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Best Practices for Effective Change Order Management Most architects and engineers go into their respective fields, not for money or fame, but because they love the practice of architecture or engineering. It’s an incredible feat to create a new design from the ground up and to ensure everything works as required. Architects provide us with a beautiful built world and engineers ensure it is safe and functional. These are critical roles in today’s world. However, whether we like it or not, architecture and engineering (A/E) services aren’t delivered in a vacuum. Services are requested from an owner and a market dictates the price for these services. Today, everyone that procures design services for a major project has an idea for how much design services will cost. Anyone can do a quick internet search on the type of building and, in short order, come up with a relatively accurate estimation of cost as a percentage of overall construction. Architecture and Engineering (A/E) Firms know these rules of thumb, especially those responsible for marketing and selling the firm’s services. If an RFP is advertised for a major project, most can approximate an acceptable fee. So, the market price is usually very competitive. The winning A/E Team will need a great design proposal, but at a very lean pricing structure. Align Fee & Scope As the project moves into production, many times the design professionals responsible for executing the work are not acutely aware of the constraints around their work. Many firms can improve project performance by simply educating the project team on how and why the design services were estimated. The scope of work articulated in the RFP should be clear. However, there is always an interpretation and creative approaches. Share the RFP with your team. This will help them understand requirements for the project. And allow you to gain consensus before the project begins. It will also help the team recognize when the client is requesting services outside of the defined scope of work. Developing this understanding with your project team will result in both satisfactory work for the client and a profitable result for the firm. Last Minute Change Orders Projects change. Schedules shift, surprises come up, and clients ask for out of scope work. It’s part of managing an A/E project. Have you ever been in a meeting where senior management asks a project manager to request a change order at the end of the project? This illustrates project management failures across the board, from start to finish. At project closeout, it’s too late to get a change order from many clients. There is no remaining budget. Any remaining dollars have been reallocated or paid to other consultants who identified issues much earlier. This raises very real questions around project management competency. Why weren’t these issues identified earlier in the project? Project managers must always track and proactively manage scope, schedule, and budget. It’s a lose-lose situation. Even if the client does pay, they will not be happy with the PM or your firm. This puts the potential for future work in jeopardy. Effective Change Orders So, how can you generate change orders, get paid for them, and make your client happy? Manage your team and put tools in place to track out of scope work. That starts with proactively managing and communicating with your project team. Make sure they understand the scope and fee and don’t simply execute on every request. Capture these requests in a log and maintain your records. No Cost Change Orders Issue your clients ‘No Cost’ change orders. If it all possible, show them again on invoices. This will help illustrate to the client as a value-adding service provider, that you have been willing to accommodate reasonable change in scope requests. Further, it shows you DO NOT nickel and dime them. However, there is a point at which you must charge for additional services this helps refresh the client’s memory about the changes you were able to accommodate. Emotional Bank Account Think of this as investing in an emotional bank account. This builds a strong working relationship between PM and client. This relationship will provide numerous benefits. One of which is an open channel of communication, which you can leverage to manage scope and mention the extra things you’ve done throughout the project. Finally, when the time comes that you need to cash in and issue a change order, you can point back to things you’ve already done to justify the charge for extra work. Clients will see it coming and have budget set aside because of you have clearly communicated the additional work your team has provided. Summing it Up Change orders are oftentimes painful and drive wedges between A/E firms and clients. This puts profitability and future work at risk. Invest in an emotional bank account with your clients. This builds a strong relationship, demonstrates effective project management, and delivers additional revenue for your projects. Sound like a good investment?

In this video Don Archibeque and JJ Brantingham have an interactive discussion with tips and steps you can use can use to conduct successful project reviews with Project Managers and Principals. By customer request we have added a transcript below. JJ (00:01): Introduction and Background Hello, I'm JJ Brantingham. I'm here with Don Archibeque from Planifi. And today we're, going to introduce a new topic for you, how to perform a principle review. We will talk about, a few aspects of, of principle reviews. (00:18): Don here has a lot of experience in AE. Don has spent 30 plus years in different project management roles, project director, leading PM teams, and as a principal. Don's experience has exposed him to many aspects of the A/E business model. So he'll share a lot of thoughts he has there. Myself, I spent 20 years in, working in IT finance operations, alongside Don, for a good chunk of that time. So, for the, agenda today we're just going talk about what, you know, as the "principle review", what does it entail? We will break it down and really highlight the benefits. Why is this worth your time. (00:52): Why Do Principal Reviews Why would you consider doing Principle Reviews? And then, if you're sold on that, we'll talk about how to get started. What you actually want to do in that review. Questions to ask, metrics to look at. Etc. (01:03): So, what is principal review? Pretty simple. We're talking about, short meetings. Everyone, we talk to says: "we already have too many meetings". We understand that. So, you target like 10 to 30 minutes per PM it depends on how many projects they have to review with you. If it's just a handful, you can probably get away in 10-15 minutes. The idea is to highlight the key things around the project, right? Such as, status issues, challenges, change in scope. (01:28): Learning Opportunity This is something sometimes people miss, is it's a mentorship and praising opportunity. time set aside to discuss in detail key elements in the projects.. That's right coachable moments in real time, with your PMs. This is how you develop better PMs, right? Don (01:40): Absolutely! In addition to mentoring junior PMs, I actually remember working as a Senior PM, and working with my Principal In Charge. I actually had to manage up. Suggesting that we have regular, project, reviews. Simply because I felt if I were able to brief my Principle efficiently bringing him up to speed, he would never get blindsided by questions that come up in senior level meetings. Or, if maybe a client called. He would be able to answer any questions or concerns . Weekly project briefings are just a way to quickly brief the junior and senior, people within the firm on what's going on with projects. Sometimes looking at sheer data just isn't enough. There's always a story behind the data. JJ (02:25): Yep. Observed Don develop quite a few PMs, by him implementing project review processes and procedures. Teaching Senior PMs, and PMs about accountability and proactive project management. Don assumed a Director role, and continued with the project review meetings. Communication, as you know, teams, talking about what's going on. What's working, what's not. How to pro actively solve problems. is fundamental to consistent success. We'll talk about some of this in our self-directed work teams video. It goes hand in hand with developing project managers, and how to get, you know, and lead design professionals. From boots on the ground team members to PMs, and Senior Managers. This stuff all sort of ties together and creates a mentoring and high performance team environment. So, what are the real benefits of doing this? Well, let's talk about the first one. Which as you know is how to improve project performance. It comes out of the dialogue . You develop a common language and metrics like JTD or ETC or EAC. Ideally, your principles have a lot of experience, there is a lot of value in that. So having a conversation, looking at performance issues. More brains in the room to have a proactive talk about how to solve problems. Identifying risk, mitigating risk proactively. Leveraging Team Leads and Senior Staff's collective experience and intellect. That's one of the first things you can really see is the benefit of this. Don (03:28): Yeah. You know, I always used to like to tell my PMs one of the primary skills the PM has, is the ability to communicate. Sometimes, you have the means to do that, and sometimes you have to facilitate the means to do that,. Communicating to the people who are executing the work, but also communicating to people who are in charge of teams executing the work. So, again, it's all about constructive, proactive, communication. Communication and teaching PMs the art of communication. So many times design professionals are really great at creating solutions, creating environments that are amazing, but they really haven't spent a lot of time communicating facts and data pertaining to a project. So this is a, this is, a nuance, a skill set that needs to be developed and, evolved over time. Share Knowledge JJ (04:23): Yeah. And, and again, it's, there's so much value in a principal who's been there. It's the opportunity to, to share that experience. Which leads to the next one, you know, really develop those PMs. A lot of firms are trying to develop PMs by sending 'em out to training, and that's good. I mean, having PMs understand metrics and standard project management practices is good, but there's just so much more to be learned from principles and vice versa. Right? Don (04:51): Absolutely. Kinda sneaking into the next one here, where we're talking about forecasting, and I think the notion or the, philosophical approach that I always used to like to teach was that if you're not forecasting your projects and forecasting accurately, then you're really not managing to a goal or an objective. You should be able to call your shots, so to speak, and then execute to that objective. And I think that's the real nuance between sending a PM to a PM bootcamp and actually training effective PMs. JJ (05:27): Yep. And so these next few points will illustrate is this idea. You know, we've seen a lot of these principle reviews. Occasionally done by finance, or with teams that only have tools that report on what's been charged the project. You know, dollars or hours spent to date. It's accurate. However that's that rear view management. What happened, lagging indicators. We advise that principles, in principle reviews, talk about what's happened, but really focus on: okay, that's what's where we are, but what are we doing going forward? What's coming down the road? What are they doing? You know, we'll talk about deliverables, and projected performance. And so these two tie together. First, we're going to get PMs to focus more on planning. This is also a key thing we talked about in our other session. If you want, please watch it. How to get started with project planning. The value of planning is demonstrated when the senior leaders, demonstrate to the PM that they actually look at and understand the information. If you don't use your project planning tool, you know, if the principal doesn't open it up and show the PM they're using it. PMs aren't using it. Showing project plans and sitting down with the PM is what emphasizes it, demonstrates the importance of project planning to the PM PMs grasp the importance of planning and updating plans. (06:34): And so it's a tool now and it helps emphasize that performance, right? Don (06:38): Absolutely! Just like anything, whether you want to be a good bowler or good at the violin, no matter what you want to get good at, the time you put in will probably have a direct correlation on the results and success. You have to invest a little bit of time. Planning really pays dividends. It gives you that roadmap again, the goal is to forecast and manage project performance. JJ (07:03): Yeah, you can sort of see, the principal fits in that coaching role. Teaching proactive PM and Continuous Improvement. What gets measured gets managed. And then this stuff rolls up. So overall, the firm now gets to look across projects and get better forecasts in total for finance, for staffing needs, right? PMs are often asking for more people. Well, the best way you can justify getting more people, is demonstrate, via solid data provided by modern PM tools. That show that. Scope, Schedule, Personal and Budget necessary to complete the project. So, if everything sounds so good so far, you how do you get started? There's two main things we sort of highlight, and a third one a little bit, but it's basically, what you intuitively talk about deliverables, deliverable status, do some of the projection, financial review. You also need to look at staffing. You know, do you have the right staffing mix? So to start with, you know, talk about deliverables and schedules, right? Communication and Coaching Don (07:54): Yes. Again, this kind of goes back to my communications mantra that says, one of the primary things is. Did you communicate the deliverables, schedule, personnel responsible . ASAP? You're asking your PM or Senior PM Did you clearly communicate the deliverables that are going to be due at this milestone? Are all your team members firing in the same direction in terms of working toward that goal? Do they understand the proper sequence of events that needs to occur? Key stake holders and contributors such as, the civil engineer, the structural engineer, mechanical engineer, and the architect, making sure that that sequence of events makes sense. So the specs and drawings are flowing through the organization smoothly. So that the PM can confidently tell you, yes, we are going to hit this deliverable and, we're within our budget on, on this scope of work. Shared Responsibility JJ (08:47): Yeah. confirming all stakeholders have been communicated with. And, you know, now we're scrambling to get their work done so that the architect or whoever next is in line can finish up just a quick review of, you know, Don (08:59): This is a great opportunity for the PIC to pick up some good information, regarding what kind of challenges or conflicts are we having, as we're going through, putting together the deliverable. So, for example, maybe the one of the team members, has got some changes that came as a result of a client review meeting, and those changes are going to increase the scope. First of all, the PIC I could say, have we documented that? Do we have all the paperwork necessary to execute that change in contract? Second, there is a time constraint that has now been created. Are we consuming more hours on this project and therefore having an impact on peripheral projects or vice versa, is that happening to us? So there are some challenges that could be overcome from that perspective. Are we in the midst of a discussion with an owner who has not really approved a change directive, and so therefore we're sitting on, a project where we really should be progressing on it? So this is a absolutely critical opportunity for the PIC to really interject himself or herself and take proactive measures. JJ (10:16): Yeah. Yeah, definitely get something better than a shaky verbal to proceed with that change order. So briefly what we brought up in this screen, this is our view, our master schedule view. So you can filter it down to a single principle or, an office or just the PM is you can look at just the, the work that that PM has scheduled, and then maybe you zoom out to work within that office, and that allows you to look at what's starting and stopping. What, , deliverables are due. So we can see that 90%, CD due, in this screen. and that, as we mentioned, just allows you to look at, are there conflicts? Do we have eight deliverables going out that day? That could be a problem, you know? The second part is, you typically, QA, QC. We have that, you know, at the top there. You know, is it assigned, you with our tool, if you assign QA, QC to a person, they can see it within their outlook. So if you have assigned that to a principal, you know, they're aware of it and it helps just coordinate, those activities. Proactive Don (11:18): I'd like to jump in there. Yeah. You know, from my experience, the quickest way to get on the wrong side of a PIC is to tell 'em at five o'clock on a Friday afternoon, Hey, I got this, set of documents I need a QA, QC on. That can get you sideways pretty fast. First of all, you'd like to give them more advanced notice. Second of all, if, the principal does pick up on a few things that need to be corrected and you've waited till the last minute, you're going to be working overtime. And these are one of those sneaky little things that consume project hours and consume project budget. Sometimes people look back and go, how did we go over budget on this thing? It's those kind of things that, that, that that'll bite you every time. JJ (12:02): Yeah. Cause then you have to go ask someone to work on Saturday to fix it. So they're working overtime. Staff morale impacted, they're not happy, or your schedule's late, right? And that's another key issue. We know that, you know, based on last year's, survey, 37% of firms had, challenges and issues with schedules. You know, being on time, there's two main things on time, on budget. If you want to win, you gotta do both, at least in our opinion. So consider, you don't need to use our tools. We're just talking about how you want to coordinate things you want to look at. We try to make it easier for you. But, you know, these are the things that you need to, identify, right? Next part of the review, unless anything else? (12:46): Nope. the financial review, quick review of, projects. So we're looking at some key high level items. We'll talk to this a little bit. I brought up our screen again to give an idea. It doesn't need to be our tool, but you know, the key elements. Job to date, estimate to complete, estimate at completion. Ideally in ours, you can just use Excel type filter, filter it down to the PM, you know, Randy Sinclair or whoever it is, you got their list of projects, you can bang through that list pretty quickly. Don, you've done a ton of these though. Let's talk about some of the points. What are you, what are you looking at? What are you talking through with your pm The Details: How to Don (13:21): You know, one of the first things that I think a lot of folks want to do is compare their fee and their estimate at complete. And sometimes you'll just take a peak at those two numbers and think, oh, things are going swimmingly. You're going to make some money, but peel back one or two layers of the onion. Hmmm. Looks like we have, a significant positive variance. Did we plan all the people that are going to be working in this particular phase? So that's where you begin to really look at estimate to complete. Does it make sense along with the estimate at completion and the fee? So you kind of just do a quick sniff test to make sure that the disciplines that you know, are going to participate in a particular deliverable. You're looking at it and going, oh yes, you have the structural, you got your architect. Oh, do you have, construction administration? Oh, looks like you missed that. You know? So these are some of the things that as you QAQC, the plan that has been put in front of you, you can pick up on stuff very, very quickly. JJ (14:23): Yeah. This one, actually, I didn't realize that good of an example. This is, so in this example, the EAC is at 1.9 million on a 2.1 million fee. Not so bad. questions you might want to quickly ask. so design development has zero ETC, it looks like it's $30,000 under budget. You want to confirm, you know, is it actually done a hundred percent no more time, you know, so that's question number one., next thing, CDs likely underway, they, they look like they're, projecting slightly over. Okay? On our overall picture, not so bad. But here's the real, you know, alarm bell, CA is projecting EAC at 267,000 on a half million dollar fee. I don't know about you guys, but not too many firms I ever speak to come under budget on CA. So, you know, going down to this level would potentially uncover, something you wouldn't catch 'em at the end of the project. Don (15:23): Right! And as I always would coach, it's that proactive, management of the PMs, as the PIC where you're looking to the horizon and seeing some potential pitfalls that if you take countermeasures early enough, you jump through that window of opportunity to correct things before they're uncorrectable. And I guess my analogy on that, just to be quick. I always talk about a marathon. If you want to run a three and a half hour marathon, you realize that your split times or times per mile have to be about seven minutes, 30 seconds per mile. Well, in the very beginning of that marathon, if you find you're off pace, you can pick it up by, say, 30 seconds per mile. If you wait till mile marker 16 and you have to pick up a full minute per mile, that's a, that's an extraordinary task. And if you wait even longer, it just becomes absolutely impossible. JJ (16:18): You know, in this example. That's a good analogy because what the PM basically did plan his team for a four minute mile. Exactly, That's what the PM did. You know, so other quick things you want to look at, you know, are the fees off or fees missing? Is EAC zero? I mean, could something's not be planned, is it under planed? We also recommend, you know, look at job date plan versus actual, that gives that comparison. Are you planning, are you spending more or less than what you've planned to this date and time? It gives you an, you know, how accurate is the, you know, temperature, so to speak. Don (16:55): Yeah, I think you'll actually have picked up on a little bit of that when you talk about conflicts and challenges, you'll, you'll see it reflected on estimate versus actual. JJ (17:04): Yeah. And again, bringing up, if you're going to do resource planning and project manage project planning, this is, again, we're bringing this with the pm, showing him, the him or her, the data and talking about it with them, it just emphasizes it's important and that you're using it, and it's valuable to you. so, those are our main things that we recommend reviewing there. One thing we actually, we didn't talk about was, resource conflicts can also come into play. So if you want to, you know use, if you're using the resource management piece, you can look at your key discipline needs or key members in that role. Double check if anyone's got vacation schedule coming up. Anything. Anyone could be get double booked on their projects somehow. you can do a quick review of, the staff too, if that's a common problem for your firm. Don (17:59): No doubt about it. And anyone that's put together a plan understands that if I have five PMs all using similar resources at some point in time, we're both going to have requests for the same resource. JJ (18:10): Yeah. So, yeah, thanks for the time. Hopefully you all find this valuable. Hopefully they'll start doing some more PM reviews. looking to the future. Don and I, have our contact information here if you want to reach out to us. (18:26): About Planifi At Planifi, our goal is to make, project planning and forecasting drop dead simple for architects, engineers, and design professionals. If you want to find out more about that, you can visit plani.net or again, contact us directly. Thanks for time and have a great day.

Engineering project management is specialized and requires specific tools in order to be successful. Planifi is one option for software that can help you manage your engineering projects effectively. Keep reading to learn more about why design professionals need specialized project management tools and how Planifi can help! Table of Contents: What Is Engineering Project Management? Who Needs Engineering Project Management Tools? Why Do Design Professionals Need Specialized Project Management Tools? How Can Planifi Help With Engineering Project Management? Other Options for Enterprise Level Engineering Project Management Software FAQs in Relation to Engineering Project Management for Design Professionals What is design project management? What is an engineering project management? Is project management good for engineers? What does a project manager do? Conclusion What Is Engineering Project Management? But what is engineering project management? In simple terms, engineering project management is the application of project management principles to engineering projects. This includes the use of project management tools and techniques to plan, execute, and control engineering projects. One of the main goals of engineering project management is to ensure that projects are completed on time and within budget. But it also aims to optimize the use of resources, minimize risks, and maximize the project's overall success. There are many different project management methodologies that can be used for engineering projects. But regardless of the methodology used, there are some key principles that all engineering project managers should follow. These principles include developing a clear and achievable project plan, communicating effectively with all project stakeholders, and maintaining control of the project throughout its execution. By following these principles, engineering project managers can help ensure that their projects are successful. And when projects are successful, everyone benefits. Who Needs Engineering Project Management Tools? The answer is that it depends on the type and size of projects you typically work on. If you typically work on small projects with a few team members, you may not need a full-featured project management tool. However, if you work on large projects with multiple team members, you may find that a project management tool helps you keep track of tasks, deadlines, and assigned team members. In addition, if you work on projects that require coordination with other teams or departments, a project management tool can help you keep track of communication and progress. Why Do Design Professionals Need Specialized Project Management Tools? But what about managing projects specifically related to your engineering field? Just as there are specific tools and software for managing different types of projects, there are also project management tools that are designed specifically for engineers and other design professionals. There are a few reasons why you might want to consider using specialized project management tools for your engineering projects. For one, these tools are often designed specifically with engineers in mind. This means that they include features and functionality that are relevant to your field and that can make your job easier. Another reason to use specialized project management tools for engineering projects is that they can help you to stay organized and on track. Engineering projects can often be complex, with many moving parts. Having a tool that can help you to keep track of all the different aspects of your project can be a huge help. Finally, using specialized project management tools can help you to save time. By having a tool that is specifically designed for engineering projects, you can often automate tasks or get help with project management tasks that would otherwise take up a lot of your time. Overall, using specialized project management tools for engineering projects can be a big help. If you are looking for a way to save time and stay organized, these tools may be a good option for you. Key Takeaway: Using specialized project management tools can help engineers to save time and stay organized. How Can Planifi Help With Engineering Project Management? Planifi is a project management software built specifically for design professionals. It allows you to create and manage projects, track progress, and collaborate with team members. Planifi can also It can also help you plan and budget for projects, and track and report on project milestones. FAQs in Relation to Engineering Project Management for Design Professionals What is design project management? Design project management is the process of planning, executing, and controlling the design and construction of engineering projects. It includes the coordination and collaboration of all stakeholders involved in the project, from conception to completion. What is engineering project management? Engineering project management is a process that helps design professionals plan, organize, and control projects. It includes creating and maintaining project plans, scheduling resources and tasks, tracking progress, and communicating with stakeholders. Is project management good for engineers? The benefits of project management for engineers will vary depending on the specific engineering discipline and project type. However, in general, project management can be beneficial for engineers by providing a structured approach to design and development, helping to ensure that projects are completed on time and within budget. Additionally, project management can help engineers to communicate more effectively with other members of the project team, as well as with clients and stakeholders. What does a project manager do? A project manager is responsible for the overall coordination and management of an engineering project. This includes developing the project plan, coordinating with various stakeholders and team members, and ensuring that the project stays on track and is completed within budget and schedule constraints. Conclusion Design professionals need specialized tools for engineering project management in order to be successful. Planifi is one great option that can help you manage your projects effectively. With its easy-to-use interface and features specifically designed for design professionals, Planifi is a top choice for managing engineering projects. Planifi offers the best project management tools for design professionals, from ERP based planning solutions to generic enterprise project planning tools. With our easy-to-use platform, you can manage your projects with ease and get the most out of your team's skills. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you streamline your workflow and improve communication between teams.

As a project manager, architect or engineer, understanding your project burn rate is essential for successful completion of any design project. But what exactly does that mean? Project burn rate is the speed at which money is spent on a particular task or set of tasks over time. It's an important metric to measure as it can provide insight into how efficiently you are managing projects with your planned spend. In this blog post we'll explore strategies for managing your project burn rate effectively, tips for improving performance and common challenges associated with optimizing it. Table of Contents: What Is Project Burn Rate? Strategies for Managing Project Burn Rate Tips for Improving Project Burn Rate Performance Common Challenges With Managing Project Burn Rate Best Practices for Optimizing Project Burn Rate Performance FAQs in Relation to Project Burn Rate What is project Burn? What is a good burn rate? What is meant by burn rate? What is burn rate in design? What Is Project Burn Rate? Project burn rate is a powerful metric that shows the planned spend on a project over a period of time, typically a month. It can be used to help manage and track you project budget allowing architects and engineers to better understand their project budget over time typically based on plan labor spending. Definition of Project Burn Rate: Project burn rate is the amount of labor fee planned on a project in relation to its timeline. It’s usually measured in terms of dollars dollars per month. This allows for quick comparison between projects as well as an understanding of how much money has been planned for each future month. Benefits of Tracking Burn Rate: By tracking your project's burn rate, you can gain insight into how efficiently resources are being utilized and where there may be room for improvement. Additionally, it helps ensure that projects stay within budget by providing visibility into spending patterns throughout the duration of the project. Finally, it provides valuable information about which areas need more attention from management so they can make informed decisions about resource allocation and cost control measures going forward. How to calculate Project Burn Rate: To calculate your project's burn rate, simply divide the total planned labor cost by the number of days or months until completion. For example, if you have $24k worth of labor over 6 months then your monthly burn rate would be $2k ($12k/6mo). Project burn rate is an important metric for project managers, principals, and executives at architecture and engineering firms to understand in order to better manage their projects. Knowing how to calculate burn rate can help teams make informed decisions about budgeting and scheduling resources. Strategies for Managing Project Burn Rate It shows the planned spend on a project over a period of time, typically a month. By tracking burn rate, project managers can better manage their projects and ensure they stay within budget. Here are some strategies for managing project burn rate: Establishing Clear Goals and Objectives: Before beginning any design project, it’s essential to set clear goals and objectives that will guide the entire process. This includes setting realistic budgets, timelines, milestones, deliverables, resources needed to complete the work on time and within budget. Doing this upfront helps avoid costly mistakes later down the line when trying to track your burn rate. Setting Realistic Budgets and Timelines: Once you have established your goals and objectives for the project, it’s important to create realistic budgets based on those objectives as well as reasonable timelines that account for unforeseen delays or changes in scope during the course of the work. Keeping these updated throughout each phase of the project allows you to more accurately monitor your progress against your budgeted amounts so you can make adjustments if necessary before things get out of hand financially speaking. Utilizing automation tools and software solutions can provide architects and engineers with real-time visibility into their projects' financial performance, including overall burn rates from start to finish. With just a few clicks of a button, users are able to easily track how much money has been spent versus what was initially planned. This makes it easier than ever before for them to stay within budget no matter the complexity or size of the project. By establishing clear goals and objectives, setting realistic budgets and timelines, and utilizing automation tools and software solutions, architects and engineers can effectively manage project burn rate. Next we will look at how to measure the success of these strategies. See how easy it is manage and track your burn rate in Planifi with this short video: Tips for Improving Project Burn Rate Performance To ensure projects are completed within budget and on time, there are several tips that can help improve performance. Analyzing Historical Data to Identify Trends and Patterns: Examining past data from similar projects can provide valuable insights into how best to manage current ones. This includes identifying areas where costs have been higher than expected or timelines extended beyond their original scope. With this information in hand, project managers can plan accordingly by setting realistic budgets and timelines for future projects. Leveraging Technology to Streamline Processes and Reduce Waste: Automation tools such as project management software offer many advantages when it comes to tracking burn rate performance. By automating mundane tasks such as invoicing or reporting, teams can save time while also reducing errors associated with manual processes. Additionally, these solutions often come with built-in analytics capabilities which allow users to easily monitor progress against goals in real-time without having to manually compile reports each month or quarter. To ensure accuracy and efficiency, quality assurance practices should be implemented throughout the entire lifecycle of a project - from planning to execution. This will reduce the risk of costly mistakes due to human error or miscommunication between stakeholders involved in the process. Examples of such practices include regularly reviewing requirements documents before starting work on any task; conducting regular check-ins with team members; establishing clear roles and responsibilities for all parties involved; creating detailed test plans prior to deployment, etc. These measures will help ensure accuracy while also improving efficiency across teams working together on complex design projects. By taking the time to analyze historical data, leverage technology, and implement quality assurance practices, architecture and engineering firms can ensure that their project burn rate performance is optimized for maximum efficiency. Next, we'll explore how to effectively manage resources in order to reduce costs. Common Challenges With Managing Project Burn Rate Managing project burn rate can be a challenge for many architecture and engineering firms. Poor communication between teams or departments, changing schedules from clients or stakeholders, and inadequate resources are all common issues that can affect the success of a project. Poor Communication Between Teams or Departments: When teams lack clear lines of communication, it can lead to delays in projects and missed deadlines. This is especially true when different departments have different priorities and objectives that need to be addressed in order for the project to move forward. It’s important for team members to stay connected with each other throughout the duration of the project so they can address any potential issues before they become major problems. Unclear Expectations or Requirements from Clients or Stakeholders: Without proper understanding of what is expected from both parties involved in a design project, there may be confusion about who is responsible for certain tasks which could lead to delays in progress as well as increased costs due to rework. It’s essential that everyone involved has an accurate understanding of their roles and responsibilities prior to beginning work on any given task so there are no surprises down the line. Inadequate resources or insufficient budget allocation can lead to costly delays during the design process. Without proper management, this could result in more money being spent than originally planned. To avoid such issues, it is important that budgets are set realistically based on estimates provided by experienced professionals within the organization who understand how long specific tasks typically take under ideal conditions and factor any potential risks associated with them into account beforehand. It is essential for project managers, principals, and executives to be aware of the common challenges associated with managing project burn rate. Next, we will discuss strategies that can help address these issues. Best Practices for Optimizing Project Burn Rate Performance By monitoring this data over time, project managers can make informed decisions about how best to allocate resources and adjust timelines accordingly. Here are some best practices for optimizing your project burn rate performance: Developing Effective Reporting Systems: To effectively monitor your projects’ burn rates, you need to have accurate and up-to-date reporting systems in place. This means tracking all expenses associated with each task or phase of the project so that you can quickly identify any potential issues or areas where costs may be exceeding expectations. Additionally, having access to real-time reports allows you to better anticipate future needs and plan ahead accordingly. Utilizing Agile Methodologies: Utilizing agile methodologies such as Scrum or Kanban can help reduce waste by allowing teams to adapt quickly when changes arise during a project’s development cycle. By breaking down tasks into smaller chunks that are completed in rapid succession, teams are able to respond more efficiently when unexpected events occur which could otherwise lead to costly delays or budget overruns. Establishing Regular Reviews: Establishing regular reviews with stakeholders helps ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding objectives and expectations throughout the course of a design project's life cycle. During these meetings, team members should discuss their progress towards achieving goals while also addressing any potential risks or challenges they may face along the way - this will help keep everyone accountable while ensuring that deadlines are met within budget constraints. By following these best practices for optimizing your projects' burn rates, you can maximize efficiency while minimizing costs associated with design projects, resulting in successful outcomes each time. By following these best practices, architecture and engineering firms can gain greater control over their project burn rate performance and ensure that resources are being used efficiently. Next, we will explore how agile methodologies can help increase flexibility and adaptability. Key Takeaway: By utilizing agile methodologies, developing effective reporting systems, and establishing regular reviews with stakeholders, project managers can optimize their projects' burn rates while minimizing costs associated with design projects. FAQs in Relation to Project Burn Rate What is project Burn? Project Burn is a project management software designed specifically for architecture and engineering firms. It helps project managers, principals, and executives to plan, manage, and track projects from start to finish with ease. Project Burn provides an intuitive interface that allows users to quickly create tasks and assign them to team members. It also offers powerful reporting tools that allow users to monitor progress in real-time as well as gain insights into their projects’ performance over time. With its comprehensive features, Project Burn makes it easy for teams of all sizes to stay organized while ensuring successful completion of projects on time and within budget. What is meant by burn rate? Burn rate is a term used to describe the rate at which a company or project spends its available funds. It is typically measured in terms of money spent per month, and can be calculated by subtracting total revenue from total expenses over a given period of time. Burn rate is an important metric for businesses and projects as it helps them understand their financial health and plan accordingly. By tracking burn rate, companies can better manage cash flow, identify areas where costs need to be reduced, and make more informed decisions about investments. What is burn rate in design? Burn rate in design is the rate at which a company spends its available funds on projects. It is calculated by taking the total amount of money spent on projects over a certain period of time and dividing it by the total amount of money available for spending during that same period. This helps companies to track their financial performance, plan budgets more accurately, and identify areas where costs can be reduced or avoided. Burn rate also serves as an indicator of how quickly a project will reach completion, allowing project managers to adjust timelines accordingly. Conclusion With the right strategies, tips, and best practices, you can optimize your project burn rate performance to ensure that projects are completed on time and within budget. By understanding what project burn rate is, how it works, and how to manage it effectively with software solutions, you can maximize efficiency while minimizing costs. Are you an architect or engineer looking for a better way to manage projects? Planifi is the project management software solution that helps you understand and control your burn rate. Our intuitive tools help track costs, timelines, resources, deliverables and more. With our real-time data insights at your fingertips, stay on top of every project with confidence – no matter how complex it may be! Planifi's industry leading product enables firms to visually track and manage their projects including the burn rate so that your projects stay on track.

Design firms are always looking for ways to improve their project management and execution. One area that is often overlooked is the financial side of things. This article contains three (3) simple project financial metrics that every design firm can use. There are a few different types of project financial metrics, but three simple ones that every design firm should be tracking are job to date spent, estimate to complete, and estimate at complete. Job to Date (JTD): For most design firms, they primary objective is to manage labor. Project managers often have little control over subcontractors and consultants. JTD is the amount of labor spent to date on a project. This metric is by nature backward looking and often comes from an accounting system. Estimate to Complete (ETC): ETC is the amount of planned labor (at cost or bill) that is required to complete the remaining work on the project from the perspective of the project manager. This metric is by nature forward looking. Estimate at Complete (EAC): These three metrics will help you see if your projects are on schedule and on budget. If your estimate at complete is less than your labor fee, then you know you're under budget! Tracking these project financial metrics is a simple yet effective way to keep tabs on progress and ensure successful completion of any given design project - both big and small. Leading design firms use systems such as Planifi to ensure that Project Managers have complete access to historical data as well as powerful tools to manage Estimate to Complete. Example of Project Metrics from Planifi: Conclusion Tracking project financial metrics is a simple yet effective way to keep tabs on progress and ensure successful completion of any given design project - both big and small. By monitoring job to date spent, estimate to complete, and estimate at complete, firms can stay on schedule and budget while executing their projects flawlessly. Planifi Planifi provides project management software for architects and engineers. Our software enables your design firm to execute projects on schedule and on budget. Our simple metrics—job to date spent, estimate to complete, and estimate at complete—allow you to track your progress and ensure that your project stays on track. Contact us today to learn more about how our software can help you manage your next project! Example of Profit Pie from Planifi:

When it comes to managing a successful project, there are a million and one things that need to be taken into account. From timelines and deadlines to budgeting and cost-benefit analyses, the list goes on. But one of the most important aspects of any project – especially large design projects – is resource capacity planning. The benefit of project resource capacity planning is all about making sure you have enough people with the right skillsets in place at the right time to get the job done. Sounds simple enough, but if not properly managed, this can quickly become one of your project's biggest headaches. If the skills you need aren't available at your firm at all because that person is booked or not yet hired your problem is even worse! Table of Contents: What Is Resource Capacity Planning? Why Is Resource Capacity Planning Important? How to Conduct Resource Capacity Planning Best Practices for Resource Capacity Planning FAQs in Relation to Resource Capacity Planning in Project Management What is capacity planning in project management? Conclusion What Is Resource Capacity Planning? Resource capacity planning is a process used by project managers to identify the amount of work that can be completed by a team of workers in a given period of time. This information is then used to create a project schedule and assign tasks to team members. Why Is Project Resource Capacity Planning Important? As someone who works in project management, you know that resource capacity planning is important in order to complete a project on time and within budget. But why is resource capacity planning so important? Simply put, resource capacity planning ensures that you have the right people working on the right tasks at the right time. If you don't have enough people working on a task, it will take longer to complete. And if you have too many people working on a task, you're wasting resources. In order to have a successful project, it's important to have a good resource capacity plan. This means that you need to identify the tasks that need to be completed, the people who will be working on each task, and the amount of time that each task will take. Once you have this information, you can create a project schedule and assign tasks to people. This will help you to make sure that everyone is working on the right tasks and that the project is completed on time. Resource capacity planning is an important part of project management and it's something that you should take time to do. By taking the time to create a good resource capacity plan, you can ensure that your project is successful. Key Takeaway: Resource capacity planning is important for successful project management as it ensures the right people are working on the right tasks at the right time. Example Capacity report from Planifi: How to Conduct Resource Capacity Planning When it comes to managing a project, one of the most important things to keep in mind is resource capacity planning. This is the process of making sure that you have enough resources available to complete the project tasks within the specified timeframe. There are a few different ways to go about conducting resource capacity planning. The first is to look at the resources you have available and determine if they are sufficient for the project at hand. This can be done by looking at past projects and seeing how much resources were used. If you find that you are consistently using more resources than you have available, then you will need to either find a way to increase your resources or adjust the project scope. Another way to conduct resource capacity planning is to look at the project tasks and determine how many resources will be required to complete them. This can be done by looking at the project schedule and identifying the tasks that require the most resources. Once you have identified these tasks, you can then determine how many resources you will need to complete them. Once you have a good understanding of the resources you have available and the project tasks that require them, you can then start to develop a resource plan. This resource plan should include the number of resources you will need, the type of resources you will need, and the timeframe in which you will need them. This resource plan will help you to ensure that you have the right resources available when you need them and will also help to keep your project on track. Key Takeaway: The worst cast scenario is you need a particular skill to complete your design project on time and that person has not yet been hired Click To Tweet Best Practices for Resource Capacity Planning As a project manager, one of your key responsibilities is to ensure that your team has the capacity to complete the work assigned to them. Resource capacity planning is a key component of effective project management and can help you avoid potential problems down the road. There are a few best practices that you should keep in mind when doing resource capacity planning: 1. Make Sure You Have a Clear Understanding of the Project Scope and Objectives. This will help you determine the necessary resources and skills needed to complete the project. Create a realistic timeline for the project and build in some buffer time in case of unforeseen delays or problems. Work with your team to determine their availability and capacity for the project. Make sure to take into account vacation time, sick days, and other potential time off. 3. Use Project Management Software to Help You Track and Manage Resources. Use the spreadsheet if you want to, but Planifi makes it easy for design professionals track of who is working on what and when they are available. You can learn more here. 4. Communicate Regularly With Your Team About the Project Timeline and Objectives. This will help ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal. By following these best practices, you can ensure that your project has the resources it needs to be successful. Key Takeaway: In order to effectively manage a project, resource capacity planning is key. FAQs in Relation to Resource Capacity Planning in Project Management What is capacity planning in project management? Capacity planning is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products or services. The purpose of capacity planning is to ensure that an organization has the resources and processes in place to meet its future needs. Conclusion Resource capacity planning is an important part of project management and can make the difference between a successful project and one that runs into trouble. By taking the time to plan ahead and ensure you have the right people in place, you can avoid costly delays and disruptions down the line. When Resource Capacity Planning is done company wide design firms benefit with a clear view of where to hire before so they can plan ahead. Planifi provides a comprehensive suite of project management tools for architects and engineers. By using our software, firms can gain an accurate forecast of resource capacity and future demand. This enables managers to make effective hiring decisions prior to the need becoming acute. With Planifi, your firm will be able to deliver projects on time and within budget while ensuring that quality standards are met. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you streamline your project management process!

Traditional A/E Project Management Traditional project management takes a step-by-step approach to delivering Architecture and Engineering (A/E) projects. The project goes through initiation, planning, execution, and monitoring, then straight to closure in consecutive stages. A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule, named after its inventor, Henry Gantt, who designed the chart around the years 1910–1915. Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationships between activities and current schedule status. Great in it’s day. Often called linear, this approach to A/E project delivery includes several sequential internal phases, executed in chronological order. This approach is most commonly applied within the construction or manufacturing industries, where little or no change is required at any given stage. I’ve spent over 25 years in Architecture and Engineering, and this sounds nothing like the projects I know. Also known as the waterfall model. Waterfall model for A/E project delivery has a strong emphasis on planning and specifications development, which takes up to 40 percent of the project’s time and budget. Another basic principle of this approach is the strict order of the project phases. A new project stage does not begin until the previous one is finished. The method works well for clearly defined projects with a single deliverable and fixed deadline. The Waterfall approach requires thorough planning, extensive project documentation, and tight control over the development process. In theory, this should lead to on-time, on-budget delivery, low project risks, and predictable results. However, when applied to the actual architectural and engineering process, Waterfall method tends to be slow, costly, and inflexible due to numerous restrictions. In many cases, its inability to adjust the product to the evolving market requirements results in wasted resources and potentially even project failure. If you’re looking to not only avoid project failure, but deliver more successful and profitable projects, take a look at our easy-to-use, visual staffing and forecasting tools! Agile A/E Project Management On the other hand, the Agile method for A/E project delivery anticipates (and even embraces) change, which allows for more flexibility than traditional A/E project management. For example, Agile enables clients to make small objective changes without huge amendments to the budget or schedule, improving client satisfaction. Agile project management involves breaking down each project into prioritized requirements, then delivering each individually within an iterative cycle. An iteration is the routine of developing small sections of a project at a time – such as pre-design, Schematic Design, Design Development, and Construction. Each iteration is reviewed and assessed by both the development team and client, ensuring alignment and providing key insights along the way. The insights gained are then used to determine the next step in development. Clients attend pre-scheduled, regular meetings to review the previous iteration’s completed work, and to plan the next step. Detailed goals are set in each iteration meeting such as: expected changes, time estimates, priorities and budgets. The Agile method places high priority to customer participation from the very beginning of the development cycle. This keeps the client involved at every step. Constant involvement and client engagement helps avoid major disruptions and ensures they are pleased with the final product. In the end, this approach saves money and time, and increases client satisfaction. If there are defects or challenges, then changes can be made proactively during production cycles to fix the issue. Traditional models of A/E project management would not find defects as early because they do not test as often. Typically (in traditional methods of production), defects are not always discovered and may find their way into the final product resulting in increased overhead and client dissatisfaction. Architecture and Engineering project teams have proven this model of project management with increased client satisfaction rates. Additionally, Architecture and Engineering firms have reported significant improvements in moral, profitability, personnel utilization and schedule management! A/E firms use this model of project management to ensure that, throughout the process, clients save time, money, and appreciate the flexibility to make changes and provide feedback. The benefits to utilizing this model include: Lower costs and higher profits Happier clients, more repeat work More effective communication between project teams and clients A competitive advantage because your firm is catching defects and making changes throughout the development process Faster evaluations since each evaluation is only on a small part of the whole project. Quicker changes with less hassle More transparent projects with regular client meetings and feedback Interested in learning how Planifi software can help your firm implement Agile project management? Improve client satisfaction, decrease overhead, and achieve higher profitability by scheduling a call today! #Agile #Architecture #Engineering #ProjectManagement About the author: Don Archibeque is a Project Executive with Planifi, bringing more than 25 years of experience in construction and A/E (architecture and engineering) Project Management, as well as associated professional managerial services.

Project Retrospectives are a concept widely used in Agile project management: what they are; how they can improve your design projects; and how to get started. In this video experienced design industry leaders JJ Brantingham and Don Archibeque discuss their process for project retrospectives to help your firm perform better. Overview and Introduction: Why and How Should we do Project Retrospectives JJ Brantingham (00:00): Hello, I'm JJ Brantingham. I'm here with Don Archibeque. We're both from Planifi, and we're here today to talk about how to do a project retrospective. Obviously we'll start by introducing what it is, what are the benefits, and how do you get started. By way of background, Don Archibeque here has 30 plus years experience in A/E, not only as a project manager, but as a director of project managers, reviewing project management teams and enhancing them. Don also spent time on the other side of the table as an Owner's Rep. Myself, I spent 20 years, well over 20 years, spent time as a principal at a firm in operations, IT, and finance. (00:46): So again, as I mentioned, we're going to get started by explaining what a retrospective is, what are the benefits of performing those retrospectives, and how to get started if you're interested or it sounds good. So obviously to get started, what's a retrospective? If you're not familiar, these are short meetings to basically uncover learnings, mentor and enhance your project teams, uncover challenges, issues, opportunities. They're not about blaming, they're about discovering and improving, and they're short meetings. They shouldn't be one hour meetings. We're looking at 10 to 30 minutes with the project teams. (01:28): And then the next sort of sticky wicket is how often do you do them? Some people prescribe to more of a regular basis. Others look at doing things at the end of milestones and phases. The important part is that they're not too far apart. Three months gets to be too long, and frankly too late to make corrections. But more importantly, a lot of things get lost or forgotten. So let's talk about ... Don, you ran a lot of these meetings with your teams. How did you figure out the best pattern to get started with your groups? How Often Should we Conduct Project Retrospectives? Don Archibeque (02:06): So first of all, thinking about when to do these retrospectives, it's kind of like asking a person, what did you have for dinner last night? Well, it's really clear. They can tell you what was great about the dinner, maybe what wasn't so great about the dinner. They can even tell you the ingredients that went into preparing the dinner. But if you wait two weeks, it becomes less clear, and I think you start to lose detail that you can actually learn from. While each project phase is just like a dinner, every one is different. And so as you are going through a project, there are typically a series of deliverables that you're required to prepare and send out for review, whether it be in the schematic design phase or design development phase or whatever. (02:56) And there are times within that work where it's important for you to take a look at, okay, how did this go? Did we have all the information we needed? Did the scope increase? Did the scope decrease? How are we doing for time? There are just a lot of things that need to be communicated as efficiently as possible creating standard process for information exchange. And I think that's one of the real benefits of a retrospective. You gain learnings very, very quickly and efficiently. You provide communication about those learning in real time. Did I mention very efficiently as well? JJ Brantingham (03:33): Yep. Yep. Great. So obviously, our point here is your need to evaluate the size of your projects, what type of work you're doing to sort of align the retrospective timing to the work you're doing. Obviously environmental, those are going to be really quick and maybe you'll combine a bunch of them together. For other services, other design projects, you're going to maybe space them out a little bit more, but you'll look at it to schedule them around those deliverables and throughout key parts of the project. (04:04): And the second part is, it's really reviewing project status. And as I mentioned before, uncovering issues, proactive implementation of counter measures, but just as importantly, talking about learning successes, challenges, problems that are going to pop up, but it's not about blaming, this is about learning. And then that's where that last part of praising and mentoring comes in to the process. (04:30): What is the Goal of a Project Retrospective? So that's the goal, that's what we're trying to achieve. So let's talk about the next thing, what are some of the benefits of this? Why should you consider doing these retrospectives? Well, we'll just talk through each one of these a little bit. Improve project performance. As these issues are uncovered earlier on, you're trying to discover those problems, and it's not after the fact, or too late to solve. Don Archibeque (05:00): Right. I mean, there's a million analogies a person can make, but let's take the marathon analogy. That always works for me. You don't want to wait , if you're running a 26 mile marathon, till mile 16 before you take corrective measures. You need to be shouting out your splits and understanding how you're doing for the time that you've allotted to run your marathon. And it's a lot easier to make a 15 second per mile improvement as opposed to a minute 30 second per mile improvement. So the longer you wait to take corrective actions and implement corrective measures, the harder it is to actually do the assigned work and take those corrective measures. Small adjustments closer to real time is going to provide more consistent positive results. JJ Brantingham (05:54): Yep. And in a project, that just equates to splits are more or less your burn rate, how much time, how much work, how many hours are you spending. It also relates to the deliverables. You don't want to wait till the deliverable's almost complete, the design's complete, to uncover a problem, that maybe different design teams, mechanical, electrical didn't coordinate or civil and mechanical had different thoughts. So getting those teams coordinated, too, to uncover problems earlier on is a big benefit. Team Collaboration and Communication Don Archibeque (06:29): You know, it leads to that'" if not, why not discussion". And when the team's there, a lot of the times the team really takes a hand in helping solve the situation that a particular discipline is running into. Maybe there are obstacles that are in the way that can be removed, and so having the team hear what's really going very well. Or conversly what obstacles need to be removed is a good thing for everyone involved. JJ Brantingham (06:56): Yep. And that's really our second point right there, team problem solving is going to result in better design decisions at the end of the day. Getting those heads around the table for short meetings to talk about recent work, potential upcoming work, too, a great chance to improve those, or at least a much higher probability that you're going to come to a better decision. (07:22): Reduced out-of-scope work, and that's maybe not intuitive, right? You maybe wouldn't think that's an outcome, but it really is, you know, a quick conversation about what are people working on. Say if someone, maybe, got a request from the owner maintenance group. The team thought maybe that was a good idea, something they should start to work on, but it could be out-of-scope. Don Archibeque (07:46): Yeah, any time a scope increases or decreases, it's going to have an effect not only on money but time. And all team disciplines that need to be aware of what's going on. So what is this difference in scope that we're discussing and how does it affect the team as a whole? Lot of times you find that a scope increase might be directed at a particular discipline. They take off running in that direction, only to realize later on in the project that maybe the rest of the team wasn't up to speed with that scope issue. JJ Brantingham (08:24): Yeah, and we talked about before, but there's usually multiple stakeholders involved with client projects. So if some of those other stakeholders are getting involved, they might be unknowingly increasing scope on the client end, and this is all about better communication is going to keep that scope aligned correctly, to keep both you and the client satisfied. But this discussion does bring up our next one. Uncover those change orders. So if it is something that the stakeholders feel they need, now, earlier on, is the time to talk about that before you did the work. Handling Scope Creep Don Archibeque (08:59): Yeah. That's the amazing thing I find with working with A/E teams is so much of the time they really struggle with asking for compensation for the work that they're doing above and beyond the original contract price. And I think this is where the team can come to the assistance of the individual discipline team lead. If there has been a change in scope and compensation is due, I think that the team is pretty good about pointing out, hey, this is the impact on the project overall, whether it's additional hours, whether it's maybe bringing in some more specialized expertise, or just a number of things that go along with that, and there's a number of impacts it's going to have with the adjacent disciplines and projects. So change order management and retrospectives work together like peanut butter and jelly. It's a good thing. JJ Brantingham (09:55): Yep. Yep. We've got a whole session on change orders and the no cost change order, which turns into the cost change order later. So keep an eye out for that. Next one's a little less intuitive. We're talking about proactive project management, but we're doing, talking about retrospectives, looking in the back, but really this means less rear view, because the idea, again, is to do these in such frequency that you're catching problems and talking about what's coming up at the same time, and thus creating more proactive solution and project management. Right? Don Archibeque (10:35): Yes. One of the big objectives I think that we at Planifi try to really communicate to project teams is that I think for many, many years we've looked at data showing how much we've invoiced, how many hours we've spent. Now what we're trying to do is get folks to start looking forward and really planning ahead and then managing to that plan. So it's kind of like in pool, you call your shots and then you execute that work and make the shots. And that's really what we're trying to get to, is just call your shots, execute the work, make your shots within the requisite time and fee that you've been allowed. (11:18): And in order to do that, you have to do some pre-planning. And a lot of the times you find that there are things that could preclude you from actually executing the way you thought you were going to. Those things that keep you from executing exactly the way you thought you were going to. These are learnings, and learnings that can be put into place for the next series of deliverables that you're going to have. And as you continue to gain this knowledge during the course of the project, every phase gets better, more efficient, and you continually pick up momentum as you lead toward a successful outcome. JJ Brantingham (11:57): Yeah, exactly. It's about uncovering learnings earlier. You might find out that part of the client team is not responsive, and if you wait until the end of schematic design for the PM to find that out, the PM doesn't have that opportunity to go reach out to the customer and talk about how do we solve this. This is the type of obstacle that can be effectively and proactively managed. (12:21): The other thing I'd like to contrast this remote with, the way a lot of firms do what they think is a retrospective is, some sort of a PM roast, or they have at the end of the project, they have the PM comment and talk about a little bit about what went right and a whole lot about what went wrong. But there's limited learnings there. There is less opportunity to take corrective actions on that project. Hopefully the idea is, if you're doing these more frequently, you're not waiting until the end of the project to do a roast and uncover it. There's learnings along the way to improve it. (12:57): And again, that's why we're talking about less rear view and getting the team aligned and communicating. Which is our last point, reviews more frequently, and that you're not doing the PM roast approach. Just again because there's too many learnings that are lost and you're trying to roll up and blame a project on one thing, when Don and I both know, having been in those meetings, there's 10 things that contributed to a project going wrong. And that's probably mild. It's probably more like 100. And to try to roll those all up into a 15 minute summary is frankly probably not that useful. Right? Don Archibeque (13:36): Yeah, absolutely, We're working to create enhanced team communication and moving towards self directed work teams. The opposite of that is when you have a project manager that is the "messiah", so to speak, the all knowing, he's assigning everyone work or she's assigning everyone work and holding them accountable to complete that work. This approach just doesn't allow for the teams to really get involved and take ownership of that project. And I think when you're sharing information and communicating and working toward a self directed work team, with the project manager facilitating the distribution of information, the removal of barriers and obstacles, then the team starts to take ownership and I think you're going to have more success, more predictable success more consistently. JJ Brantingham (14:31): Yeah, exactly. And we have a whole session on self directed work teams, so keep an eye out for that. We'll talk you through the benefits and how to develop self directed work teams, and it really is part of the project retrospective process. (14:44): So how do you get started if this sounds good so far? Few basic steps. Obviously, you've got to figure out how you're going to schedule them and try to get something scheduled. If you drag your feet too long, obviously that won't happen. So what are you doing in these retrospectives? We'll dig into this a little bit more. So one of the top ones we have is update the scope definitions, because scope does change as projects are underway and execute, right? Don Archibeque (15:15): Yeah, routinely. I mean, every project starts out with a predefined scope of work, a predefined schedule, and you think that things are going to clip along just the way they've been planned. Well, I can count the times on one hand in a 30 year career where things have just gone off exactly as planned. The reality is is that a lot of things change, personnel changes, priorities within the firm can change, priorities with your key stakeholders for the customers. Project management team can change. So yeah, there are going to be unforeseeable changes in the project, absolutely. (15:56): Is that going to impact more than the discipline that's being communicated to by the client? Probably. Should you get that information out to the team as quickly as possible? Absolutely. So having an opportunity to discuss that really kind of sets the stage as you go forward. Hey, we've got a client that likes to change their mind, scope ebbs and flows with their mood, it seems like. And so you learn from the first retrospective that be on guard, all of you. Depending on who's talking to you and what conversation you're having, you may have some news to bring back to the team. It's a great opportunity to implement and reinforce standard work for change order process. JJ Brantingham (16:36): Yep. Yep. And we have, that's almost a double point, right? Update the definitions, and then the second point around scope alignment, just make sure everyone's aligned then with the current and correct understanding of scope. Right? Don Archibeque (16:49): Yeah. Certainly alignment is a big deal, and I'm going to kind of go down a bit of a rabbit hole here, so pull me out if I get too deep, JJ. You have to bid projects in every A and E firm to win them. And sometimes the difference between the person who is out there hunting for work and the people who are executing work, there is a misalignment. And as the project manager, you have to brainstorm along with your project team. How are we going to take this project that our business development and sales guys have won for us and execute within the constraints that they've had to put out there in order to win the work? (17:33): Sometimes that requires a redefinition of what the deliverable is, or maybe a primary definition of what the deliverable is. If you have an engineer trying to do the very best job developing a project that is the absolute gold standard, but that isn't what the client paid for, you have a misalignment of scope. And so making sure that you're keeping your finger on the pulse, and how do you do that? You start to see that people are spending a little bit more time early on on a particular deliverable than you had planned for them to spend or that you collectively had planned for them to spend. And that needs to be adjusted, just like in a marathon, as quickly as possible so it's as minor adjustment as possible. JJ Brantingham (18:24): Yep. Yep. And for an example there, we've got budget status, and if using our tools or whatever your tool that you are using, you know, you want to drill into that project, look under the current phase that you're reviewing, and take a quick glance at job to date plan versus job to date actual to uncover that. And then it's a quick conversation about well, what's your understanding of what you're doing? And I know exactly the people that Don's talking about, and some of the people that want to deliver a gold standard, but in the case of the customer, maybe went with more of the bronze deliverable because that's what they could afford. And that's what we have to match to. (19:06): So doing a quick review, and again, this just means opening that current phase. Go down the list, ask any questions as a PM, or let the team ask their own questions, and then go to the next phase, make adjustments. So you can quickly select a few weeks, take it from 40 hours to 30 hours or make that adjustment real time, so these meetings are productive in updating scope and status, right? Don Archibeque (19:32): Absolutely. JJ Brantingham (19:35): You will want to develop your own agenda, what you think is the most key things to discuss? We always like to ask the questions, what are the current challenges, but also what are the successes? Anything, hey, anyone have anything that they found is working really well on this project? So you can share those learnings and keep improving the team, and then issues that, you know, those they sort of go together, right? Don Archibeque (20:03): Yeah. I think a lot of people will think about successes in terms of who did an outstanding job with a particular deliverable. But if we drill down on that for just a minute, maybe someone has found a particularly responsive key stakeholder, that when you ask for information, they get it to you in a very, very timely fashion. That's a success. And you want to pass that on to your teammates so they have the same information, and as quickly as you might have procured it. (20:34): There are a number of successes that come along the way. Maybe something that would have to do with coordination meetings and utilizing maybe an internal resource to help schedule coordination meetings. That's a success, because maybe the rest of the team didn't know, oh, that's something that we have internally that we can take advantage. So success isn't defined as something just within the deliverable that you have. It could be a process success. JJ Brantingham (21:05): Yeah. Or just a tip. We could use tips in there, as well, just ideas that people discover that are, you know, things are going well for them, that turned into something that was helpful. So however you need to phrase that, to sort of tease those out, we encourage it because that's one of the best ways to improve teams is keep building on what's going well. Then obviously issues and challenges, just understand, hey I'm struggling with this, or could be uncovering a coordination challenge between disciplines. It could be those issues that we mentioned earlier, like a client not being responsive and needing to understand that. So quick conversations about those issues. (21:49): Scheduling the deliverable, right? Fundamental PM status. I think that last survey we saw something like 34% of AE firms had schedule challenges. So do a quick review. In our tool, you can bring up all your project schedules in a single screen. Look at those deliverables. They show up as the milestones, which also comes to the next part, is you're never doing one project or rarely doing one project. So deliverable coordination, review and ask your team if they see any challenges with deliverables on other projects, but also make sure they have an understanding of what's coming up and what needs to get out the door on your project, as well. But again, review it and ask questions. Don Archibeque (22:34): Absolutely. That's the main thing. Ask questions. Whether you're asking questions of the team or the team is asking questions among themselves, that is the key. JJ Brantingham (22:45): Yeah. And we touched on budget status. Last one, these are opportunities to praise and mentor, to enhance teams, build teams. That's one of the goals of retrospectives. So take the time to make sure you say thanks. Say congrats, good job. Share learnings, you know, on this project I did this to overcome that, right? Don Archibeque (23:09): Yes. You create an environment for success, and by creating that high level of communication and trust and formulating that self-directed work team, you'll find that you have success on projects more often than you can believe. Summing it all Up JJ Brantingham (23:26): Yep. Last thing I didn't mention, we said these are 10 to 30 minute meetings. As you get started, you're going to overrun. It's going to take a little longer. Don't be discouraged. Your first meetings might turn into 45 minutes to an hour, especially as teams get used to sharing all their challenges and sharing all their thoughts. But you'll develop efficiency over time the more frequently you have these. Also, if you do have them more frequently, less will build up and you can get through them quicker and be more efficient at having the meetings, right? Don Archibeque (24:02): Absolutely. JJ Brantingham (24:03): Yeah. All right, well thanks for your time. Hopefully this was useful. If you want to find out more about us, you can go to planifi.net. You can reach Don at don@planifi.net or myself jj@planifi.net. If you have any questions or comments, want to find out more, or talk about retrospectives. At Planifi, our goal is to make planning drop dead simple. So I encourage you to find out more on http://planifi.net Thanks, and have a great day.

Firms often struggled to get project planning started so they can both understand where their Portfolio of Project stands and where their forcasted profitability will be and where staff will be working across the organization to see who's over-booked and who may be available. In this video Don and JJ discuss some tips and best practices to get project planning to stick at firms.

At PLANIFI, we've seen firms struggle to get simple understandable Metrics and KPI's out to Managers on a real-time basis, and at the same time we've seen firms get stuck trying get the right numbers into dashboard tools (that only a handful of managers visit regularly). So we've done the hard work for you and created a configurable project dashboard with up to 12 metrics you can choose and up to 5 charts, that Managers can have on a single page or up to 5 can have emailed to them, all for free. Managers are busy and often don't get a chance to visit dashboard sites or run reports, by emailing the dashboards on a scheduled basis they can have real-time data on the go, with nothing to install and no training required. If you choose to upgrade to our Earned Value plan percent complete can also be entered while they are reviewing their projects to capture Earned Value and/or be used for Revenue Generation in Deltek. We've seen many firms not take advantage of Revenue Generation, so we will include free consultation to setup and review Revenue Generation for anyone signing up for a year.

About the author: Don Archibeque is a Project Executive with Planifi, bringing more than 25 years of experience in construction and A/E (architecture and engineering) Project Management, as well as associated professional managerial services. Architecture and Engineering (A/E) projects require collaboration to reach a successful end result. As the design lead, your firm may be responsible for much more than just your own work. Whether those responsibilities are spelled out in contract language or simply based upon client expectations, misalignment can drain profitability and time away from your projects. Keep an eye on these four areas and improve your practices to increase profitability across your firm. The cost of money A good understanding of how the money works will go a long way towards maximizing project profits. Your project teams should know how money works on A/E projects and how to move it around based upon the demands of each project. At first glance, it may seem strange that a design professional needs to know how projects are financed from an owner, construction, sub-contractor, and design perspectives. However, this context is critical to optimal project delivery. Has each party borrowed money for operating expenses while the work is completed and billed? Will your sub-contractors expect immediate payment or are they willing to get paid when you get paid? How does interest affect your profitability? Is your professional insurance high priced and is that consuming your profit? Clear answers to these questions may reveal previously unrecognized profit sinks and time wasters on your projects. Implement good business practices along with your design processes and watch your profits grow. Poor construction Your team may create a flawless design, but there’s no guarantee that it will be constructed in the same way. It’s common for budget and time constraints to erode your design intent. Cheaper versions of the materials you recommended, skipping crucial reinforcement, or insulation steps can all result in a lower quality end result. Who has the client selected as their contractor? What is their reputation? When design directions aren’t followed, structures will not perform as indicated. Finger pointing ensues and lots of time is wasted in sorting things out. The answer is proactive training of your client and contractor regarding substitutions and value engineering. Why? All of this finger-pointing and back-and-forth consumes considerable time, and that consumes your profit. Proactively manage client expectations and be sure everyone is on the same page heading into construction. Track project profitability with real-time actuals from Deltek – Visual Planning Contractor liability Whether you’re subcontracting work to another design professional or overseeing the construction of a bridge, you could be held liable for the work done by sub-contractors executing their scope of work. Review and understand the contract language for each project. Depending upon the agreement, you may be legally responsible for the sub-contractor’s mistakes and oversights, as if the work was your own. Minimize risk exposure by verifying all licensure and make sure every contractor has adequate expertise with their relevant responsibilities and scope of work. Also, be sure they are properly insured to avoid potential issues down the road. Alternative Project Delivery Alternative project delivery use continues to gain popularity in both the public and private sectors in the U.S. and abroad. New project delivery methods are considered great for the owner, but how about for the design professional? The design-build project delivery system provides single-point responsibility to the clients for both design and construction. The design-builder is both the architect/engineer and contractor of the project. They also serve as a single contact for guaranteed performance on quality, cost, and delivery schedule. On the surface, a single point of contact sounds like a much simpler method for project delivery. However, in practice, opportunities for confusion remain. How does the review process differ on this design-build project versus another? Who is responsible for deliverables and when? When does ownership transition? Again, early identification of the risks, complete communication, and contract review are critical to successful project delivery. Regardless of your firm’s role on a design-build project, be sure to understand these key points to maximize profitability. Are you aligned with the client and contractor on what is required for materials? Have you worked with these sub-contractors before or do you need to discuss payment terms? These are just a couple questions you need to ask before kicking off a project. Small misunderstandings can turn into time consuming litigation at the first sign of trouble. Proactive risk management and communication are the best tools in your belt for avoiding costly problems and increasing profitability. Improve profitability and utilization with Visual Planning – schedule a call today! #Architecture #Engineering #Profitability #ProjectManagement

About the author: Don Archibeque is a Project Executive with Planifi, bringing more than 25 years of experience in construction and A/E (architecture and engineering) Project Management, as well as associated professional managerial services. Architecture and Engineering (A/E) project management can feel like juggling 15 balls at a time. You check one thing off the list and 14 more immediately require your attention. Then, as soon as one thing gets off course, everything else comes crashing down. The difference between juggling and project management though is pretty clear– juggling, you can pick up the balls and try again. With an A/E project, there’s money, time, and reputation at stake. Architecture and Engineering (A/E) firms puts a lot on the line with every project that goes out the door. It’s impossible to control every risk on every project, just like it’s impossible to watch and track 15 balls in the air at the same time. However, you may be surprised at the effectiveness of identifying and prioritizing potential risks throughout a project’s life cycle. How can your firm effectively manage project risks and avoid “dropping the ball?” Scope Creep Every A/E firm has projects that suffer from “scope creep.” Without proper management this means your project team is working for free. And, to make matters worse, this free work often results in conflict between firms and their clients. What causes scope creep? Most projects have multiple stake holders. Some stakeholders read the contract and understand the parameters of the project. However, many do not. Then, they go on to ask for services not included in the original scope of work. Oftentimes, these stakeholders are lay people who don’t understand project documents or the design/construction process. Designers and project managers understand where their bread is buttered. They don’t want to raise these issues with the client because that might put the relationship at risk or upset the client. However, ignoring out-of-scope work often has the opposite effect. Poor communication (or complete lack of it) results in frustration for both the A/E firm and client and can lead to more serious, legal, disputes. These disputes can compromise strategic client relationships and lead to nonpayment, delays, or claims while a project is underway. Contract documents are the “rules of engagement” for a project. They spell out every detail of the project schedule, requirements, review process, etc. You can’t require that stakeholders read contract documents. However, firms can manage project risk by making sure the project team feels comfortable with the contract documents relevant to their projects. When designers knows the rules, they are in a much better position to successfully navigate scope creep and deliver the project on time and within budget. Track project profitability with real-time actuals from Deltek – Visual Planning Change Management Design and construction is a litigious process and much of that litigation is between the design firm and the owner. Most of this litigation results from confusion. Clients are expecting one thing and design professionals deliver another. For many project managers, it’s outside of their comfort zone or skill set to deal with unrealistic owner expectations. However, it’s critical to reach a mutual agreement, between client and designer, on the perception of what the agreement calls for, what work is the be delivered, and when. Even once a mutual understanding is reached, this agreement is not set in stone. Projects change, that’s the nature of the business. Project managers must maintain those lines of communication throughout the project. That way, if anything changes, the key stakeholders can be informed in a timely manner and involved in the decision process. Finally, be sure those changes are properly documented. Out of scope work may have a significant impact on the project manager’s ability to deliver a profitable project for the firm. If this is the case, or it is otherwise deemed necessary, the PM should issue a change order to ensure the firm gets paid for the additional work. Otherwise, for any number of reasons, the PM may decide not to request additional fee for the change. In this case, issue a “no cost change order.” This shows the client they are aware of the project scope, but are willing to go above and beyond to meet the needs of the project. Plus, this documentation puts the PM in a stronger position to request additional dollars should the scope change again in the future. Delivering an A/E project can feel like a daunting task at times. Projects change, deadlines shift, and clients ask for more. However, with proactive project risk management and solid communication, the impossible can turn into a profitable result for your firm. Improve profitability and utilization with Visual Planning – schedule a call today! #Architecture #Engineering #Profitability #ProjectManagement