There is nothing an engineer dislikes more than lack of control. Yet when it comes to project management, control can often be in short supply, writes Cora Systems CEO Philip Martin.
State of play
There might not be a standardised way of doing work across your organisation and out on the field. Often there’s no way of knowing the state of play on projects – if they are profitable, what work is left in them and when will they be finished.
Sometimes you simply might not have an immediate, bird’s eye view of the profitability of your projects. You’ve got to ensure you’ve control of all your jobs and that you’re managing profitability – so you can see what’s profitable and what’s not. Maybe you’ve got to make sure you’re not losing money on change requests, for example.
In the background, your senior management team could be wrestling with strategic issues and change transformation. Maybe your company has grown swiftly and both your processes and systems need to mature fast to manage that growth carefully.
New staff might need to be brought up to speed quickly through having standardised systems and existing staff need to align to one way of working. Sound familiar?
Exact tracking
What you require is a reliable, repeatable and robust way of managing your project portfolio. You need tight control on every aspect of your engineering jobs, i.e. exact tracking – and invoicing – for time your engineers spend on site.
You need to able to forecast what’s coming down the line – what’s finished, and what’s going to be finished. You need to be able to invoice quickly after a job is complete and avoid getting bogged down in delayed payments. You need to streamline your process.
If you have got a proper project management execution system, it provides you with complete control, governance and insight over your project portfolio – good visibility so you’ve got a handle on what’s going on right across all of your delivery teams.
At Cora Systems, we have 20 years’ experience of working with firms like Honeywell Building Solutions and Automated Logic in giving them control and insight into their project portfolios and, crucially, in helping them to focus on those projects that are most profitable.
Author: Philip Martin is CEO of Cora Systems. To gain insight into the benefits companies such as Honeywell Building Solutions and Automated Logic have accrued from their project management implementations, download Philip’s 'Engineering' guidebook: https://corasystems.com/eiguide.