Could the Position of a Planning Engineer Become Indispensable?

Could the Position of a Planning Engineer Become Indispensable?

How to enhance the value of the job that they perform so that they can become indispensable is one of the major obstacles that individuals involved in executing capital construction projects must overcome. This difficulty is one that planning engineers also face. They must expand on their current position as the reliable project planner.

By being the go-to source for reliable project information, which is something everyone would agree has both power and worth, planning engineers can expand their role. This makes it possible for planning engineers to take the initiative in giving project stakeholders the knowledge they need to decide more quickly and wisely. To be sure, project stakeholders must be given access to the information they need to manage, monitor, and evaluate the performance, status, problems, and actions that must be taken right away. Only then will this insight be possible. The accuracy, reliability, and traceability of this information depend on having access to reliable project data.

Contrary to the schedule data for the project, over which the planning engineer has complete authority, this data is out of the planning engineer's direct control. These data include, for instance, information about health, safety, environment, and quality (HSEQ) processes such as NCRs, inspection requests, and safety incidents. Aside from that, there is data pertaining to the procurement and commercial management processes, including budget, budget modifications, granted contracts, prospective changes, change orders, progress invoices, and a host of other things.

The planning engineer should go beyond merely giving the start and end dates of completed and ongoing activities, their percentage completion, and other project schedule-related data, even for information that is under their control. The planning engineer must collect data to enhance the project schedule reporting, including information on the actual work completed and resource hours used, as well as planned and unexpected risks, requests for time extensions, narrative reports on the schedule's performance, and many other things.

When it comes to sharing information, business intelligence and data visualization solutions like MS Power BI are a game-changer. To meet the needs of project stakeholders who want to understand how their projects are performing, project information can be given in any preferred shape and format. To give the necessary information in an interactive way, tabular and graphical graphics will be used to dice, slice, summarize, analyze, visualize, and query the project's data. Access to a comprehensive range of reports covering the project's schedule, quality, HSE, procurement, and other management aspects will be available to project stakeholders.

In addition, the ability to associate and blend the reported data with the data captured in Building Information Modelling (BIM) models, geospatial maps, and other data sources, will improve the visualization and understanding of the reported projects’ data by project stakeholders. Whether the BIM model was used to report schedule, safety, quality, cost, or any other type of data, giving the project stakeholder the ability to understand which building system or area is associated with the reported project performance data will of great value.

Another key advantage of having those interactive reports and dashboards available to project stakeholders is the ability to drill down for more information without the need to ask or request for it. This is not only vital for improving their insight but also gives them confidence in the quality and validity of information shared with them. By having access to the detailed information level, project stakeholders will have insight into the particulars of performance trends for the different business processes needed to manage their capital construction projects.

A collateral benefit of having access to the data of the different business processes needed to manage the project delivery is the ability to consolidate all issues that need to be resolved and critical actions to be taken on a single page. Similarly, the project stakeholder can drill down on each one of those reported issues and critical actions to better understand them before making a decision. The project stakeholders can drill down to review and understand to whom those issues and actions are assigned and what has been done to close them before they impact the project’s objectives.

For project stakeholders who need to have an overview of the overall project performance covering all critical information that relates to schedule, cost, quality, safety, communications among others, a single-page project performance dashboard will be made available. Although the dashboard will provide a summary of the project’s key performance indicators (KPIs), nevertheless, the project stakeholder can drill down for more information when needed.

On the other hand, for stakeholders who need to compare or benchmark their projects’ performance with other projects’ performance, having the needed data for all projects on the same data source platform enables them to monitor, evaluate and report the key review indicators (KPIs) that matters to them most. They can select what programs or projects to report on and understand their actual performance trend.

Most of the data needed for those reports and dashboards will be provided by project team members who are accountable for performing their related business processes. Therefore, the planning engineer needs this data to be provided in a format that will automatically update the information in the project’s reports and dashboards. MS Excel lacks the needed transparency and accountability and cannot be used to communicate this critical project’s data.

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