Monitoring Multidisciplinary Construction Sites Across The Country
The Government of Mozambique and the Millennium Challenge Corporation on behalf of the United States of America had signed an agreement for implementing a country-wide infrastructure program comprising of three components, namely roads, water supply and sanitation.
These components composed the program and each was subdivided into a number of individual projects. In total the program comprised seven different projects, with each project amounting between 35-50ml USD. The maximum implementation period was predetermined to be five years and the net construction period was fixed to two years and to be completed at the end of the five years program duration. All projects were located in the northern part of the country, spread over a remote area of about 150km radius and a two hours flight away from the capital.
The the projects composing the programme were in particular:-
- Three road constructions of about 80km each including bridges and other supporting infrastructure;
- Two urban water supply schemes with intake structures, water treatment plants, mains, reservoirs and distribution pipes;
- One dam heightening for increasing the storage capacity and including new pumping stations; and
- One urban sanitation system.
The various projects fell within the responsibility of three different and independent implementing entities that took over the projects after final completion. A temporary installed Projects Implementation Unit (PIU) was responsible for acting as client on behalf of the three implementing entities. Consulting engineers supervised the construction works on the various sites and the client was kept informed by monthly progress reports and regular meetings.
This set-up created a major challenge for all parties involved and the Prommpt approach helped overcome the difficulties. The challenges were:-
- Projects of different sectoral allocation under the umbrella of one program;
- Locally dispersed sites with some in remote areas;
- Different deliverables and timelines; and
- Multiple client and donor entities with different reporting requirements;
The PIU contracted a small consortium of consulting engineers as Technical Assistance (TA) Engineering Service Consultant for support in the course of project implementation.
One of the major duties of the TA consortium was analysing the monthly progress reports received in form of different documents from the various projects in terms of progress and financial situation. From this, the consulting team prepared a condensed TA report that served as the single source of information for the implementing entities. For that reason the reports required two main aspects:-
- Providing a condensed snapshot of the actual project statuses including a forecast for the individual projects as well as the programme; and
- The TA reports had to be stipulated in a harmonised manner.
In the TA consortium the German based consulting practice “apid” was responsible for collecting the progress and financial data, analysing them and ultimately summarising all data in Key Performance Indicators (KPI) advising the clients in terms of actual progress, expected completion dates, financial situation and contractual risks.
The Prommpt approach demonstrated hugely beneficial as each project was considered separately but the algorithms allowed summarising the projects on demand, i.e. all road projects or all projects in a certain area or all projects under the responsibility of a certain contractor or consultant, or all projects as a whole. The synchronisation capabilities of Prommpt enabled the team to remotely access real-time data from the projects without the need of preparing, sending and reading lengthily and blurred reports.
The key modules of Prommpt, that significantly helped pulling together the programme were-
- The project summary providing on one screen computed information on project scope, status, elapsed time frames, allocated and expended budgets, key people, project planning maturity, and the like;
- Tracking of deliverables and other important milestones in a graphical overview with the ability to allocate notes to nodes in the context of occurrence for keeping track of the history;
- Keeping in one place all project people working on the achievement of the targets including contact details, position, role, planed input and utilisation;
- Managing incidental budgets and other capital expenditure not relating to the people
- Keeping track and managing of issues, decisions and notes with the provision that the entire team can contribute and comment on dedicated chat channels;
- A tool for the profiling of all relevant stakeholders including the capturing of interest and managing of the engagement strategy depending on the desired levels participation;
- The diagnostic Earned Value Analysis for immediate indication of performance in terms of time and cost with the ability of forecasting same to completion. All key performance indicators are available on one single screen; and
- Another diagnostic tool to conduct a subjective assessment questionnaire of the maturity of the implementation framework per project that also supports the project planning as it covers all relevant project dimensions with graphic indication as to where the team needs to focus.
The versatile application of Prommpt on a project level was complemented by its ability to allocate the projects in a variety of groups giving clear indication on the performance of the various contractors across their projects, status per sector, progress per implementing agency and many other relevant groupings.
Prommpt’s ability to generate pdf reports on any one the groups or projects as a whole based on synchronised data that was remotely collected by the teams on site has streamlined the entire reporting on the programme implementation.
With these modules and features, “apid” was in the position to equip the client and subsequently the implementation entities with all required data for informed decision making.
Prommpt enables teams or individuals to thoroughly plan, manage and monitor projects across a sound project management skill-set by putting the focus on where it is needed. Prommpt merges the data that is collected and distilled into effective, stylish graphics, which give the user the ability to discern the status of any aspect of a project at a glance. The immediate feedback on the status of the projects and portfolios further enhance communication with the team or clients. Prommpt also has the ability to generate clear, intelligent project reports in pdf format which can shared via email and translate well into presentation slides for clients and other stakeholders.
Prommpt benchmarks all modules against a best practice and is expertly coaching you towards overall optimum project management performance. With Prommpt on your tablet, there will be a noticeable reduction in the need for complex, extensive and tedious spread sheets, which enables project managers who are on-the-go to conveniently and quickly access and share a wide variety of important project information from the convenience of their iPads.