Chapter one: Planning fundamentals

1.1 Introduction
Objectives:

 Acquire a general understanding of the parts of the project management plan

 Understand the importance of discovering & documenting stakeholder requirements.

 Understand the processes & components of construction project planning.

A manager who does not plan cannot control, because there will be no benchmark with which to judge actual
project progress or costs.

In presenting this course we will look at the major aspects of construction planning and explain some of the
techniques used.

You need to remember however, that if you as senior managers are not fully committed to making the planning
function work effectively and thus achieve the required control, then any efforts put into planning will be of
little use and doomed to failure.

Planning

 Planning is the creative and challenging intellectual action of working out what has to be achieved, how,
by when, by whom, and with what. Plans are not just pieces of paper; they signify the result of careful
consideration, wide-ranging discussions, decisions and actions, and commitments made between people.

The word planning can be applied to the entire project, from commencement to completion, (i.e. from inception
to commissioning), although you, as ‘own force’ managers and engineers, will only be involved in the
construction phase. It is on this phase of a project that we will be concentrating.

The construction phase of the project is generally the most expensive and fastest moving stage of a project, and
therefore requires appropriate planning to lay the basis for effective control.

Planning is a general term that sets a clear road map that should be followed to reach a destination. The term,
therefore, has been used at different levels to mean different things. Planning involves the breakdown of the
project into definable, measurable, and identifiable tasks/activities, and then establishes the logical
interdependences among them. Generally, planning answers three main questions:

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 What is to be done?

How to do it?

Who does it?

 In construction, for example, plans may exist at several levels:

o corporate strategic plans,

o pre-tender plans,

o pre-contract plans,

o Short-term construction plans, and long-term construction plans. These plans are different from
each other; however, all these plans involve four main steps:

 Performing breakdown of work items involved in the project into activities.

 Identifying the proper sequence by which the activities should be executed.
 Activities representation.
 Estimating the resources, time, and cost of individual activities.

Planning Objectives

The main objectives of planning can be described as follows:

 Analysis requires considering how the work will be done, in what order and what resources will be
required. This entails breaking the project, or a part of the project, down into small manageable and
identifiable work activities.

 Anticipation involves predicting possible problems and risks and planning how to overcome the
problems and minimise the risks.

 Scheduling resources is done to facilitate optimal use of the available and most cost-effective resources.

 Co-ordination and control to supply a basis for co-ordination of the work or the parties involved in the
project, and to provide a basis for predicting and controlling time and costs.

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 Planning and Planning Techniques

We must make a distinction between planning and planning techniques. It is essential to realise that the planner

cannot plan without management input. This involves managerial decisions with respect to the strategies and

tactics to be used, the breaking down of the work into tasks and sub-tasks and the assigning of responsibilities

for carrying out the task to individuals or organisations.

It must be remembered that the value any works programme produced will be directly connected to the quality

of the planning, which itself will be dependent on the role played by management.

Planning techniques make-up the planner’s tool-kit; they aid in the analysis of a plan, organising the

information, and are crucial in the method by which the plan is conveyed to other.

The above two facet of planning produce the plan that provides the strategy and tactics for carrying out the

project, which would be in terms of activities, time, quantities, resources, and perhaps costs and values.

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1.2 planning process
Figure 1.1: The Planning Process

Planning
Techniques

Data Sources Planning Output

Technical books & Report

magazines Programme
Manufacturer’s literature Method statement
Planning Resource schedule
Personal experience
Other people’s Cash flow diagram
experience Resource histogram
ERA data
Contract documents

PLANNING COMMUNICATING

The plan would be communicated through the use of charts and reports as indicated in Figure 2.1 above.

Planning Data

Planning depends on data and information and without reliable and appropriate data any attempt at planning will involve
guesstimates. Although planning by best guesses would be better than no planning at all, the better the quality of data, the
better the plans made. Figure 2.1: The Planning Process shows typical sources of data and resultant planning outputs.

Planning in the Organisation

Since most of you are or will be involved in the management of some fairly large projects I would suggest that
although you will be intimately involved in the planning process, (making the necessary managerial decisions),
you will need the help of one or two dedicated specialist planners. These planners would be involved in using
the various planning techniques to produce the required planning outputs to allow proper monitoring and control
of the project by its managers.

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 Early Planning Requirements
Planning can be a difficult and lengthy process, with early choices on how the specific plan will be done having
a huge impact on the efficiency of the process. To avoid later problems it is therefore, essential to set up the
project correctly at commencement. Some of these early decisions are described below.

Who is the Plan for?

It is vital to identify the intended user of the plan. The large construction projects, on which you are likely to be
working, can produce vast amounts of information, and the planner must make objective choices – Table 3.1
details those requiring or preparing a construction plan, and summarises what they require to obtain from it and
the timescales involved.

What level of detail is needed?

It is important to include only the necessary level of detail to adequately draw up the plan required, and to avoid
going into too much unnecessary detail. Figure 3.1 below illustrates the relationship between the level of detail
and the time required for different types of plans.

The outer frame represents a theoretical fully detailed programme showing all details to completion. A
programme to such detail and exactitude could only realistically be produced following the project’s completion
and would be an historic record document rather than a plan to be used to execute the project.

The frame for the client’s master programme is for the whole of the project’s duration including the
commissioning and represents the interest of a client who normally is interested in the overall position rather
than detail.

The other types of programmes such as the construction programme (e.g. Clause 14 FIDIC IV) and the
foreman’s weekly programme can be seen to occupy different size frames, which illustrate their particular
requirements.

It is important not to over-plan. The first consideration is what is known with certainty, because it is pointless to
plan in more detail than this. The most practical approach is to acknowledge that as the project progresses, the
information on hand to the managers and planners increases, and their experience and understanding develops,
so they can formulate improved and make more certain plans in greater detail. Original plans, made with little
information available, (especially when planning the design phase of the project), have to be rather vague in
many respects; so the plan is expressed in broad terms. Gradually, through a process of learning and
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development, it becomes possible to make better estimates of what is required, and then planning in greater
detail becomes meaningful.

This concept is known as dynamic planning and avoids the stricture of keeping to an outdated unrealistic plan
that would have been arrived at with limited information.

Key Elements in Project Planning

According to the Project Management Institute there are nine specific areas that require a project manager’s
attention and should be incorporated into the strategic plan:

1. Integration, to ensure that the various project elements are effectively coordinated.
2. Scope, to ensure that all the work required (and only the required work) is included.
3. Time, to provide an effective project schedule.
4. Cost, to identify needed resources and maintains budget control.
5. Quality, to ensure functional requirements is met.
6. Human resources, to effectively employ project personnel.
7. Communications, to ensure effective internal and external communications.
8. Risk, to analyze and mitigate potential risks.
9. Procurement, to obtain necessary resources from external sources.

1.3 project master plan

Definitions
 Functional areas of the organization assigned to the project should be involved in the planning process.
 Although each area develops its own plan all plans are derived from and become a part of a single,
overall project plan.
 This overall plan is referred to as the project master plan or project summary plan.

Contents of master plan

The contents of master plans vary depending on the size, complexity, and nature of the project. Typically, the
plan has three major sections:

1. Management summary. An over view description of the project oriented toward top level management.

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 o It includes a brief description of the project, objectives, overall requirements, constraints,
problem areas (and how they will be overcome), and the master schedule showing major events
& milestones.

2. Management and organization section.

o Overview of organization and personal requirements for the project. It includes
A. A project management & organization
B. Manpower
C. Training & development

3. Technical section. Overview of major project activities , timing, & cost, It Includes:
A. Statement of work & scope of work
B. Wordbreak breakdown
C. Responsibility assignments
D. Project schedules
E. Budget & financial support
F. Testing
G. Change control plan
H. Quality plan
I. Work review plan
J. Documentation
K. Implementation
L. Economic justification
M. Areas of uncertainty and risk

The advantages of using a Master Project Plan are –

1. You can track multiple projects from a single project plan.

2. The project plans can be updated via Master Project plan or independently. .
3. You can get a combined report on resource usage and task usage.

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