Hi Guys, how did everyone go last week?
This week,we are going to dive into Why Foremen are Oblivious to Fortnightly Programmes and their importance in respects to the success of the projects.
Well this is one that tends to not have the attention that it requires and has lead to many projects failing simply because not enough thought, knowledge or action has gone to planning, which has lead to project failure each and every time.
Fortnightly programmes only covers a part of the larger issues, surrounding programme generally and that includes:
- Lack of connection between Fortnightly and Main Programme
- Lack of knowledge and training to foremen on design and management of programmes
- Poor integration between Tender/Estimating and Construction Team in programmes
- Traditional Programmes are reactive by design and what to do about it.
- And so on…
But i think you get my point.
But for this week, we will focus only on Why foremen are oblivious to Fortnightly Programmes.
In todays world, the lack of training around the design and management of programme has been a HUGE ISSUE and still is, which has rippled across a lot of the building industry, including project managers, construction managers and even state, national and international managers, especially in being able to do their jobs more effectively and efficient.
This brings memories of a project, where the foremen was struggling to keep control of the project and the construction manager had visited site to assess the situation and concluded that the clients were difficult and that the contractors were not working with the foremen. With the project already passed completion date by 7 weeks and the remaining 10% of the project which should of been wrapped up in 3 weeks, ended up dragging out another 9.5 weeks.
Wow, that 16.5 weeks or just over 4 months in total. Can you imagine how much over cost, this totalled to. And at face value it certainly seemed that the cause was solely on the client, but as you will see, it didn’t.
But when I got involved, I would get calls from the foremen stating the contractors were not coming out to do there work until days or weeks later. Which was causing all the delays on the project, including the 16.5 weeks/4 months of additional time on site.
And so I would be calling these contractors ready to have a serious talk with them for dragging out the project and hint latent conditions, at hand. To find out that the foremen had only called them that afternoon and was expecting them to drop all other prescheduled works weeks in advance, for him.
And so when I questioned the foremen why he hadn’t booked them earlier, it became apparent that he didn’t realise it until the time when needing them (reactive). So I requested the fortnightly programme, which would of detailed the works planned out for that fortnight. But to my horror, it didn’t, was out-of-date, a two liner and didn’t even relate back to the main programme or tasks actually required.
Almost as though he literally just scribbled it up just then.
In other words absolutely no form of planning (fortnightly programme) had been done at all. And because no planning was happening they were simply doing one task at a time with continuous and high probable of delays, issues and so on just because they didn’t know where they were going.
So as you can see, the importance of the fortnightly programme is critical to the success of the project, in enabling you to plan-out contractors, suppliers and tasks, with confidence.
Now apply what you’ve learnt this week on your sites and share with us, your results, changes and experiences.
This is a core element of a Productive Foremen and as noted earlier expands into other areas, which we didn’t dive into this week.
That being said, we are working frantically over the next few months in putting together training, specifically around programmes, which will go into detail, in turning your projects around to success. We’ll keep you posted:)
Don’t forget to comment, below.
Till next week,
Nelio