Practical project management lessons from environmental, demolition, remediation, and industrial work. For project engineers, developing PMs, and field professionals. Delivered every Friday.
Friday Field Notes #01: Forecasts Are Not Budgets
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FRIDAY FIELD NOTES #01 Forecasts Are Not Budgets Good morning team, I'd like to try something new. Every Friday, I'll send a few short project management observations, leadership thoughts, field lessons, and spreadsheet tips that may help as you continue developing as Project Engineers and future Project Managers. Most of these topics won't come from textbooks. They'll come from things I've seen on projects over the years—some that went well and some that didn't. My hope is that these notes help bridge the gap between training and the realities of managing work in the field. This week's topic: forecasting. From the Field Forecasting problems are rarely caused by bad math. More often, they're caused by good people working with outdated assumptions. I've seen projects where the field team knew productivity was slipping weeks before it showed up in the forecast. The information existed, but it never made its way into the numbers. By the time everyone agreed there was a problem, valuable time had already been lost. Forecasts tend to get blamed when projects miss expectations, but in many cases the forecast wasn't the problem. The project team simply wasn't updating it with what they were learning. Leadership Perspective Good project leaders create an environment where bad news can be brought forward early. If people are afraid to mention a problem until they have a perfect solution, the project may lose the time needed to correct it. Forecasting is not just a financial exercise. It is also a leadership exercise because it depends on honest communication. Field Observation One pattern I've noticed is that field concerns usually appear before financial concerns. A superintendent may notice a crew is moving slower than expected. A foreman may start requesting additional labor. A PE may notice quantities aren't tracking as planned. Those observations are often the earliest warning signs available to the project team. Good forecasting starts by paying attention to what the field is telling you and translating those observations into updated assumptions. Spreadsheet Tip This week's formula: SUMIFS Use this when you want to total costs, hours, quantities, or other values based on one or more conditions. =SUMIFS($F:$F,$B:$B,"02100") In this example, Excel adds everything in Column F where the cost code in Column B equals 02100. A more useful version is to reference a cell instead of typing the cost code directly into the formula: =SUMIFS($F:$F,$B:$B,A2) If Cell A2 contains the cost code, this formula will total everything in Column F that matches that cost code. This can be useful for labor hours, equipment costs, trucking quantities, waste totals, or any other project data that needs to be summarized by category. Question for the Week If you had to update your project forecast today, what field information would you use that is different from what you knew 30 days ago? Have a great weekend, Dan |
Friday Field Notes
Practical project management lessons from environmental, demolition, remediation, and industrial work. For project engineers, developing PMs, and field professionals. Delivered every Friday.
Good morning team, This week’s topic: small tools and consumables. 1. From the Field Nobody calls an emergency meeting because the project bought another box of cutting wheels. Small purchases rarely look concerning one at a time. Over several months, though, the job may go through far more blades, filters, hoses, batteries, PPE, and other consumables than the estimate allowed. Some small tools will also disappear into gang boxes, service trucks, and whatever mysterious place tape measures go...
Good morning team, This week’s topic: equipment cost exposure. 1. From the Field Equipment costs don’t wait for someone to notice them. A rented excavator can be fueled, inspected, parked in exactly the right spot, and accomplish absolutely nothing while the rental clock keeps running. Sometimes the delay can’t be avoided. An approval may still be pending, the work area might not be ready, or the sequence may have changed. The trouble starts when “we’ll probably need it later” becomes the...
Good morning team, This week’s topic: labor hours. 1. From the Field Knowing that a project used 500 labor hours does not tell you much by itself. You need to know what those hours accomplished. That is where labor tracking becomes more useful. If 500 hours produced 1,000 units one week and the same 500 hours produced 650 the next, something changed. The reason could be completely legitimate, but the project team should understand it. I’ve found that labor discussions become much more useful...