Indeed, a project manager’s ability to effectively manage uncertainty and stay informed about project developments is crucial. Construction projects become more detailed as they progress, with numerous uncertainties in the initial stages. A project manager must be comfortable with this aspect.
Situational awareness involves perceiving, comprehending, and responding effectively to circumstances. It encompasses understanding a situation, collecting pertinent information, analyzing it, and making informed decisions to address potential risks, hazards, or events. Situational awareness facilitates swift and safe responses to disasters by guiding human decision-making.
Utilizing an integrated Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb enables the project manager and the management team to capture real-time project data for later analysis. The project data will include data that relates to project communications, cost, schedule, quality, health, safety, environment, and security (HSSE), risk, procurement, contract, changes, claims and other aspects needed to become aware of what is going on the project. This empowers the project manager to make more informed and sound decisions, enhancing their situational awareness skills.
PMWeb facilitates the digitalization of all processes necessary for managing the entire construction project lifecycle, from inception to handover. This ensures the quality, validity, and traceability of captured data. Specific input templates are provided for each process, with data fields that may include numeric, text, date, list, or other formats. A predefined list of possible values is available for list data types, and some fields may be mandatory for specific processes.
Access rights for data fields within a template can be specified, often based on project team member groupings that dictate permission rights for accessing various processes. Full Control, View, Create, Delete and Edit rights for each data field can also be set for these processes.
For templates created using the PMWeb custom form builder or adaptive forms builder, permission rights for each form can be defined. Those will include the Full Control, View, Create, Delete and Edit rights for each data field created in the custom form or adaptive form. These templates can be created in any desired format and language, ensuring flexibility to meet project requirements, such as using Arabic as the formal communication language.
Additionally, PMWeb includes a document management repository for uploading and storing all project documents. Folders and subfolders can be defined to match the project site’s filing structure, with access rights restrictions and permissible actions for project team members.
These documents can be attached to relevant transactions within various project management processes, ensuring that all necessary documents supporting shared data are readily accessible. Links to other related transactions and imported email communications can also be added to templates, promoting data quality, validity, traceability, and transparency.
PMWeb further supports accountability by automating workflow processes for executing each project management task. Workflow tasks include submission, review, notification, support-seeking, and approval, with responsible parties clearly defined. Task durations can be specified, along with who should be informed, returned to, and resubmitted in the event of comments or revisions. Review actions can be customized, and digital signatures through DocuSign are available if required.
For workflows requiring approval authority levels aligned with a project’s delegation of authority (DoA) matrix, rules and actions can be defined. Workflow scenarios can be created to select different workflows automatically based on transaction types.
Data on planned and actual workflow tasks is captured for each transaction, including timestamps, task performers, delegation details, inputs, actions, and comments. This real-time data allows project managers to review and analyze information needed for decision-making. Reports can be created for the different processes to provide the project manager with the to view projects’ information in the format that is best to improve their awareness of what is happening on the project and how the project is performing. This will drastically improve their situational awareness.
