Project Management Training for Everyone
Project management training is a skill that anyone can learn. What you need is training that is clear and useful, but this can be hard to find. All that is needed is a clear understanding of the basics and you will ready to mangage your projects. I think many resources for project management training tend to make this discipline too complicated. To me, there are three simple areas to manage for your project: budgeting, scheduling, and construction. Here I will discuss the basic elements of these three to get you started with your project management training.
Budgeting… It’s by the Numbers
Your first step in project management training is to learn good budgeting skills. This assumes that your project scope and design has already been completed. You need to know exactly what you are building or making in order to budget correctly. There are three main categories for you budget: materials, labor, and equipment.
Your designer should have a complete material take-off sheet that lists all parts, equipment, and raw materials needed to build the thing. Excel is the ideal tool for making your budget. Make four columns in your Excel file: material, quantity, unit cost, and total cost. Simply write down the information specific to all the items listed on the material list and parts take-off sheets. For parts you will have to use vendor catalogs or call them to get good price estimates to use in your budget.
After materials you will have to identify all the labor required to complete your project. This will require that you have an idea of the number of man-hours are needed to complete each task. You may have to call contractors to get estimates on the cost per hour for different types of labor. Also needed is the equipment used during construction, and you will have to get an hourly rate for that also. List all of the different types of labor and equipment needed on your spreadsheet, and the associated cost per hour.
Then you will get a total for all of this. Many estimators like to have a contingency added to the subtotal. This can be any percentage you like, if you are not sure use 10%. This means you will add an extra 10% to your overall budget to account for risks and unknowns that may occur.
Project Management Challenge: The Hadron Collider
Scheduling… Time Is Money
Once your budget is approved you will need to make a project schedule. This will include all the jobs that are required to complete your project. For example, if we are pouring a concrete wall we would have to know the times needed for site prep, setting forms, laying rebar, pouring concrete, and cleanup. You can make a simple Gantt Chart in Excel and make a line for each task, and the number of hours or days required for each. If you want fancy detail then MS Project is an excellent tool to use for making a project schedule.
The most important part of the schedule is to find the “critical path”. These are the tasks that must be completed before the project can move forward. Taking our concrete example, the critical path would be earthwork, forms, pouring concrete, and cleanup. Notice that I did not list laying rebar, because the rebar work can be done the same time as the forms so it will not be on the critical path. If you define the critical path then you know exactly how long your project will take.
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Construction… Getting It Built Right
Now you are ready to begin construction. All of your hard word of budgeting and scheduling will show here. During this phase you will monitor how the work is getting done, making sure it is completed according to design, within budget and on time. This requires that you have a good working relationship with the contractor, and you are able to work side by side with him in a positive manner. It is important that you selected a reputable and honest contractor so your money won’t be wasted on poor quality work.
There are times when you want to change a part of your project while it is being construction. This will require you to make a “change order” with the contractor, and ask him to give you a bid for the extra work. Also, with these changes a new set of drawings will need to be made (if drawing are required at all), and these are called “as builts”. Finally, when the construction is completed you will have to perform a final walk through of the contractor’s work. Here you make sure nothing was missed, that all aspects of the design were completed properly, and the cleanup was done adequately.
How to Find Solid Training
As you can see, the three main areas of project management training are not complicated. A good measure of common sense is needed to apply these skills. However, as you can imagine, there are numerous small details to budgeting, scheduling, and construction that when mastered make the difference in a successful project. Learning these details will require that you find qualified project management training. Here is a resource I have found particularly helpful:
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