by Kristine Kalnina
Kristine Kalnina, Bin Shabib and Associates.Looking at any of the impressive structures shaping Dubai’s skyline, one may see just glass and steel as the main constituent components. But all projects stem from an idea before they become tangible objects and that idea heavily depends on first building successful relationships. …
By Hamish Macdonald
In the first place, DABs are not intended to replace arbitration or litigation but are to be considered as part of a multi-tiered dispute resolution process. The use of a DAB has been described as an early and intermediary step directed at avoiding the need to resort to other more expensive and more time-consuming procedures such as arbitration or litigation. …
by Antonios Dimitracopoulos
A modernised method of administering arbitration proceedings is set to liberalise the local scene, and make the thought of commencing this popular dispute resolution mode within the construction industry less intimidating than it currently may appear to be. …
When you manage the schedule and budget, you normally do not need to be accurate to the minute or to the dollar. You also do not want make all kinds of proactive changes if your project is a day over deadline one week and a day ahead of schedule the next. …
It is hard to define product or service quality at a high level because the term “quality” is nebulous and means different things to different people. You must take the time to define the lower-level characteristics of quality for each specific service or deliverable. If you want to ensure that a service or product meets the customer’s expectations of quality, you have to understand the underlying characteristics of quality. …
Understand the Characteristics of Quality for Your ProjectRead More »
In some procurement contexts, the choice of contract may be determined by external factors, such as requirements of the funder. For example the World Bank now require the FIDIC forms of contract to be used on projects of over £6 million, and it appears as if the NEC form may be the preferred choice for the Olympic construction programme. In such cases the form to be used will have been selected before the Architect and other consultants are appointed. …
Advising clients on the appropriate form of contractRead More »
The process of creating the Project Charter, schedule and budget may take a long time and may be very complicated. Therefore, the work should not be left unorganized, for the same reasons that you are building the schedule for the project to begin with. Immediately after being assigned, the project manager should create a short-term schedule to plan and guide the initial activities. …
Create a Short-Term Schedule to Guide the Definition and Planning ProcessesRead More »
Projects, especially larger ones, are never executed exactly as they are planned. Some activities finish early. Some finish late. Sometimes it is not easy to know if you are ahead of schedule or behind. Likewise, sometimes it is hard to know whether you are under budget or not. …
Consider Earned Value Management for Understanding Schedule and Budget StatusRead More »
Effort hours must be estimated first, before duration and cost estimates can be prepared. Use the following process to estimate effort hours.
1. Determine how accurate your estimate needs to be.
Typically, the more accurate the estimate, the more detail you need to understand about the project, and perhaps the more time that is needed. If you are asked for a rough order of magnitude (ROM) estimate (-25% – +75%), you might be able to complete the work quickly, at a high level, and with a minimum amount of detail. Perhaps you can provide a ROM estimate based on knowledge in your head. On the other hand, if you must provide an accurate estimate within 10%, you need to spend more time and understand the work at a lower level of detail.
2. Create the initial estimate of effort hours
Estimate each activity and for the entire project, using techniques described in 2.2.1 Estimating Techniques.
3. (optional) Factor the effort hours based on the resources assigned
Your estimates are probably based on the effort it will take an average resource to do the work (or perhaps the estimates are based on the effort it would take if you did the work). Sometimes you also have knowledge of the exact resource or the type of resource that will be assigned. If you do, you may want to factor the estimate up or down. For instance, you may estimate an activity to take 40 effort hours. However, you also know that the person who will do the work is an inexperienced trainee. In this case, you may want to double the estimate to 80 hours. Another set of activities may be estimated to take 200 hours. However, you know that you will hire an experienced contractor to do the work, so you may be comfortable reducing the estimate to 150 hours. Obviously, this step can only be performed if you have some sense for the actual resources to be applied to the project.
4. Add specialist resource hours
Make sure you have included hours for part-time and specialty resources. This could include freelance people, training specialists, administrative help, etc. These are people that may not be obvious at first, but you may need them for special activities. Because they are typically in project support roles, you may have forgotten to include their activities in the original Work Breakdown Structure.
5. (optional) Add rework time
In a perfect world, all project deliverables would be correct the first time. On real projects, that usually is not the case. Schedules that do not consider rework can easily end up underestimating the total effort involved with completing deliverables.
This is not to be confused with scope changes. If you produce a deliverable that does not meet all the original requirements, or has a quality problem, then rework may be required. If the original deliverable is not acceptable because of additional requests for new features, functions or requirements, then scope change management should be utilized. There are a number of ways to factor in the effort and time associated with rework.
6. Add project management time
Project management takes effort and there is an associated cost as well. You need to allocate effort hours to successfully and proactively manage a project. You should add 15% of the effort hours for project management. For instance, if a project estimate is 12,000 hours (7 – 8 people), then a full-time project manager (1800 hours) is needed. If the project estimate is 1,000 hours, the project management time would be 150 hours. This would not be enough for a full-time project manager, so the project manager would either be a part-time project resource or the project manager would also have non-project management activities assigned to him as well.
7. Add contingency hours
Contingency is used to reflect the uncertainty or risk associated with the estimate. If you are asked to estimate work that is not well defined, you may add 50%, 75% or more to reflect the uncertainty. If the estimate was required on short notice, a large contingency may be required. Even if you have time to create a reasonably accurate estimate, your contingency may still be 10-25%. If you do not add a contingency amount, it would mean that you are 100% confident in your estimate. This may be the case if similar types of projects have been done before.
When you add contingency, the best approach is to include it as a separate line item. However, if your organization will not allow you to include a formal estimating contingency, you may have no choice but to include the estimating contingency by padding the estimates of all the underlying activities. This is not the preferred approach, but it is the natural reaction if your organization will not allow a formal estimating contingency budget to reflect estimating uncertainty.
8. Calculate the total effort
Add up the estimates for all the work components described above.
9. Review and adjust as necessary
Sometimes when you add up all the components, the estimate seems obviously high or low. If your estimate does not look right, go back and make adjustments to your estimating assumptions to better reflect reality. Also make sure that your estimating model is consistent and reasonable. For instance, if a repetitive activity is planned, you might initially calculate the total effort by multiplying the effort to complete one activity by the number of times the activity is executed. However, upon further evaluation, you may realize that the effort to complete the activity will decrease as it becomes routine. You should also make sure that similar activities have similar effort estimates and if they do not, adjust them as needed.
10. Document all assumptions
You will never know all the details of a project for certain. Therefore, it is important to document all the assumptions you are making along with the estimate.
Tenstep.com
by Andrew Gibson
When I announced at the beginning of this year to colleagues in the UK that I would shortly be relocating to Dubai to specialise in the resolution of construction disputes, most, if not all, imagined the typical contractor/employer type of disputes arising out of defects or delaying events. …
Clients who ask us to help them draft forms of guaranteed maximum price (GMP) contracts, have a variety of reasons for their decision to contract on this basis. Fixed price lump sum contracting, they point out, assumes that the design will be more or less complete at the time the contract is signed. …
Unless your official title is “lawyer” or “agent,” you probably don’t think of yourself as an agent. But if you have ever represented a family member, your boss, your department, or your organisation in a negotiation, you have served as that party’s agent. …
