9 women cannot deliver a baby in one month!

10 years back, I worked with a project manager who believes that planning engineers are from different plant. They think that 9 women can deliver a baby in one month! I used to have long discussions with him trying to forward planning engineers message “If You Plant Rice, You Get Rice.” At this time i was convinced that the planning engineer is just collecting information from different project team, but information together and develop a construction schedule. However, i was wondering why most of the time schedule does not work?

Today, my conclusion of planning completely changed. I realized that Planning Engineer should not only collect information from the project team, but also s/he should verify and audit this information as well. You as a planning engineer should not accept project team inputs if you believe it will not work. In the other hand, you should be creative and offer alternative solutions, do not just say it will not work, you should say it will not work this way but it will work with another way.

For example, I had long discussion with a construction manager who wanted to finish a certain scope of work within certain duration and with certain manpower. I got the information and prepared my time schedule along with resource allocation and i gave him my feedback for the required productivity rates since this was the only remaining factor in his formula. When he saw the required productivity rate he got shocked and only then he realized that his requirements cannot be achieved, it is only a wish! However, i gave him the solution to increase the crew by 10% and work overtime 25% to achieve a reasonable required productivity rate.

If you don’t know the differences between planner and scheduler, just wait until your project is late! 

If you are working as a planning engineer, please don’t play the rule of the scheduler only. You need to be a real planning engineer and give your project team a plan that works. Invest in your self before it is too late and no one accept to hire you. See the video below it is showing the concept of expected outputs based on time planning: