Project monitoring and Project Control
Project monitoring involves the activities such as collecting information about project performance, providing forecasts for future work, tracking and analyzing risks, communicating status of the project. The PMBOK Guide defines this activity as collecting project performance data with respect to a plan, produce performance measures, and report and disseminate performance information.
Project controlling involves the activities like comparing the information with the project management plan, developing preventive action plans to keep the project within the variance thresholds, developing corrective action plans to bring the project back within the variance thresholds, recommending defect repairs for processes that allow poor performance, submitting change requests to implement the preventive and corrective actions, defect repairs or other necessary changes. The PMBOK Guide defines control as comparing actual performance with planned performance, analysing variances, assessing trends to effect process improvements, evaluating possible alternatives, and recommending appropriate corrective action as needed.
Project Monitoring in different sectors
In project management, success is a target that is always moving. There is always a chance for improvement for the processes and the products. An effective project monitoring system enables proper tracking of cost, quality and time in any type of project. The results from the project performance measurement helps the project team to control the processes and to bring back the project on track as to its scheduled course. This control process often involves performance adjustments with regards to schedule, level of quality and price.
For an effective project monitoring system, several components are to be considered. They include the establishment of an appropriate scope breakdown, selection of the most useful performance metrics, identification of a performance reporting scheme as well as a suitable performance forecasting method. Undertaking any major changes in later stages of any project is often ineffective and highly expensive. Also, the ability of the corrective action to influence the project outcome becomes lesser towards the later stage of the project. Hence it is important to have in place an effective monitoring system right from the planning stage of a project.
The scope of this study is to understand the various project performance measurement (monitoring) methods used in various types of projects.
(Include justification for why these 3 industries were chosen)
For the study, the methods used in projects pertaining to construction, pharma and IT industries are analyzed below. A brief introduction about each industry followed by the project monitoring methods used are discussed in the following sections.
Construction Industry
Construction industry comprises of those firms engaged in preparation of land and construction, alteration and repair of buildings and other real estate property. According to a survey by Market Research Hub (https://www.marketresearchhub.com/report/global-construction-outlook-2021-report.html) the global construction industry is set to grow at 2.8% during 2017-2021. The survey also predicts that the global construction output will reach a valuation of US$ 10.1 trillion in 2021 from the 2016 value of US$ 8.8 trillion. It suggests that Asia-Pacific region which includes markets like China, Japan and India will continue to account for the largest contribution to global construction industry.
In India, the construction industry contributed US$ 308 billion (about 19%) of national GDP in 2011-12. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_industry_of_India). The industry comprises of large companies working in all segments, medium sized companies specializing in niche segments, and also small and medium-sized companies who carry out the field work on contract basis. The sector provides employment opportunities either directly or indirectly to more than 35 million people. The construction industry is an important indicator of national development as it brings in investment opportunities across related sectors.
Project monitoring in construction industry
EVA details. Other methods.
To quantify work progress, several approaches have been used by practitioners across the world. The project expenditures are often used as a progress measurement tool on the assumption that the ratio of project expenditure till date to the total estimated budget is indicative of project’s progress. For example, spending half the budget of the project is considered as 50% project completion in this method. The concern that no significant work progress may be achieved even though a substantial amount of money may be spent in a project revealed the drawback of this approach. This led to assessment of work progress with another approach, based on installed quantities. Even though it could overcome the drawback of the previous method, the measurement of installed quantities often faced a major obstacle when different units of measurement were used to assess work of different types. Hence determining overall project performance was not possible without assigning weight factors to work items. (Eldin, 1989). This led to origin of weighted percent complete method (WPC).
A method which is widely used to determine progress of a construction project is the weighted percent complete (WPC) method (Clark & Lorenzoni, 1978). This method uses the following steps to compute work progress. (1) assess the percentage completion of a work item; (2) multiply this percent completed by a weight factor (WF) to determine WPC for each work item. The work factor is the ratio of the budget of a work item to the total budget of the work items of the same type. The drawback of this method is that it does not clearly define the breakdown of a work item. A work breakdown structure (WBS) was explained in detail later to overcome this hurdle (Eldin, 1989). Additionally, the WPC method requires lengthy and cumbersome computations to assess work performance.
A method to integrate and display the project’s cost performance and accomplishments was presented by (Stevens, 1986). The graph recorded an under expenditure if the actual cost is less than the planned cost. The magnitude of the under expenditure is equal to the difference between the two points on the cost scale. Even though the graphical progress reporting was an improvement, the method could not represent actual work progress in the graph.
Eldin (Eldin, 1989) tried to enhance the WPC method suggested by (Clark & Lorenzoni, 1978) by detailing the control points used to measure the earned value. In his example, (Eldin, 1989) explained that the construction of a footing foundation may include events such as excavation, forming, placing steel reinforced bars and pouring concrete. Therefore, when each of these events are complete, the total progress increases by a certain percentage according to quantity of work done. He (Eldin, 1989) suggested that visual inspection at the site is sufficient to acquire the data required for this method. Nevertheless, the subjectivity of visual inspection as well as level of control points for quantity distribution and schedule still lacked clarity.
To measure the performance of a project we need to analyze schedule and cost data, which are inter-related. They are also dependent on time. Therefore, assessing schedule and cost performance individually in not very useful to construction project managers. An approach for cost and schedule integration which helps to acquire store and present information in a timely manner (Rasdorf & Abudayyeh, 1991) were studied by researchers in the past.
(Barrie & Paulson, 1992) suggested that progress can also be measured by a new method which multiplies the percent of work completed by the weighted value of manpower. The weighted value of manpower was used instead of costs because costs may change over time, causing ambiguity to the performance measurement.
The Earned Value Analysis is being used as a project monitoring tool in several areas.
(Yang, Park, Kim, & Kim, 2007) suggested a method that reduced the data handling workload while not sacrificing the rationale of progress management. They found that enhanced data accuracy had always come at the cost of increasing data handling workload. The case study performed by them on a construction project in South Korea explained the practical possibilities of their model to measure daily work progress.