Project Control in Practice

Extract

I intend to speak briefly on three aspects of Project Management in the amplification of what Mr. Williamson has just said. Members of the audience who have attended lectures at this Society and elsewhere before, will, I am sure, recognise some of the Figures and I should not like it to be thought that I am presenting new or original ideas.

Turning to the control cycle that we at Hunting Engineering Ltd have been using now for a number of years, let me say that we believe that projects lasting two years or more need to be reviewed and re-cast, if necessary, at least every month. We have, therefore, evolved a four week management cycle and Figs. 1-5 explain our modus operandi. Programme re-casting is done at what we call the Management Decisions Meeting (Fig. 1). This takes place at the second week of the four week cycle. The efficacy of management decisions is tested by network re-running on the computer during the third week of the cycle, and on the assumption that the decisions meet the projects target date requirement the PERT time predictions resulting from these re-runs are issued during week three.