I have received an interesting email asking about the following:

I am a master’s student of construction and project management from Queen’s University, Belfast, UK. I have been watching your videos helping me gain knowledge in the planning department. I finally have a chance to implement it as an opportunity has arisen getting a chance to be eligible for the interview of a graduate planner in one of the UK’s top construction companies. I am a fresher with almost no experience. I have my interview scheduled for next week. I have several questions which I think are likely to be asked and I would appreciate getting answers from you.

Q1 What are the basic skills required to be a fresher graduate planner?
Q2 What is the list of documents or reports that the planner is likely to be handled or to be submitted?
Q3 How does work start as a planner in short?

I would appreciate your efforts in giving me these answers and helping me to build my career.

 

It is my pleasure to answer my colleague in this article so everyone else could get benefit from my reply:

Q1 What are the basic skills required to be a fresher graduate planner?

You need to have some skills in two different areas. Technical skills and soft skills. Many fresher planning engineers focus only on tools and forget other required skills which I am going to discuss below:

A: Technical Skills for junior planning engineer:

• Good knowledge about the planning tool you are going to use i.e Primavera P6 or MS Project (I prefer P6).
• Very good in using Microsoft Excel, for a planning Engineer you need to use VLookup, Pivot Tables, and Excel power query.
• Understand the concept of Earned Value Management EVM. This is commonly used in measuring progress.
• Understand the concept of scheduling and how to break down activities to create a logical time schedule.
• How to estimate activities costs and resources based on quantity.
• How to create cost and resource loading and upload them to your time schedule.
• How to create weekly/monthly reports showing the progress of works and highlight the delays and potential risks.

B: Soft skills for junior planning engineer:

• Ability to work in a team.
• Organized and committed to the deadlines.
• Able to communicate with the project team and get/send relevant data smoothly.
• Cooperative with the project team. find a solution to each problem, NOT the other way around.

 

Q2 What is the list of documents or reports that the planner is likely to be handled or to be submitted?

Each project has its requirements; however, the following document is most likely to be required in most of the projects:

• Master Time Schedule Cost and Resource loaded.
• Detailed Time Schedule Cost and Resource loaded.
• Cash Flow / S Curve.
• Manpower Histogram.
• Equipment Histogram.
• Cost and Resource loading sheet.
• Shop Drawings Log.
• Material Procurement Log.
• Weekly / Monthly Reports.
• Extension of Time EOT Claims.
• Payment Certificates (If it is extracted from the schedule update).

 

Q3 How does work start as a planner in short?

I know you might be worried now about the above requirements. However, since you are a junior planning engineer, you should have some kind of support from your seniors. In my opinion, you should know how to do all of the above then consult your senior planning engineer/planning manager about how s/he would like to do the planning tasks. This will be much better rather than asking about every single thing and how to do it.

Normally, you will have several meetings with your manager and you will have access to previous projects where you can see how similar tasks were done, and here you need to do the same or even better 🙂

If you would like to prepare yourself, get ready for your next challenge as a junior planning engineer with very high skills, I recommend the following road map:

1- Study the Basic Planning Course: Click Here

2- Study the intermediate Planning Course: Click Here

3- Study the Advanced Planning Package: Click Here

4- Study the Powerful Reporting Program MS Power Bi: Click Here

5- Study the Cost Control Course (will let you understand excel in-depth and the concept of cost control): Click Here

 

If you manage to complete all the above courses, I guarantee you will exceed your manager’s expectations and your chances of getting promoted will be 10x compared to others.

Note: Don’t let the cost of the courses stop you, if you cannot afford to pay the full amount, just send me an email with how much you can afford to pay and I will give you the chance to learn and boost your skills. My email: [email protected]