VPVI-66:Project Planning: A Year in Review

Mickey Garcia & Jesi Cannon, BHC RHODES

BHC RHODES

Engineering / Surveying

Founded 1992

115 employees

Mickey Garcia

mickey.garcia@ibhc.com

Project Accounting Supervisor / Project Management Analyst

Jesi Cannon

jesi.cannon@ibhc.com

Bookkeeper / Vision Administrator

Today’s Agenda• Why Vision Planning

• Preparation Phase

• Implementation Phase

• Using Planning Reports and Resource Utilization Screens

• Screen Design, User Defined Tab, and Help Buttons

• Main Takeaways

• Future Plans

Why Vision Planning

• Needed a common tool that would provide benefit to all

• Deltek already houses our project, opportunity,

client/contact, financial, and contract data

• PMs create data by planning and managing their projects

– That same data is then used by leadership to plan and manage

firm-wide resources and forecast future needs and revenue

– This single view is a win for all, making us more successful

Preparation Phase

• Six months of self-learning

– Deltek University courses

– Help from SilverEdge (our consultant)

– Trial and error

• Designed processes and presented to project champion

• Created training materials

• Scheduled and provided several training times

Initial Training – December 2017

• One long session v. several shorter sessions

– Too much material at once; an hour or so is all they can absorb

before they’re on overload

• Created handout to go along with training

Implementation Phase

• Rolled out in January 2018

• Goal to have a project plan for all projects

– New plans to be created as projects were set up

– Ongoing projects to be in Planning by August

• Bi-weekly meetings with all PMs and Market Segment Leads

– Discuss status of project and plan

– Help to update plan

– One-on-one training at beginning of process

• Pushback from almost everyone on almost everything

– Didn’t want to change

– Didn’t want to be “forced” to change

– Didn’t trust my knowledge or abilities

– Very little forward movement

• Accounting setup plans for existing projects to assist PMs

– Created basic shell that matched planned hours to actual hours

Using Planning Reports and

Resource Utilization Screens

Labor Resource Forecast

• Labor resource forecast

– Review forecasted hours, costs, and billing amounts by project

plan, employee, and labor category

– Review project assignments and determine if adjustments are

necessary

• Used for reviewing the current week’s planned hours

Labor Planned and Actuals

• Labor Resource Planned and actuals

– Review both planned and actual labor hours

– Determine if projects are on target, understand why or why not,

and improve performance on similar projects in the future

• Used in After Action Review meetings

Planned Labor for Generics

• Planned labor for generics

– Started from Labor Resource Planned/Actuals report

– Displays all projects with generic staff types

• Used to help replace generics with named staff

Resource Utilization

• Resource utilization

– Review employee utilization data from Project Planning and

Resource Management applications

• Used to guide staffing issues on an ongoing basis

– See which employees have capacity

– See which employees are overbooked

Resource Utilization Search

• Resource utilization

– Assign employees to project plans and monitor their utilization

– Search for resources based on different criteria

• Used to see an overview of a specific employee or group

of employees

– Easily reassign hours from one employee to another

Revenue Forecast

• Labor forecast report at billing

• Monthly by market segment

• Compare

– Budget from the revenue projections

– Planned values at billing

– Actual revenue

– Capacity based on the staffing model produced for the year

Revenue Forecast

Screen Design, User Defined

Tab, and Help Buttons

General Tab

Weekly Maintenance Tab

Weekly Maintenance Tab

Progress

Progress

• Initial training and rollout December 2017 / January 2018

• Most current active projects have plans

• Using planning reports for staffing and forecasting

• Regular bi-weekly meetings with PMs to review plans

• Annual refresher training

• Workshops

• Only about half of project management staff using planning

Main Takeaways

If We Could Go Back…

• Better change management

• Thorough stakeholder analysis

• More convincing, less pushing

• Longer initial training process

• Workshops to subsidize the formal training

Main Takeaways

• Change management is a big concern

• Maintain consistent communication with PMs

• Reinforces accuracy of timekeeping

• Creating culture of self-service

• More project awareness

Main Takeaways

• Better risk mitigation

• Staff is starting to “get it”

• Allows improved client evaluation

• Are projects being managed better because of planning

tool?

– No backup to show yes or no, but we are definitely headed that

direction

Future Plans

Future Plans

• Continue to improve the forecasting by incorporating

opportunities

• Assist in creating future annual budgets

• Encourage use of Earned Value Management and the

Labor EVT Chart

What does your organization do first –project or plan?

Questions?