A Simple Guide on How to set up an Engineering Progress Monitoring & Control system

A huge challenge faced by project owners, managers, and controllers is the non-availability of accurate timely project progress information. In most EPC projects getting access to this kind of information takes at least a week and sets up a bottleneck that can delay the taking of corrective actions, which in turn adds to schedule and cost overruns.

Keeping in mind that the progress of engineering deliverables is the true reflection of the engineering project’s progress, here is a simple and effective way to achieve near real-time progress monitoring without the possibility of incorrect status reporting.

First, let’s understand the concept. Managing engineering projects by managing the associated document data flows and capturing data at the source is like bulletproofing your engineering progress monitoring system because you shut down all the avenues for wrong and/or delayed reporting. This provides accurate information at the press of a button, enhances timely decision-making, and improves the project’s velocity. If you can manage the progress of the document workflows you can manage the progress of the actual work. I know of several projects where real-time progress monitoring & control was achieved following this logic and the resulting system was highly scalable across tasks and work packages, all the way up to project, program, and portfolio levels. In a nutshell, the system was able to facilitate management-by-exception with drill-down capability.

Let’s take a closer look to understand how it works.

The completion of an engineering drawing comprises the completion of:

• The draft drawing
• Quality checks
• Internal reviews
• External reviews
• Incorporation of review comments
• Final review and approval

We get the most accurate reflection of work actually done by monitoring the progression of the automated workflows associated with the engineering drawing.

Now let us examine how to implement this approach to real-time Engineering Progress Monitoring & Control at an artifact level, which can be later scaled up to:

• Work package level
• Work order level
• Project level
• Program level
• Portfolio level

In this context, your imagination is the limit.

In the rest of this blog post, I will demonstrate the concept with examples, or if you already understand the concept and want to see a live demo click here.

At the core of real-time progress monitoring and control is the electronic document management system or EDMS which has workflow automation capability. There are 16 characteristics of such an EDMS:

1. Metadata capture– Date of creation, Time, Owner, location etc.
2. Integration– Integration with other applications
3. Capture– Conversion of digital images to machine-readable text
4. Data validation– Check for document failures, missing signatures, misspelled names and other issues and recommend real-time correction
5. Indexing– Unique document identifiers
6. Storage – Storage of the documents including archiving and backups
7. Retrieval– Retrieve the electronic documents from storage
8. Distribution– Traceability, and versioning across systems
9. Security– Document security standards compliance
10. Workflow– Inbuilt workflows or integration with workflow management systems
11. Collaboration– Multiple users can view and modify (or markup) documents at the same time. The various markups by each individual user during the collaboration session are recorded, allowing document history to be monitored.
12. Versioning– The Process by which documents are checked in or out of the document management system. Versioning is useful for documents that change over time and require updating but it may be necessary to go back to or reference a previous version.
13. Searching– Location of documents using the search functionality
14. Federated search–  Capability to extend search capabilities to draw results from multiple sources
15. Publishing– Proofreading, reviewing, authorizing, printing and approving, etc.
16. Hard copy reproduction– Document/image reproduction

A good EDMS will have all these components, which, if well integrated, can be transformed into a real-time, error-free, cost-effective progress monitoring system.

By integrating the EDMS with a scheduling tool the EDMS can be transformed into a powerful Progress Monitoring & Controlling system founded on Earned Value Management (EVM) fundamentals.

The benefits of real-time Progress Monitoring by integrating EDMS and EVM are:

1. Progress Reporting and Control – Shows Planned work Vs Completed work within a given time frame within minutes, with accuracy.
2. Variance analysis
3. Trends analysis– Schedule Performance and Cost performance trends within minutes, with accuracy.
4. Ability to forecast time and cost – Go from Reactive to Proactive decision making
5. Management by exceptions

Example.

According to the table, as on 26th May 2022:

• Planned value of this engineering drawing = 100%
• Earned Value = 70%
• Schedule Variance (SV) = EV-PV = 70-100 = -30

By defining the rules of credit upfront and automating the engineering document workflow, the progress reporting happens automatically as and when the work progresses and the extra step of manually entering percentage completion is eliminated. This enforces process compliance, eliminates wrong reporting, and considerably reduces waiting time for project progress information. The concept can be scaled from a document level to work package, project, program, and portfolio level, within engineering or extended to procurement and construction, single location, or multi-location.

Wrench Smart Project does all the above. It harnesses the power of Electronic Document Management and Earned Value Management to deliver real-time progress monitoring and reporting.

Real-World User Case

Consider this data from the field of a very large project on which Wrench implemented an EDMS-based Integrated EVMS. This was a USD 1.6 billion projects with 120+ vendors. The engineering was done in five locations and there was a tight schedule (25 months) with incentives and penalties. After implementing the system I described above the following benefits were reported:

• 70% reduction in overall time taken to generate reports
• Access to EPC contractors/vendors, automated approval processes, and quick access to drawings and docs with the latest revisions increased productivity by 20-25%.
• Improved accuracy of the real-time reports, and direct access to multiple EPC contractors and vendors which reduced data exchange time
• Managers achieved an ability to manage by exceptions rather than getting buried in information overload
• 90% on-time completion of deliverables
• 80% deliverables completed within budget
• 80% reduction in errors and rework

All that said, seeing is believing.Click here to set up a demo.