2018Case15PMGroup

57 L EAN C ONSTRUCTION I RELAND A NNUAL B OOK OF C ASES 2018 Case 15 – PM Group PM Group is an international project delivery company operating across Europe, the USA, and Asia. We have a 44-year track record in project management, process design, facility design, and construction management for leading multinational companies. We are wor ld leaders in the Pharmaceutical, Food, mission-critical, Medtech, Advanced Manufacturing, and Energy sectors. Our reputation is built on great people with a flexible “can do” attitude who consistently deliver successful projects safely for our clients. We pride ourselves on our technical expertise and work closely with our clients to develop innovative solutions for complex projects. We have over 2,500 highly-skilled employees worldwide. While headquartered in Ireland, we have offices based in 17 countries worldwide. C O M P A N Y W E B S I T E OVERVIEW OF THE LEAN INITIATIVE This case study examines PM Group’s focus on developing and deploying more effective and efficient Graphical Representation of Schedule on multiple Client projects in Europe, ranging in scale from € 50M to € 400M. LEAN INITIATIVE UNDERTAKEN – LEAN THINKING, TOOLS, TECHNIQUES www.pmgroup-global.com AUTHOR John Harte Over many years of experience in the delivery of high-tech complex projects, PM Group has identified the following issues with the day-to-day use of traditional Gantt charts as a communication and coordination tool for large diverse project teams and end users: • Difficult to relate Gantt Chart to specific areas/plant zones. • Difficult to clearly convey the sequential flow of work in area. • Difficult to convey weekly milestones per area. • The overlap and coordination required between different contractors in a specific area not readily or clearly discernible. • Hard to communicate current schedule status of all activities in a specific area. Figure 1. Typical Traditional Gantt Chart. On large, complex, technological-based projects, the user groups of schedule information are diverse and range from designers, project managers, and construction supervisors, to equipment vendors and commissioning teams. This is a large and diverse audience with multiple skillsets and not all are competent, capable, or even willing to try to disseminate and extract the information they require from large Gantt charts. This barrier to information flow often results in the following negative project team performance characteristics: • Large schedules are often too complex with several thousand activities and can be difficult to follow for some team members and as a result can often be ignored. • This further reduces schedule ownership by project teams and schedule adherence on site. • The project scheduler becomes isolated from the team. • Schedule is not used as a coordination aid for planning work. • This leads to more potential for coordination and congestion issues between trades/disciplines. • Large schedules are hard to update on a regular basis and are therefore often out of date by the time they are issued. To overcome the informat ion di sseminat ion and communication limitations of the traditional schedule Gantt chart described above, PM Group developed and utilises graphical measures to provide a more succinct means of extracting and communicating key schedule drivers. These measures involve supplementing the traditional Gantt Chart by graphical presentation with actual facility layouts in the background. This provides both graphical representation of schedule dates with actual plant layout in the background, resulting in: • Clearer and easier to understand schedule information for cross-discipline field supervisors, contractors, area owners, and safety professionals. • Better communication tool for multi-contractor coordination meetings/whiteboard, planning and look-ahead meetings. • Better communication tool for progress reporting to clients, and in particular non-technical personnel. • Easier to update on weekly basis with minimal supervisor input. The following are a series of project demonstrations from BACKGROUND TO THE LEAN INITIATIVE Large-scale complex projects require large complex schedules, and these schedules often run to hundreds of pages. We have found that traditional Gantt charts do not communicate well the key schedule objectives and drivers to the full range of users. To address this, PM Group developed graphical-based means to convey more clearly and succinctly the requirements of schedules focused upon the specific information requirements of the end users across all stages of construction projects, from construction pre-planning and constructability, through construction, and into turnover and commissioning phases. COMPANY OVERVIEW