Book Description

This book tackles in details all aspects of project control and provides - through comprehensive and tabulated data, methods, formulas, exercises, templates, charts, figures, etc.- to project/site managers, engineers, and accountants the necessary data and guidance they need for performing their works. It highlights also the detrimental behavior and pitfalls that hinder the successful completion of projects. It covers, in addition to Cost Control which forms the core element of this book, a wide range of other project activities - organizational matters; compliance with policies and regulations; contractual matters with client and others; construction schedules of permanent and temporary works; receipt dates of construction sites and drawings; procurement of resources; quality of works; safety and environment, etc. The project control system handled in this book allows to get, at any performance evaluation date of the project, an accurate picture of the project operations for the current, elapsed construction period of the project up to this date (current report), and also, based on the current, gained output data of the operations, a projected evaluation of the project operations covering the period up to project completion (projected report). Each of the current and the projected reports of the project provides, at each performance evaluation date, for each item to be controlled, a comparison between its actual/projected and budgeted data. The items that have to be controlled, depending on the adopted control system, can cover all aspects of the project operations such as progress of works, costs, unit cost of the labor working-hour, labor-hours consumption per unit of work, material consumption per unit of work, unit costs of materials, unit costs of subcontracted items, cost of temporary site installations, cost of construction equipment and plant, cost of staff, execution period of the project, delay, quantities and qualities of the works, saving/loss cost of lump-sum projects resulted from inexact quantities takeoff of the project works and/or inaccurate interpretation of specifications and contract conditions, value of executed works, variations and additional works, amounts invoiced, amounts received, amounts claimed, supply of drawings approved for construction, amounts and periods of bank guarantees, compliance with policies and regulations, compliance with safety and environment regulations, and many others.The actual/projected status of each item to be controlled is exhibited either as (1) a comparison between its budgeted and actual/projected data and or (2) as a ratio or quotient of its actual/projected and budgeted data (called performance index "PI"). A PI value equals to 1 indicates that the evaluated task has been executed or is expected to be executed as it was foreseen in the estimate/budget or in the planning (on target performance). A PI value smaller than 1 (except for the project value, quantity of works, income, profit/loss, and others not expended items) indicates that the task has been executed or is expected to be executed with a performance better than what was foreseen in the estimate/budget or in the planning (good performance). A PI value greater than 1 (except for the items listed above) indicates a poor performance of the task. The performance indexes, selected for the project control, could be computed by means of a computer program. The input-data required for this program will be fed by the site management and other units of the project organization. These performance indexes allow the general management, the area management, the operations management, the project/site management, and other management levels to identify, at a glance, the items whose actual output data exceed, equal, or less than the budgeted ones.