Those involved in the construction of high-rise towers usually like to have an easy-to-understand report that shows the overall project performance on a single page. Of course, by doing so, they want to sacrifice the quality and trustworthiness of the reported performance data. There also could be the requirement to review the project’s performance status at any past period. Although MS Excel can be used to create such a report nevertheless, there is the challenge of verifying the reported performance status as well as view past periods’ performance unless those printed and saved.
The posting made on Linkedin by Eng. Raed Alrabadi, the Senior Planning Engineer at Al Hamad Group of Companies, UAE, provided a perfect example of such a performance report. The high-rise towers report shows the project floor levels listed on the horizontal axis while displaying the different project trades on the vertical axis. The intersection cell details if the work was completed (blue color), progress with reported percent complete (yellow color), no progress, or does not exist as blank. Also, there is a green line that details the planned progress at the reported performance period. In other words, where there are blank cells that fall behind the green line, it means that the trade at that floor level is late. In other words, empty cells could be for delayed trade works or trade work that does not exist at that floor level. The report was created using MS Excel.
Using a Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb, the organization can formalize creating the desired high-rise towers project performance status report. To start with, PMWeb will be used to import the approved baseline project schedule, which will be the basis to determine the start and finish dates of the project’s activities that will be displayed on the performance report. The imported schedule data will also be used in the PMWeb daily reports module and other modules that require the link with the project schedule. PMWeb import function allows importing the activities description, duration, start and finish dates, percent complete, total float, among other project schedule data.
The next step is to create the progress report used to capture the project’s performance data. The form will include the project system and trade to be reported on, the name of the subcontractor responsible for this trade performance, if any, the contractor’s representative accountable for reporting the selected trade performance. The form will also include a table that will capture each building level, the actual start, completion dates, percent complete for those in progress, and the relevant project schedule activity picked from the imported project schedule. The table can be expanded to include fields to report any disruption events that affected the progress of this trade at the specific floor level, among others.
The progress form attachment tab will be used to attach all relevant supporting documents such as progress photos and other documents related to the reported progress. All those documents will be uploaded and stored in the PMWeb document management repository under the specified folder for documenting the project’s actual progress. In addition, links to relevant PMWeb records like RFIs. Daily Reports, Meeting Minutes, Change Order Requests, Change Orders, Confirmation of Verbal Instructions, Inspection Requests, NCR, among others, can be linked to the progress report and link all imported MS Outlook emails.
For example, the default PMWeb daily report module allows capturing the details of work completed for each trade at each floor level along with the number of works completed on that date. The Daily Report location breakdown structure will be used to map all floor levels and areas within each level, and the classification field will be used to have a predefined list of all trades to be reported on. Of course, the daily report also capturing the resource, labor, and equipment, hours spent on completing the reported works for that particular day.
To formalize and enforce accountability on reporting the performance data for each project trade, a workflow will be assigned to the form to identify the needed review and approval steps and who will be given to those tasks. PMWeb conditional workflow allows having different individuals involved in the review and approval process depending on the selected project trade value, e.g., False Ceiling Closing Wet Areas, among others.
For approved progress reports, the project team member will copy the last approved progress report and add the new progress report data for the next follow-on progress period. When copying a form in PMWeb, the status will become “draft” instead of “approved” by default.
The data captured in the progress report will be used to create the high-rise towers visual progress report. Instead of the green line used to report progress, the project team member responsible for notifying a specific trade performance will add the value of 1% in the percent complete field for those floor levels planned to commence but did not. This enables color code for those levels in red, as shown below. Completed trades at each floor will be colored in blue, while those still in progress will have yellow shades depending on the reported percent complete. This can be adjusted to be just yellow-colored while working still in progress.
The same reported performance data can be written by project building level showing each trade performance’s status. The same color-coding will apply to the new performance report layout. Of course, other reports could be created on the captured performance data, such as the list of areas planned to start but did not start. Another report could be made to report on events that could have disrupted or impacted the progress of the different trades at the different floor levels.
