From Recovery to Completion: Transforming Schedule Recovery
In construction project management, project milestones are how we measure progress and success. Yet, even the most meticulously planned projects can face unexpected hurdles that knock our milestones off course. Traditionally, when a key milestone started to slip, we’d huddle around tables, plotting out recovery schedules or devising revised programs – both reactive strategies to pull us back on course or plot a new delivery date.
But what if we could be more agile? What if we could quickly identify issues and have a plan that not only recovers lost time but also keeps us driving forward? Enter Foresight – the leading AI-enabled construction project management platform. Our Completion Plan feature is a dynamic, versatile tool that construction professionals will find both familiar and refreshingly innovative.
What’s a Completion Plan?
While the terms ‘recovery schedule’ and ‘schedule compression’ resonate well within our industry, serving as lifelines to draw us back from the brink of delays, Foresight introduces a broader, more holistic concept: the Completion Plan. This isn’t merely a reactionary band-aid; it’s a comprehensive approach that combines proactive foresight with reactive agility. It’s designed to not just bring projects back on track but to steer them toward successful and timely delivery, encompassing every aspect of project control and prescriptive planning.
So, as we look at the steps for creating a Completion Plan with Foresight, let’s reframe our perspective: we’re not just aiming to recover; we’re planning to succeed.
Crafting Your Recovery Strategy
Step 1: Assessing Schedule Health
The first step in creating a Completion Plan with Foresight is to perform a comprehensive check of the project’s schedule performance. This is a deep analysis that compares planned progress against actual performance. Foresight’s analytics dig into the details, uncovering not just delays, but how – and more importantly, why – a project is falling behind.
Step 2: Filtering by Milestones
With an understanding of overall schedule health, the focus narrows to specific milestones. By filtering the project timeline by these milestones, planners and project controllers can concentrate their efforts on the most critical elements affecting project delivery, such as the key deliverables for the next three to six months, or any payment or incentivization milestones. This targeted approach streamlines the process of pinpointing where the project is faltering, and which milestones are at risk of slipping.
Step 3: Identifying Actionable Insights
Once the critical milestones are identified, it’s time to determine what needs addressing. You’ll see the option to create a Completion Plan right below Schedule Performance. Here, the activities that are affecting progress (blockers) for every milestone are displayed when a milestone is selected. Any delayed activities are also highlighted.
It’s not enough to know that a milestone is off schedule; Foresight helps you understand why and what can be done to mitigate these issues. For example, it will tell you what the delay drivers are – such as resource constraints or logistical bottlenecks like long lead times – whether the activity is on the critical path, and what activities need to be completed before progress can be made.
Step 4: Determining Accountability
Determining who owns each delayed item is crucial for accountability. If ownership is unclear, responsibilities can be either assigned to the Project Director or identifying who would be best placed to deal with the activity. Utilizing Foresight’s tagging system can assist in assigning and tracking these responsibilities, and even users who are not on the platform can be invited to join.
The focus then shifts to who can assist in mitigating risks. Here, it’s handy to have Foresight’s centralized platform for efficient collaboration and problem-solving. Finally, it’s also important to identify affected stakeholders and understand their concerns. This insight guides how the project team communicates delays and action plans to these stakeholders.
Step 5: Engaging the Team with Data-Driven Decisions
Armed with this knowledge, it’s time to put Foresight’s tools to work. The Completion Plan enables you to assign responsibilities for recovery tasks to the right team members. With clear, data-driven directives, project teams can mobilize quickly, focusing their efforts where they will have the most significant impact on the project’s trajectory.
Alternatively, responsibilities can be assigned during a project meeting, where the team comes together to discuss the identified risk items, explore mitigation options, and agree on the next steps. Bringing the compiled list of issues and insights to this meeting allows for a collective decision-making process that is crucial for effective project management.
During the meeting, Foresight’s platform plays a central role in capturing and organizing the discussion’s outcomes. Team members can enter actions and immediate next steps directly into the system, utilizing the @mentions feature for specific callouts and responsibilities. This direct input method ensures that action items are recorded in real time and assigned appropriately. The use of #tags is another powerful feature, facilitating later analysis and retrieval of information related to specific issues or themes discussed.
As the team collaborates, user actions are created within Foresight, items are added to pinboards, or new pinboards are created. These pinboards serve as dynamic repositories of meeting details, agreements, and notes, offering a visual and interactive way to track the project’s progress and decisions.
Step 6: Monitoring Progress and Adjusting in Real Time
After the meeting, the creation of a custom pinboard in Foresight to preserve the meeting’s outcomes becomes an important step. This pinboard acts not only as a record of what was discussed and decided but also as a living document that can be referred back to and updated as the project progresses. Setting reminders or alerts to revisit this pinboard could further enhance their effectiveness, ensuring that the team remains aligned and that agreed-upon actions are revisited and reassessed regularly.
From Insight to Action
As actions are taken to address project delays, Foresight’s platform continues to monitor progress. In the dynamic environment of construction, situations can change rapidly. The Completion Plan isn’t a static document but a living strategy that adapts to new information. As project controllers and planners, you’ll be equipped to make real-time adjustments, ensuring that the recovery strategy remains aligned with the project’s evolving needs.
In essence, the Completion Plan transforms what could be a reactive scramble to recover lost time into a proactive, controlled march towards project completion. It’s about shifting from playing catch-up to taking the lead.
