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 #16: Slippage Usually Starts Small
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Good morning team, This week’s topic: schedule slippage. 1. From the Field Major schedule problems rarely arrive as a single dramatic event. More often, the project gives you a series of smaller signals first. An activity takes two days longer than planned. The next crew mobilizes a little later. A delivery moves from Tuesday to Thursday. The team adjusts around each issue, and individually none of them seems serious enough to change the overall outlook. That is where paying attention to trends matters. Small delays that repeatedly move in the same direction can eventually become a much larger schedule problem. 2. Leadership Perspective Good leaders do not overreact to every small deviation, but they also do not ignore patterns. The skill is recognizing when several small issues are starting to tell the same story. 3. Field Observation I’ve seen projects remain “on schedule” for quite a while even though nearly every short-term activity was finishing later than planned. The final completion date had not moved yet because the team was absorbing the delays through resequencing, float, and extra effort. That can work for a while, but it is worth understanding what the project is spending to maintain the date. A schedule can still show the right finish date while the underlying trend is getting worse. 4. Spreadsheet Tip This week’s formula: track days late. If Column D contains the planned finish and Column E contains the actual or forecast finish: =MAX(0,E2-D2) The result shows the number of calendar days late. Activities that finish on time or early return 0. Copy the formula down a schedule tracker and you can quickly see whether delays are isolated or becoming a pattern. 5. Question for the Week Are the small schedule misses on your project isolated events, or are they beginning to form a trend? 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...