of sources—the Client, other companies, the industry. The Project Manager must ensure that Project Design Basis and the basic project data is well defined, reviewed, scrutinized and thoroughly vetted before it is used. Discovering late in the project that some of the basic data that engineering and design relied on is incorrect or missing always results in cost and schedule overruns. Don’t take the chance. Check it before it is used.

Be Completion Driven

No one builds a project for its own sake—they build it so it can produce new products. Every project activity needs to be conducted with the end in mind—normal day to day plant