Project Scheduling

What’s your success rate on capital projects?  Usually on time? On budget? If you commit to a Total Installed Cost (TIC) of $450k and a line downtime (DT) of 22 days, do you make it? What’s the over/under bet the Maintenance guys have running?  30 days?

My project experience is mostly in manufacturing: new equipment, upgrades, replacements. Typically, you do your best estimate on the time you need, then pitch it to Operations and Plant Management.

“We need 28 days of line downtime to do this project.”

Plant Manager is shocked (shocked, I tell you), Operations Manager seems concerned, and the Engineering Manager is suddenly much more interested in your project timeline.

Cue the discussions. Hopefully, you’ve gamed this all out and can answer these.

Is that calendar days? No. Monday – Friday.

What if we do 7 days per week? OK, that will get us to around 22 days DT. We’ll need some support for writing work permits and supervising the contractors on weekends.

What if we do two 12-hour shifts and go to 7 days a week? The contractor can’t support that. Or the budget doesn’t support the OT cost. (This last one is best to not say out loud; no one at the table is going to remember that, months ago, they made you cut the proposed budget to get the project approved.)

How much prework can we do before shutting the line down?

You get the idea.

Again, if you’ve done more than, say, one project in a manufacturing plant, you know what questions you’ll be asked and have the answers.

Back to how you manage your projects.

What’s your track record? When you get pinned down to that 22-day DT, do you have the line back up and making product on day 23?

Are you staying within the planned TIC?

Are your contractors still returning your calls?

How are you planning and tracking the schedule? Microsoft Project, Excel, something else?

Over the years, I’ve managed and been a part of a bunch of equipment installations in manufacturing facilities. On some projects, I planned and coordinated the whole process; on others, I was brought in when it was time to do the installation.

I’ve used Microsoft Project (MS Project from here out.) On other, more simple projects, I used an Excel spreadsheet.

If I had to do those projects over again, I’d always use MS Project or something comparable. Don’t get me wrong—a spreadsheet works fine for a simple project, but I’ve had things go awry even on “simple” projects. When you’re back sitting in that conference room explaining to your boss, the Operations Manager, and the Plant Manager why that 3-week planned downtime is running long and it might be closer to 5 weeks, it doesn’t really matter that it was a simple project and tracking the work shouldn’t have been that tough.

You can do a decent schedule in a spreadsheet, and if you detail it and stare at it long enough you can figure out the critical path. You can do status reports if needed.

With a project management program, those tasks are much more structured. I did not say simpler—you still have to monitor the details. But using something structured lets you focus on those details and not spend your time formatting cells on a spreadsheet.

MS Project is what I know, so I’ll talk about it.

So why did I choose to use a spreadsheet so often and not MS Project?

Honestly, and this is no excuse: cost and time. I also took over several in-progress projects that someone else had started; if their schedule was in Excel, we went with it.

Cost – In retrospect, this should not have been a problem. An MS Project subscription is about $30 per month. How fast does that get paid for with one of your production lines starting up on time after an upgrade? “Hey boss, that 10,000PPH line will be down a couple extra days because we lost track of when those approval drawings were due back to the vendor; but we saved $360 this year by doing the schedule in a spreadsheet!”

Time (INITIALLY) – MS Project is a good tool, but you must invest a little time up front to work with it effectively. When I picked it back up recently, I spent a few days refamiliarizing myself with the latest version. I can set up a basic project schedule, with tasks and predecessors, in about a day.

The following is why I think using a project management tool is the only way to go on even the smallest projects:

Advantages of a project management program (again, using my experience with MS Project here; your mileage may vary.)

• Critical Path – visually seeing the most critical tasks on a project helps the Project Manager focus on the items that CANNOT be allowed to slip (need to add resources, work OT, etc.) Also, the critical path may change in the middle of the project as some items are completed.
• Easier to link tasks (Predecessors in MS Project) – Sure, you know you have to let the concrete cure before you set that platform on it, and of course the platform fab has to complete. Did you build in that 1 week for getting the approval drawings back?
• Resource loading – Full disclosure, as the PM in the plant, I seldom used the resources feature. Now, after creating a couple schedules for a contractor, I see why it’s extremely useful.  Oh, you double booked a couple resources? MS Project shows little red guys in the first column by those tasks. Those LRGs tell me I have an overloaded resource. Right click and I see that my ONE detailer is detailing two platforms, dust collector ducting and collection hoods at the same time. Maybe I would have caught that with my spreadsheet. Maybe.
• Status tracking and reporting – OK, this is cool. MS Project has some pretty good tracking tools. You can set a Status Date and generate reports for your weekly update meetings.
• Cost, if you want to track that.

So, use a good Project Management tool.

Just the act of entering the information into the program will remind you of things you might have overlooked.

You can’t justify the cost? You’ll probably pay for the software with one saved oversight or one less day of line downtime.

Don’t have time? Same reasons as above, or hire someone that knows the software, knows how to do projects, and has made the mistakes so you don’t have to.

I know a guy.

And, if you use something other than Microsoft Project and you like it (or hate it), drop a comment.