Meet PMA Project Engineer Yuan Zhang, a project professional who spent her formative years in the most rapidly growing construction market in the world. Here she shares her journey in discovering her passion for the construction industry.

How did you become interested in construction management?

When I was a student in China, I observed many different construction projects moving very rapidly. So, I just felt like I wanted to be a part of them. I thought to myself, “Who built these kinds of crazy buildings?” Consequently, I became interested in different aspects of construction and engaged in discussions with friends and teachers about them. Finally, I decided to study construction management in college. I earned my bachelor’s degree at Shanghai Normal University. Shanghai is a super-international city with many different kinds of buildings developed there. One of the most famous landmarks is the Oriental Pearl Radio & TV Tower, which is located by the side of the west bank of Huangpu River, opposite the Bund. Another famous landmark that impressed me is the Shanghai World Financial Center, which is the second-highest building in mainland China with a total height of 1614ft (492m). There are many other iconic landmarks to see in Shanghai. Living there made me feel how great it would be if I could be part of the teams who build these crazy buildings.

Was there a reason why you liked construction vs. architecture?

When I thought about it, I realized I am not good at drawing things. I do not have that much creativity, which is very important for an architect. I was also interested in the construction process: how a building can go from nothing, to a major playground installation, or to a tall building.

Did you have any interest before college?

No, my interest arose when I entered college and met some of my professors who worked in construction. So, I went to them to ask their opinion if it is a good field to get into for work, and they all said it is a good field. And I really like it. Then after I studied the courses for construction, I felt I would like to join this field to be an engineer on these types of projects.

Where did you receive your engineering degree?

 I earned my master’s degree in engineering management at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Were there any major differences in learning about construction management in China vs. in the US?

The basic classes are quite similar. The project management courses, economics of construction, etc. are mostly the same.

So, when you decided to come to the US to study, why did you come to Boston, and Northeastern, specifically?

 Like many college students in China, I wanted to go abroad to study and experience new things and face totally new challenges. I did some of my own research on which university has the best engineering college. I found that Northeastern was ranked very highly based on my research.

The location was also an important factor in my decision. I had not been to the US before, and I was coming here by myself, so I decided on Boston because it is a great city with so many great universities.

Did you have any other friends or classmates who had also gone to the Boston area to study?

 I did make friends who came to study here, but when I arrived, I was alone. I mostly relied on Google and other searches to learn about the area. I like Northeastern a lot, and I do recommend others to come here if they ask for my advice about studying in the US.

Women are a minority in the construction field in the US: do you feel that this was similar in China?

Yes, of course, when I was studying, there were fewer women studying construction than men. I would guess there were twice as many men as women in my classes. In the US, in some of my classes, it was closer to 50/50, but still fewer women.

How did you learn about PMA?

After graduation, I attended a school career fair where I collected some business cards and gave out my resume. After that, I went online and searched for different companies and PMA was one of them. I do not remember who I met from PMA because there were just so many people that day and so many companies.

A few months later, I received an email asking if I had time for an interview, and I said, “Yes, yes!”

Have you worked with senior leadership since joining PMA?

Currently, I am working with Dennis Lucey, Managing Director for the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) project. I produce a monthly report and provide cost control effort and it is going well.

What do you like about working at PMA?

The people I work with are very nice and you have a lot of autonomy to manage your own tasks. When I have any questions, they are very patient in answering them and giving me help if I need it. When I worked for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) task force projects and was using NetPoint for the high-level schedule summary, there were several problems that my team member helped me to solve, and now I can use NetPoint proficiently.

From working at PMA, have you found out what types of projects you like working on?

 I like project controls, which is what I am working on now. I also like to be on-site to see construction actually happening. The areas that I am working on at PMA are a bit new to me, so I would like to dig more deeply into these fields too.

What have you worked on so far?

 I have contributed efforts mainly focusing on developing project budget and cost spreadsheets, project schedule reviews, change order reviews, and invoice reviews. I also produce monthly reports and provide cost control for the MWRA project. I have been using e-builder frequently with the current MBTA task force project that I am working on.

What do you want to learn more about next?

I am interested in continuing to learn Primavera P6 and want to work more with scheduling. I also want to dig deep into learning even more about budget controls. Long term, I want to gain more experience in different aspects of the field to learn more about which types of projects I want to work on.

How would you describe PMA culture?

So far, the experience with PMA is great. I really appreciate the opportunities I have at PMA. I would say that people help each other. When I feel like I need help, others like to share their experience with me.

(Editor’s note: Northeastern University is listed as No. 31 in the 2021 Best Engineering Schools rankings.)

The post From Shanghai to Boston: How to start a career in the Construction Industry appeared first on PMA Consultants.

As we will discover, the current COVID-19 situation impacts project delivery, risk management, the project schedule, stakeholder communication, and many other aspects of the industry. While we may see projects postponed in the short term, in the long term, this crisis will demand safety enhancements to buildings and processes that can only be provided by new engineering and construction projects.

A major adaptation to the new environment will be an ever-growing need for project professionals who will manage their teams remotely. With technology comes convenience, as well as many novel challenges.

If you’re a project manager who needs help with managing remote teams, here’s a brief guide for remote construction project management.

Find a Good Communication Platform

When you need to manage a team remotely, it goes without saying that you need to put technology to good use. But sometimes, people overutilize the technology, or have too many tools, and these can be more confusing than helpful. So best practices dictate sourcing and utilizing a few good programs to prevent chaos.

The first priority is finding a good communication platform. Without communication, the project would undoubtedly come to a standstill.

This platform should be the central tool for communication between you and your workers. Use both chat and video conferencing to get daily updates, as well as have one-on-ones.

Use the program for building relationships as well. Many remote project managers risk losing the human element when communication is only screen-based. You can’t really have a chat with your colleagues by the water cooler.

If the communication platform has a chat function, then consider setting up a non-work channel. This can effectively serve as a digital water cooler, which allows workers to blow off some steam and get to know one another.

Make sure you get to know your team members in other ways; for example, if you have one-on-one meetings, take a few minutes at the start to ask how things are going with them. This can help you build relationships and have a more cohesive, loyal, and hardworking team.

Use Project Management Software

How many times have you set a timeline for your project, only for it to fall behind more and more as time went on? Managing projects with in-person teams is already tough enough, but when you start working remotely, it can get even more challenging.

Sourcing the best project management software for your project and using it before you even get started is vital. Once you’ve determined team assignments, delegate those tasks on the program so everyone gets a clear picture of what needs to be done, and when. Rather than focus on how much time your team spends on certain tasks, focus on accomplishing objectives in accordance with the set timeline.

A central feature of project management software is accessibility from practically anywhere; many have mobile apps as well. This means all team members can quickly pull up the timeline, find out if everyone’s done their part, and take over when it’s time for them to jump into action.

This accessibility can help significantly with keeping the project moving instead of coming to a standstill because of miscommunication of task start dates. It can also cut down on people waiting around for others to “pass the baton,” as the software will enable workers to easily check off tasks and notify the next person down the line.

Communicate the Project Plan

Selecting a planning tool that can graphically display the project activities and tasks on-screen will ensure your team understands the current and future states of the project. The more interactive and dynamic the application, the better you will engage your team.

Using your communication platform, summon your team to plan and schedule your projects on optimally user-friendly and visually impactful planning software. NetPoint was created by construction scheduling professionals to optimize project management and team collaboration. NetPoint provides a highly interactive experience in which all stakeholders on the project can be actively engaged and contribute to project planning.

By contrast, team members often become overwhelmed when looking at a P6 schedule, so they do not feel empowered to discuss it. P6 is designed to have multiple activities linked on different pages that are difficult to discern from a printout.

NetPoint, a real-time planning and scheduling application, is a great tool to summarize multi-page schedules into one page or screen. NetPoint allows project managers to show a project from a very high level. The graphical interface is markedly different from the tabular format that P6 and Microsoft Project provides.

In a nutshell, NetPoint displays a canvas for you to draw the network logic. There are no columns to match up, and you can see the actual flow of the work. During project planning or execution as task changes occur, NetPoint helps you move activities and adjust durations effortlessly, instantly propagating all changes to the entire network. All objects and data elements update with any schedule modification in real-time.

Best of all, NetPoint provides all stakeholders with a deeper insight into the activities with the greatest impact to the project schedule and completion.

Interactive Planning Sessions

NetPoint is ideal for Interactive Planning Session (IPS) because it helps project stakeholders agree on a plan of action, reach commitment, and align teamwork. This process includes designers, CMs, commissioning agents, and others who can collaboratively identify milestones in design, construction, and commissioning.

For example, if the design team sets a goal to issue a set of documents by a certain date, but the construction manager needs that information one month prior, the team must agree on an alternate solution. This type of team-wide collaboration allows for greater efficiency and planning for all parties involved and ultimately saves time and money.

NetPoint’s intuitive graphical interface and hands-on interaction show the immediate impact and result of every decision. Like Activity Network diagrams of the past, NetPoint brings the focus back to a network view that is easy for everyone to understand. NetPoint can develop solutions and help the team solve problems together in real-time, even when working remotely.

Consider Resource Management and Employee Scheduling Software

Construction project managers are faced with the challenge of prioritizing and optimizing a wide array of resources. Resources can take the form of human labor, equipment, capital/costs, or material. These resources must be accurately forecast, tracked, and measured to keep the project on schedule.

NetPoint is an excellent project scheduling software for managing time and resources. NetPoint allows you to clearly define any task lists or resources you need to execute your projects.

Cost-loading tasks are accomplished through the resource functionality. Furthermore, by plotting resource histograms and curves directly underneath activities, resource leveling in NetPoint becomes a truly interactive and engaging exercise.

Project team members and contractors are one of the most important resources on a project and managing them requires time and energy. You might be used to scheduling your employees manually. But not only is this time-consuming, but it can also become disorganized.

A simple way to improve employee scheduling is to use dedicated human resource scheduling software. This prevents overlaps and enables you to send out schedules easily.

A good program also gives you a great overall view so you can identify any areas that are lacking. You can then find workers who are available and assign them accordingly. In addition, many programs integrate with HR and accounting software, which means you can eliminate extra steps for payroll.

The right employee scheduling software can streamline and improve this aspect of project management for your company.

Meet in Person When Possible

While adopting great pieces of technology can be excellent for managing remote projects, technology can never replace face-to-face human interaction. Even if it’s just once or twice a year, it’s important to meet with your team in person when possible.

Face-to-face meetings help you build rapport and a better relationship with your workers. You can also use this opportunity to celebrate milestones and recognize those who have worked hard and made great achievements. Not only will this make them feel appreciated, but it can also show your team that you’re a project manager who actually cares and pays attention to their efforts.

Meeting in person can also help align visions and goals more easily. Webcams can convey only a limited view; when you can get together in person, the process is much simpler.

Moreover, some people may feel more comfortable voicing concerns with you in person. If that happens, make sure you have an open ear. Don’t just listen; set processes in motion to address those concerns and make their workplace safer and more comfortable.

Manage Remote Construction Projects Efficiently

As you can see, remote construction project management can be handled successfully with the right processes and by leveraging technology. Take some time to experiment with different programs and once you figure out what works for your team, stick with it.

Working remotely already comes with its own unique set of hurdles, and you don’t want to further complicate things by swapping tech halfway. Get it right in the beginning, and you’ll see your project move along smoothly in the future. And don’t forget: one of the most important things is to have open communication and transparency.

Need help with your remote construction team? Then get in touch with us now.

The post A Guide for Remote Construction Project Managers appeared first on PMA Consultants.

Project Master Schedule & Schedule Control
The development and maintenance of detailed project master schedules in P6 for all phases of the project are critical for delivering construction projects. Schedule management starts well before construction begins in the planning process. All aspects of the design and bidding phase must be planned to avoid delays in beginning construction. This requires experienced planners and schedulers to lead the development, evaluation, and maintenance of design and construction schedules.

The Planning Process
In the planning process, the project manager is looking at the big picture prior to having all the details. The project manager considers all the obstacles with the goal of getting project buy-in in the early stages when funding may be an issue. A more detailed schedule can be created after the planning when the full set of documents is available.

Example 46-page P6 schedule

At the onset of the project, the planning process requires overall general knowledge of the scope, phasing requirements, and the deadlines for contracts, drawings, and the involvement of subject matter experts. Working from the owner’s side, planners and schedulers talk to those who can help move the project, especially if they have done it before. As a planner, getting the required level of detail from all the stakeholders is sometimes a challenge. For example, it may be difficult to pull the information you need from all of the crews working on the project. The more involved the stakeholders, the better the preparation and transition into the schedule will be.

Project managers appreciate alternative tools like NetPoint for planning, then turn to P6 for actually scheduling and tracking the progress on the project. P6 also works well when dealing with multiple projects or programs. When planning the project and creating the initial schedule, it’s important to be able to see the results on one page or screen. With this priority in mind, PMA developed NetPoint to use in interactive planning sessions and to communicate the schedule to project teams.

Case Study: Mitigating Schedule Risk Using NetPoint
Learn how NetPoint was used to better analyze, understand, and share the delay sources for risk assessment of a complex $1.2 billion transit project that was behind schedule with three years’ work remaining.

Engaging all mindsets
There are multiple ways to smooth the mindful transition from planning to scheduling. Many people relate better to easy-to-understand graphics. Non-schedulers may be overwhelmed by schedules in P6 due to the level of detail. Presentation requires multiple pages and screens to view the full project, making it difficult to perform the calculated process of creating the schedule in P6 in front of a room. NetPoint helps pull people into the discussion and clearly shows the “this needs to be done before that can ever start” relationships in a graphically impactful and abbreviated format. The critical path is clearly revealed via the Graphical Path Method. Using both P6 and NetPoint helps create presentation conditions that are engaging for all mindsets.

Example one page NetPoint schedule

Suggestions for aiding in the communication between Planner/Scheduler and Project Team

1. Maximize communication with Both Primavera P6 and NetPoint built-in functionality
   An effective communication tool in both P6 and NetPoint is the ability to attach a picture to an activity. This aids in communicating items of interest to the project team that better enables their understanding of the project We have also found attached pictures to be very helpful in demonstrating actual unforeseen conditions which may be a barrier to timely completion for the whole project team.
2. Meaningful activity IDs and codes
   Meaningful activity IDs and activity or project code assignments are essential and correlate with how schedulers will organize, filter, and sort the data. The IDs must be smart enough to contain vital information such as the building site, and area.
3. Informative activity description
   When schedulers look at the WBS, they have to know where the activities are occurring. Schedulers consider this beforehand, but also assign IDs and codes as they go along. They also customize the codes to get information more easily in whatever environment they find themselves.
4. Systematic categorizing of activities
   In a large-scale environment, with say, 30 schedulers, it is important to create keys to the activity codes and names so all of the schedulers know what each refers to. P6 also enables the scheduler to sort in multiple modalities. For example, there may be excavation going on in 10 different places in the project, and these may be sorted by building, by area, or by the excavation activity.

Exchanging Information Between NetPoint and Primavera P6
Project managers can initially create a project plan and build Level 1 or 2 schedules in NetPoint. The benefits of using NetPoint for the planning sessions include collaborative planning, interactive and real-time interface, intuitive logic display, planned dates, and self-healing data during schedule changes. The schedule created in NetPoint during your planning sessions can subsequently be imported into P6.

Baseline schedules
Project schedulers often say that they live and die by their baseline schedule. The true baseline is recognized as the original agreed-upon document to which schedulers plan; other baseline reference schedules are used to track progress. Baselines are typically created at the point during the project when you need a benchmark to compare future progress against or you need to perform what-if scenarios. A best practice is to baseline the initial schedule so you can measure performance as the project progresses through time. In Primavera, it is easy to create, assign, and maintain a baseline schedule. Baseline schedule functionality in P6 also includes the notes feature on the WBS activity and other visual aids.

Creating the baseline schedule.
The baseline is created by mapping the scope of work as expressed by the design documents and interactive planning sessions to estimate schedule activities. These activities are then assigned durations and logic ties, and external and internal restraints among the project activities are identified. Targets and milestones against which to measure progress are then developed. Schedule coding is established to facilitate the breakdown of the work into different views or layouts. This coding allows the creation of multi-level reports and information that can be tailored to provide various levels of management with the degree of detail needed. It also provides the needed single point of accountability for each element.

How NetPoint aids Primavera in creating these conditions
Adding NetPoint to P6 functionality allows project schedulers to immediately see the critical path and receive instant feedback on where their project may be going off track. NetPoint adds its visualized schedules and fully interactive planning to the schedulers’ toolkit so that project managers can make realistic plans.

NetPoint also provides a critical path model by graphically depicting network activities, displaying float, leveling resources, and much more. NetPoint has transformed the practice of full wall planning sessions by providing an interactive and graphic platform for collaborative planning. It provides the ability to link activities graphically and illustrate critical dependencies on a time scale yet keep the network model easy to understand. Therefore the plan is simple to edit and the group can collaboratively explore what-if scenarios. All data is refreshed in real-time, showing the actual effects of network changes and their impact.

Finally, although you can do comparisons to the baseline schedule in P6, you can also use NetPoint in this process. NetPoint is great if you want to compare schedule variance and do a side-by-side schedule comparison. You can visually isolate the critical path to show the difference between two schedule updates. The ability to compare two updates within one document helps the project team and other stakeholders to quickly address any problems.

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This keynote will: 1) reveal how the GPM probabilistic scheduling algorithm, by allowing activities to float in every iteration, develops both the statistical early and late schedules, unveiling early/late bounding completion distribution envelopes from which practitioners can infer more realistic 80% confidence level completion aka P80 dates; and 2) question continued reliance on CPM risk assessment tools that promote optimistic P80 dates. The hoped-for outcome is a path toward more realistic schedule risk analysis results.

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