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Abstract:
With the marketing competitiveness growing, it is more and more critical in time and budget control of each project. This paper discusses that in the construction phase, how can a project manager be successful in time and budget control. This paper also evaluates some pitfalls the project manager will meet in his endeavors to monitor and control the project. There are many methods and five kind pitfalls are discussed in this paper, it reveals that to be successful, the project manager must concern all this methods and avoid pitfalls successfully.
1. INTRODUCTION
The survey shows that most projects encounter cost and time over-runs (Williams Ackermann, Eden, 2002,p192). According to Wright (1997)’s research, a good rule of thumb is to add a minimum of 50% to every time estimate, and 50% to the first estimate of the budget (Gardiner and Stewart,1998, p251). It indicates that project is very complex and full of challenge. Many unexpected issues will lead the project cost and time over-runs. Therefore, many technologies and methods are developed for successful monitoring and control to lead the project to success. In this article, we will discuss in the construction phase, how can a project manager to be successful in time and budget control. Another part we will discuss what pitfalls will wait for the manager in his endeavors to monitor and control the project.
2. THE CONCEPT AND THE PURPOSE OF PROJECT CONTROL AND MONITOR
Erel and Raz (2000) state that the project control cycle consists of measuring the status of the project, comparing to the plan, analysis of the deviations, and implementing any appropriate corrective actions. When a project reach the construction phase, monitor and control is critical to deliver the project success. Project monitoring exists to establish the need to take corrective action, whilst there is still time to take action. Through monitoring the activities, the project team can analyze the deviations and decide what to
3. SETTING UP AN EFFICIENT CONTROL SYSTEM
For the purpose of achieving time and cost target, the manager need to set up an efficient management framework including: reporting structure, assessing progress, and communication system. The employees’ responsibility and authority need to be defined in the reporting structure. The formal and informal assessing progress can help getting a general perspective between reality and target. It is significant to help identify what is the risk and should be monitored and controlled. Project success is strongly linked to communication. The efficient communication system benefit for teamwork and facilitate problem solving .
4. TIME AND COST MONITOR AND CONTROL
4.1 Ranking the priority of monitoring In construction phase, many activities are carried out based on the original plan. It is need to know what kind of activities or things are most likely to lead the project delay and disruption. Therefore, the first step is ranking the priority of the activities. Because the duration of a project is determined by the total time of activities on critical path, any delay in an activity on the critical path will cause a delay in the completion date for the project (Ackermann Eden, Howick and Williams,2000,p295). Therefore, the
activities on critical path should firstly to be monitored and controlled. Secondly, monitoring the activities with no free float remaining, a delay in any activity with no free float will delay some subsequent activity inevitably. These subsequent delays will discomfit the resource schedule significantly. Some resources are unavailable because they are committed elsewhere. Thirdly, monitoring the activities with less than a specified float, because if an activity has very little float, it might use up the time before control decision is made once such an activities has a variance with the target. Fourthly, managers should monitor high risky activities. High risky activities are most likely to overrun or overspend. Fifthly, managers should monitor the activities using critical resource. Some resource is critical because they are very expensive or limited)
4.2 Methods of time control
4.2.1 CPM
Based on the original plan(Gantt charts), we can analyze what activities are on the critical path, what activities with no free float and what activities with less than a specified float via network diagram, then monitoring these activities, take control actions to avoid delay.
Once an activity on critical path is going to delay, commonly, there are the ways to avoid delay or even can shorten the time of activities:
a) Increasing resource levels, such as adding labour.
b) Improving resource efficiency, such as transferring high skill employees to the activity,improving efficient tools.
c) And means that can shorten critical path timescales to bring a project back on target, such asovertime, outsourcing, etc.