The Components of a Project Controls Plan (PCP)

have you ever been assigned to a project where you were asked to develop a specific project procedure document presentation or report but you didn't know exactly how hi I am Sarah Corr penny I'm the founder and director of project control Academy welcome to another episode of project control mastery training you know most people are despite their level of experience or expertise when they're asked to develop a project procedure presentation document or report they are puzzled at you know what to put in that report you know that there are a lot of things going in their mind but they don't know exactly how to put that on paper but the moment you give them a framework a structure a component of that report for them it just easy just a matter of filling in the blanks let me share with you a story that happened to me a few years ago in a my in one of the employments incorporated employments that I had I remember I was asked to come to the office of the business need manager and when I went there I saw the business trade manager sitting with the safety manager and I was wondering oh my god why I'm called to that meeting you know did I do something wrong why the safety manager is there so when we sat down for the meeting the business unit manager asked me to help the safety manager to develop a presentation and training material for training the entire business unit on the company's safety procedure my first respond to that request was thank you for considering me for that for this initiation for this initiative but as you know my background is project controls I am NOT an expert in safety and other talking the business idiot manager interrupted me immediately and said yes I know but you're a great trainer you can develop a presentation on safety and train people on safety as well and I was thinking really what me I can teach even safety so anyways that what happened to make the long story short in that meeting the businessman manager safety manager and myself came up kind of brainstorm and came up with different topics or titles that needs to go into that one other presentation for the safety training and they both did a great job on coming up with a good structure of what they want to see in that training and they gave me the list of topics along with a 1,000 page procedure to go ahead and develop the training material so what do you think did I do it yes you bet I did it and guess what I only had one week to develop that training it was easy because they did a great job in coming up with a component of that report and for me it was just referring back to the safety manual and extracting information from there and filling in the blanks and I've heard later from the business unit managers we'll have the safety manager that that presentation was one of the best safety presentation they have conducted in the company so the point I'm trying to make here is when you have the components of a report or of a procedure creating that procedure is not going to be a hard task it's just a matter of filling in the blanks with the information that you have or the information that you can gather from your company procedures and policies so in this video you might be wondering okay why I'm talking about those in this video I'm not going to cover a training on you know how to develop a presentation on a given topic let's say a safety know this video is not about a safety presentation what I'm going to talk about in this video for you is the components of the project control plan so next time that you're assigned to develop a project control plan for your project you know the components and you can easily compile that report or that document together and prepare project controls plan for your project and in case if you don't know what a project controls plan is make sure that you watch another video I have prepared for you entitled what kind of a plan is a project control plan but just to give you a kind of high-level background and what a project control plan is a project control plan is basically a well-defined project control execution strategy that outlines their project processes procedures systems and tools that will be used by the project control team throughout the project lifecycle and according to ace the international practice standard on project control plan development they mentioned that project control plan is a communication tool for establishing the project controls process so in order to come up with the components of a project control plan if you have a good understanding of a project control process then we can kind of put together the project control plan so first let's go ahead and understand what the project control process is what are the components of a project control process and then we can extract information from there and they've loved the project controls plan so I'm going to walk you over the project control process and then from there I will show you the details of the components of the project control slack [Music] according to ACS total cost management framework an effective project controls process is built upon the PDCA control cycle which is also known as Deming cycle PDCA or Deming cycle is a method used for the controls and continuous improvement of products and services it stands for plan do check in acts and sometimes we call act as act assess and adjust now recording the project control process the first stage of the project control process is project planning in the planning stage you plan define and develop the scope time and cost and evaluate and assess associated risks so this step is really important it's a fundamental step in forming a project baseline basically a cost based on scheduled baseline and integrated project baseline after having the plan in place and establishing the project baselines you execute the project controls work by recording and measuring the actual cost and schedule status this also includes a progress measurement change management as well as risk and contingency management the next stage of the process which is performed a hand-in-hand with the project control execution stage is project performance measurement and assessment in this step you measure and monitor cost and schedule performance against the baseline and evaluate the health of your project whether or not you will finish on time and within budget after obtaining the performance results you analyze variances and forecast the project behavior and finally the project status and any recommended corrective or preventive actions that will be communicated with the project team members we are different project controls reporting and deliverables so this is the the overall project controls process in a nutshell now for the project control plan the project controls plan should address the same components in the project controls process plus the application of any tools or software in every stage of the process as well now let me go into more detail and show you the component of the project control plan as it relates to the project control process so what needs to be addressed in the project control plan when it comes to the project planning stage is project scope execution in contracting strategy development in the project control plan you need to briefly describe the scope of work for the project also you need to address the development and structure of the project work breakdown structure how when the overall project work based and structure is going to be developed or what the structure is if that's already been provided to you also you need to include a brief description of the execution strategy is it a standard project is the fast-track shut down project what kind of project is it and what's the execution strategy for the project you also need to include a brief description of the contracting strategy is it going to be self perform project or is it going to be your entire prime contractor is it going to be multiple contractor joint-ventures and how coding gas structure and system will be integrated or mapped as well so if you're using different contractors then you also need to address the coding structure in the system integration or the mapping of those codes to your systems as well another thing that you need to address is the development and organization of the project control accounts and here I'm not going to go into too much detail on what each of those items are because it needs a course by itself but just here to give you a brief idea of the control accounts they are basically the control point within your WBS where you measure and monitor performance and collect actual cost so it's very important that you determine the control accounts early on on your project and it's best if you address that on your project control plan on what's the organization of the project control accounts and how you're going to develop those so make sure that you address them on your project controls plan as well on risk analysis and contingency you need to address very formal risk analysis will be conducted to determine the cause their schedule contingency for the project and if yes who is going to conduct a risk workshop if it something that owner is going to do or is it an independent contractor is going to perform their cost and schedule risk analysis or you are responsible for doing that so make sure that you address that on project controls plan also what are the target cost and schedule probability or confidence level for contingency so for coming up with the contingency you need to determine the confidence level so it's better to address those on your project control plan so everybody has the same agreement on the confidence level that you want to go ahead for coming up with a contingency for the project cost and schedule and if you're going to use time reserve to the schedule you have to address how it's going to be done the next point is the systems and software that you're going to use for risk analysis what kind of tool you are going to use if you are the one who are going to perform the risk analysis of course and the process of recording and maintaining the risk register sometimes the project manager is responsible for maintaining the risk register sometimes the owner might be so you need to address that who is going to record and maintain the risk register for their project so the next point is schedule planning and development you need to mention how the project schedule is going to be developed validated and baselined for this project how the schedule basis will be documented also what tools they are going to use for planning and development of the schedule also you need to address the level of details that are required for the schedule development during the project including the resource loading and leveling is your schedule going to be resource loaded and if yes so what would be the level of detail that you're going to load the resources against on your schedule so you need to address the level of details that you are going to develop your resources and also the schedule development as well and how the resource requirements are going to be determined to support the execution of the project is it based on the resource ordered schedule if not how you're going to address the resource address and assess that your resource requirement for the project and if you are working with different contractors or if you're maintaining multiple schedules for the project you need to also mention how the master schedule is going to be compiled and who is going to do that who is going to be responsible for the master schedule for its development and maintenance and how you're going to integrate into the master schedule so that also needs to be addressed as well when it comes to cost estimating and budgeting you need to mention the establish cost estimate classification system what kind of classification system you're going to use for your cost estimate also what class of the cost estimate you are going to develop at the end of each project development phase and how cost estimate basis will be documented and how cost estimate will be developed and again here we don't want to come up with a huge procedure on how those things are going to be developed each other as long as you address those briefly and kind of having an agreement on your team on you know how let's say in that example how cost estimate is going to be developed and these things that should be fine we don't want a very detailed document when it comes to project controls plan the main purpose is coming up with a strategy on how you're going to implement different elements of the project control execution the next point is how the overall project assessment will be compiled and who is responsible for compiling the cost estimate sometimes you are gathering the data from different sources different parties so we're going to do that it's just the owner who is building the total cost estimate for or the TI's the cost estimate for the project or if you are the one who is responsible you have to address how you're going to compile that information as well and what tool and software you are going to use for cost estimating and cost budgeting so these are the items that or components that you need to address in your project control plan when it comes to the plot project planning stage okay one point one more point is how the cost estimate will be integrated with the schedule which is very important because you need to have the intuition between your cost estimate or your cost with the schedule so you need to address how these two will be integrated as well so for the next stage which is the project controlled execution under change management you need to address the process for managing changes from the initiation to approval of the change whether the changes internal or external what the process is and for project changes versus contractor and contract changes you know what the process is for managing the changes also what is the method for communicating the changes to project controls you might see in some projects project controls is the discipline who's responsible for issuing the change orders and maintaining the change log and everything else related to the change sometimes we see a project coordinator or a project engineer or someone else who is assigned to the change management process of the project but here in the project control planning to address how those changes are going to be communicated to project controls if there are not the ones who are responsible for the change management process of the project also what is the involvement of project controls in assessing the changes on project cost and schedule you know sometimes we do a very good job in assessing the overall change on different elements of it when it comes to the changes on the scope and also the association associated cost on it but sometimes we don't do a good job on assessing the impact of the change on the schedule so you need to address really how you expect project controls discipline to be involved when a change is issued and how they're going to assess the impact of the change on the project cost and schedule also are you going to do a TI C cost estimate assessment on the overall project estimate for that specific change or not like how those things would be assessed you need to address that in project controls plan also how in scope changes will be managed so if there are changes within the scope of the project how we are going to manage the Changez and at what point changes will be incorporated into the project cost and schedule usually they are incorporated when they are approved changes but make sure that you address that in your project control plan is it okay to incorporate the changes with even a verbal approval from the owner or how it's going to be incorporated just every one sentence or paragraph as long as you covered that should be fine also the responsibilities of contractors if you are dealing with multiple contractors in managing and communicating the changes how you expect them to communicate the changes to you or to document it to you and what's the process for that and the tools and templates for managing the changes are using a tool a software for documenting the changes and kind of going through the process of the change management or are you using a template if you're using templates you can put your template like that your change order requires and different things as a net attachment to your project control plan so everybody is clear on the process of the template of the change management process the next point that you need to address is regarding a progress measurement you need to mention how physical progress is going to be measured what are the methods that you are going to use in this specific project and what are the rules of credit that you're going to apply also what are your expectations from the contractors in measuring and reporting the progress and what is the interface between the schedule control and physical progress measurement how you're going to incorporate the physical progress into your schedule control and progress the next point is a risk and contingency management you need to address who manages the contingency in the project and when contingency fund can be used and release that for example can you use contingency for in scope changes another point is how cost contingency and schedule resolve will be allocated or draw done sometimes that you will see a contingency drawdown in a projects I need to address how contingency is going to be released and how it's going to be allocated and drowned on and how risk will be revisited during that project so on the cost control element you need to mention what tools or system were method will be used for managing and controlling their project cost how actual cost and expenditure will be collected and how cost forecasting is going to be performed in a project and how project costs are going to be interfaced with the owner cost accounting system okay unscheduled control you need to mention what tool or system will be used for managing and controlling the project schedule and how the schedule is going to be updated and maintained also how schedule variances will be reported and what is the strategy around rebased lining how changes will be incorporated into the schedule and how resources will be tracked in forecast at the next stage is project performance assessment you need to address how cost and schedule performance is going to be measured in your project especially if you are using in value management and what are the acceptable various thresholds for your project costs and schedule variances how project costs and schedule variances are measured and how cost poor forecasting is performed and how scheduled analysis and forecasting is performed for the next stage is you need to mention the scope content format and responsibilities for the preparation submittal and approval of project reports and that's very important because everybody needs to be clear on your format and you know the process of the preparation all the way to the pro world of project control related reports also what are the project reporting deliverables and frequency of the reporting what I found it's very useful is developing a project reporting calendar and include that as part of your project control plan and it's basically reflecting the deliverables the project control deliverables or report on a calendar so that everybody is clear on the expectations and in terms of delivery of the specific report or document and at what time or at what frequency so developing a project reporting calendar is very useful and it's good to include that as part of a project controls plan also if you're going to have project control specific meetings what are your meeting requirements and what are the frequency of your meetings also what is the file structure for sorting the project files and information and what are the project control outputs or deliverables that are required for the execution and management of the project it can be a list or a table outlining the project control outputs or deliverables that you're going to deliver at the end of each reporting cycle or at the end of the project also what tools and system are going to use for project control reporting so these are all the components of a project control plan that I recommend for inclusion in your project controls plan again this is not this list that I provided you is not covering everything you might not need some of those items you might need some extra items that are not addressed here so but make sure that you know use this as a guideline for when you want to develop your project control plan and also I don't forget to check a ce3 commended practice on developing the project control plan they came up with it with a very good template or outline of project control plan and you know the components of the plan and what should be included that's slightly different as compared to what I have shown you here because I centered the component of the project control plan according to project control process what AAC has done is slightly different but the content is basically the same so I encourage you to check that as well did I overwhelm you with a big list of items for inclusion in the project controls plan you know your project controls plan doesn't need to be such a lengthy document as long as they are clear on your approach on your strategy when it comes to project controls execution the tools and system that you want to use for this specific project and your approach toward project control execution you should be fine in fact if your project controls plan is a short and to the point it's even more effective and sometimes you know in support of your project controls plan you may need to develop other processes and procedures for example schedule development and maintenance procedure cost management procedure change management procedure so if your company already have developed some project control related procedures then your task would be easy it's not a hard you know deliverable for you to develop the project and it controls a plan as long as you have those procedures and you are clear on the strategy it's just a matter of tailoring the company's processes according to your projects needs now talking about the project control plan and the amount of effort that's required to put in the plan you might question is it really necessary to develop a project control plan for every project even the small project well according to a the international recommended practice on project control plan development they mentioned that the project control development of the project control plan is considered as a success as a leading indicator for assisting the success and delivery of the project and you know if the time that if you are spending time and energy on the project control plan that time and energy that you're investing in development and implementation of the project control plan we reduce the risks to your project and increase the success of the delivery and execution of your project and any consideration not to include you know not to implement the project control plan in part or in whole would introduce some risks to your project so according to this recommended practice you know it's better you develop a project into a plan and you know have that strategy up front for your project but talking about the importance and the benefits of developing a project control plan I have to warn you that you know documenting the project control plan is not enough there are other requirements that contribute to the success of the implementation of the project control plan that you need to consider and I will cover those requirements in the next episode of project control mastery this video is already lengthy I don't want to take more time on this but I will cover the requirements of the successful project control plan implementation in the next theory so for more resources on this topic make sure that you check 8th international recommended practice on project control development that's a very good document make sure you check it out there's another resource which is a paper on the importance of project control plan development and also there are some modules on Gilder project controls friends that you can check as well so if you have any comment or question on this topic please make sure that you write them down below so I can answer those questions or comments and if you found this video valuable please give me high five and by liking this video and sharing it with your connections until next time do your best in everything that you do my friend and make a difference hi this is Sherlock or Vanya again I just wanted to say thank you for watching this video I hope you enjoyed it I hope it added value to you and I hope you learned something from this video if you did and if you want to be notified for any future videos that I release just do me a favor and hit the subscribe button down below so that you get the notification as soon as I release a new video training I normally release such trainings on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and I want you to be one of the first ones who get notified as soon as I release a video training and second things I wanted to tell you is about my 10 day free training on project controls on how you can start and step up in project controls how you can accelerate your growth in project controls what is the ladder of success in project controls and my journey in project controls on how you started and where I am right now my secrets and the secrets of project control industry and much much more so if you're interested in that training if you want to advance in project controls I highly recommend you to watch this training if 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Channel: Project Control Academy

Views: 5,509

Rating: 4.9658117 out of 5

Keywords: project control, project control training, project control academy, project controls plan, project control plan, PCP, PEP, project controls plan components, elements of a project controls plan, what is included in the project controls plan, project controls plan structure, shohreh ghorbani, project controls process, project controls

Id: Ebu0SD2api8

Length: 33min 53sec (2033 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 17 2018