Optimizing Review and Approval Processes for Engineering

Let’s talk about review and approvals, and closed-loop systems, and how to execute the review and approval processes for engineering and commercial…

Optimizing Review and Approval Processes for Engineering

Let’s talk about review and approvals, and closed-loop systems, and how to execute the review and approval processes for engineering and commercial teams in the oil and gas, EPC in capital construction industries.

When we have conversations with clients, or prospective clients, about reviews and approvals, they tell us that the process can be a nightmare. We hear horror stories about using paper based, or even some electronic systems that rely on printing out reams of paper for distribution. Further, these systems rely on paper and pen and a bunch on manual processes to complete the cycle. Some poor souls still have to use couriers and file cabinets. We hear things like that all the time. That sounds like the way my grandfather did business in the 1950s.


Today, review and approval processes for engineering technical documents, requests for quote, PO’s, and action items should be executed, tracked, and managed online at this point. It makes the whole mess and turns it into a nice trackable, accountable system.

We’re also hearing that most systems that manage any review and approval process have some major flaws. Either they can be really expensive, incomplete clunky and sometimes all three.

An example of an incomplete system a client told me about was unable to compile markups during reviews and approval processes. This created a manual process where there’s a human being that draws a salary that has to go and transpose any markups at the end of the revision cycle and keep all the papers with red ink in a file cabinet. There simply was no place for them in their document management system.

Clients and prospective clients also hearing that most apps they encounter don’t provide proper accountability, visibility, or team integration. This is a huge problem. The global nature of oil and gas, EPC and capital construction industries dictates that engineering could take place in New York or Houston and the fabrication could take place in Singapore, or Korea and the MC and commissioning could take place in the middle of the ocean you have an offshore vessel. Try sending a courier to the middle of the pacific!

The ability to integrate these teams and have some visibility into the execution of review and approvals, and enforce some accountability within reviews and approvals is terribly important.

We’re also hearing that it’s very difficult to find a system that will actually speed up review and approval turn arounds. Basically, if the system is smart enough to help execute the markups, and compile the markups, and then return those approvals all in the same closed-loop system – there is a very good chance that the application is so clunky that the process takes forever.

We have found that in order to be the best solution for oil and gas, EPC, and capital construction, your tools need to get all the teams working in the same system. It has to automate otherwise manual processes. No printing, no manual transposing or compiling, none of that. You have got to get accountability and visibility built into the application so you know where things are at, who’s doing what, and make sure that things are getting done. Those are the minimum technical competencies.

In this economic environment, all costs are scrutinized closely. You have to find that elusive affordable, closed-loop system that works.

Part of having an affordable system that works these days is having a cloud-based system. Gone are the days of managing systems like these for global teams in house. Businesses just can’t compete with cloud providers on cost, reliability, and security. It’s a great idea to have a Cloud based application because users want on demand access to review and approve tasks online. Moreover, managers need teams to have easy access to tasks and project data so they are never sitting idle, waiting for an email or courier to arrive with the next batch of work.

Your app needs role based permissions as well. Role based permissions should go much deeper than read only and edit permissions. Your projects and project roles are dynamic – you systems should be too. You want the ability to set a system up to allow teams to contribute without sacrificing the overall security of your sensitive information.

A cloud based system with smart role-based permissions provides more security than doing these reviews and approvals via email. In an email based process, somebody in the review and approval loop could forward sensitive data to anybody or include inconvenient people in the conversation. There’s really no security there. The same thing with most common communication media like Skype. Some companies try to drag files over into messenger to transmit them that way. It might be a little quicker for the here and now but at the end of the day, not having visibility into that process is going to cost some time down the road and not to mention a terrible information security practice.

Client integration is another important part as well, with sometimes clients being in the UK and engineering teams being in Houston for these EPC projects. Being able to integrate your clients into your workflows and say, hey, check off on this, make sure it’s okay. Without having to physically send a document over the Atlantic is huge. When your clients can log into a Cloud based system and see the work you’ve done and put their stamp of approval on it, it definitely speeds turnaround times and probably increases credibility as well. Because it shows that you have the capability to deliver your engineering deliverables in the document management context anyway, through an online system in a nice neat package.

The second thing I mentioned was automating otherwise manual processes. The ideal application allows you to enforce the right work flow, you’ll enforce the engineering and technical or supplier data workflows as you have defined them. You should also be able to enforce Requisition workflows and HSE workflows as well. These are all different and for instance, the HSE, that workflow would have tasks and correspondence that bounces back and forth until an outcome is agreed upon and then that item can be closed out, which is different than the other ones. Within these workflows and these different types you can automate them and this is huge because an automated workflow really reduces the variables and minimizes the effort and manual oversight. The follow through is much better when your workflows automated.

Review and approvals should be executed as in-application tasks, so users can create and assign and complete tasks in the application. This is beneficial because the right application can report on all of the important metadata associated with completing the task.

The last thing I want to mention here is that tasks are personal and if you’re looking at other applications make sure that this is the case so individuals log in and individual users receive tasks rather than groups. This increases ownership and reduces the possibility of finger pointing and other antics like that. Which leads nicely into my third point here is project tools providing accountability and viability. As I mentioned the tasks should be user based, so they’re directed at people rather than groups. This means that you should be able to see who is performing well and who is behind.

To see how ProjecTools handles review and approval processes, please view the video above.

ProjecTools Product Information

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Standard Project Management Features

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ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

  • 545

Security and Reliability

September 1st, 2015|0 Comments

Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

  • 492

Construction Project Management Services

August 31st, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

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Document Management Software ROI

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Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

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  • Review and Approvals

Optimizing Review and Approval Processes for Engineering

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Let’s talk about review and approvals, and closed-loop systems, and how to execute the review and approval processes for engineering and commercial...

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Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

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Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.

The Keys to Successful Document Management

Let’s talk specifically about document management software, and the key factors for clean and organized documentation, accessibility, finding a system…

The Keys to Successful Document Management

Let’s talk specifically about document management software, and the key factors for clean and organized documentation, accessibility, finding a system to optimize your workflow, and enforcing rules for accurate reporting.


Most prospective clients that talk to us about document management applications tell us that their current document management systems aren’t working. They often complain that document workflows aren’t enforced or optimized, contractors and partners are working outside of your systems. We hear that people are having trouble accessing current revisions and mistakes are made when you work from the incorrect revisions.

A side problem is that there isn’t a standard numbering system enforced and emails and spreadsheets which are produced internally by employees out of necessity and aren’t effective document management tools and there are huge hidden costs associated with those.

These folks have want to find an affordable document management system that makes sure teams are working from the right revisions, standardizes numbering, and pulls everybody into one system. The answer is an application that will get your team, suppliers, and clients working in one system to enforce and automate and optimize document workflow.

The right system has a few defining characteristics. First, a cloud-based application means you can have on demand access 24/7. You’ll have online access to quick and robust search tools so that you can find your documents quickly. Employees searching will have role-based permissions so that the right people are getting the right documents without sacrificing security. Further you want to have supplier document management meaning that your suppliers can upload the documents for their PO directly to the point, document control, and we’ll enforce the standard numbering and due dates.

Second, is to have a system that supports an optimized workflow for your industry (Oil & Gas, Capital Construction, IT, Legal, Pharmaceutical, etc.). The right tools are optimized for your industry out of the box with the appropriate review, approval, and release workflows allowing document controllers to keep the documents moving. The workflow is automated, the application has built in tasks and task management so that everybody’s data’s in one place and is recordable. Further, look for a system that allows engineers, commercial, legal, etc. to actually do markups, reviews, and approvals inside of the application so everything says organized, archived, and reportable.

The third thing that fixes your problem is easy access to the latest revision. Everybody can work from the correct document for revision through easy-to-navigate online permission based access that you set up, and also you’ll have an archived complete revision history.

The fourth defining characteristic is enforced standard numbering. You should be able to define the levels and lists or numbering that work for you. You can enforce a numbering system and eliminate disorganization and numbering system headaches. You can track other numbering systems, that means that your client, your suppliers may have different numbering systems, you can accommodate that within the software. Further you should be able to accommodate your clients by using their client numbering system while assimilating that with your own.

The fifth characteristic is having reports on clean data with accurate reporting.

You’re going to enforce revision control so that the revision workflow is done in the proper way, and it is the wisest use of your IT resources. ProjecTools doesn’t require expensive IT staff, servers, or maintenance and we’ll get not this a little bit later. ProjecTools was made for the EPC, Oil & Gas, Pharmaceutical, Legal, and Mining industries. We account for all the players beginning to end in one application in each of the industries mentioned. The system is an out-of-the-box project management tool that is built by project professionals for project professionals, we understand document management. It is the industry standard for each of our industries.

ProjecTools Product Information

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Standard Project Management Features

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ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

  • 545

Security and Reliability

September 1st, 2015|0 Comments

Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

  • 492

Construction Project Management Services

August 31st, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

ProjecTools Resources

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Projects have too many moving parts and too many players to be trusting critical data to spreadsheets and emails. You need a spreadsheet reduction strategy.

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Project Management Assessment Assess your project management practices against the best project execution teams in the Capital Construction, [...]

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Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1357

Aligning Document Control and Cost Control

February 15th, 2016|0 Comments

Align Document Control with Cost Control and create seamless progress and earned value reports to stay on budget and improve cash flows.

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  • Review and Approvals

Optimizing Review and Approval Processes for Engineering

October 14th, 2021|0 Comments

Let’s talk about review and approvals, and closed-loop systems, and how to execute the review and approval processes for engineering and commercial...

  • 1567
  • Document Management

The Keys to Successful Document Management

November 23rd, 2020|0 Comments

Let's talk specifically about document management software, and the key factors for clean and organized documentation, accessibility, finding a system...

  • 1716
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Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1631

Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction

August 24th, 2016|0 Comments

Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.

Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction

Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.

Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction Projects

We totally get it. We live in the global supply chain era, just like you. In this new paradigm, engineers are working in India, Romania, etc., project management is in Calgary, and the client is in Mexico. Situations like this are incredibly common and aren’t going away anytime soon. The smartest managers and executives understand that global projects need the right technology and processes to integrate global players.

For global or regional project teams, having access to the right documents can mean the difference between sitting on your ass until the India team gets back into the office and then staying late – all because someone forgot to attach the drawing to an email that simply says “See drawing attached.”

These situations happen all the time and they are super frustrating for engineers, partners, suppliers, document control, and clients.  On top of that when one interaction or process gets out of control, everybody loses. Clients lose money, document controllers lose credibility, engineers lose sleep, and eventually someone starts to lose business.

Rule number one in managing a global project team is to keep teams informed. The changing project landscape if not communicated or improperly communicated will leave remote teams frustrated, confused, disinterested and ultimately producing sub-optimal work. The remedy is to keep remote teams engaged which requires transparency, over-communication, and on-demand access to the latest project information.

Since transparency and over-communication are organizational commitments that have no gold standard for execution, it makes sense to focus on on-demand access to the latest project information. Access to project data is a concrete, measurable objective that can be fixed in a matter of days or weeks.

On-demand access to documents and project data seems like a tall order. It is. Engineers need access to the latest drawings and specs. Procurement teams need the latest drawings, specs, and equipment lists. Cost control teams need the latest progress and status from engineering, procurement, and completions. PO inspectors need access to check sheets and technical data. Document controllers need access to engineering and supplier files. Project managers need access to all of the aforementioned data in the form of reports.

Providing access to each of these teams is difficult and exponentially more difficult if you are using bad technology to do it. In fact, the wrong technology can doom this effort completely, so be sure to choose technology that is:

  • Cloud-based systems offer out-of-the-box global access. Security, reliability and cost savings have come a long way in the last 20 years, so cloud based is probably more economical and secure than something your IT department can cook up.
  • Multi-discipline is a must. There are many applications (like ProjecTools) that incorporate document management, cost, procurement, logistics, and completion into a single system. These multi-discipline systems are generally more affordable and more integrated than others.
  • Proven industry expertise. Don’t ask a software company that only has experience with residential construction to manage an oil & gas or mining project.
  • Role-based permissions. Most technology partners will have role-based permissions that allow remote teams to see what they need and only what they need.
  • Multi-project licensing. Don’t fall for the old-school money grabbing licensing scheme. Each project is important and you shouldn’t be penalized for having more or bigger projects.

ProjecTools Product Information

  • 817

ProjecTools Client Spotlight

September 24th, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools Client Spotlight "I don't see how companies can manage projects like [...]

  • 568

Standard Project Management Features

September 2nd, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

  • 545

Security and Reliability

September 1st, 2015|0 Comments

Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

  • 492

Construction Project Management Services

August 31st, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

ProjecTools Resources

  • 1872

Spreadsheets and Email as Project Management Tools

March 9th, 2017|0 Comments

Projects have too many moving parts and too many players to be trusting critical data to spreadsheets and emails. You need a spreadsheet reduction strategy.

  • 1811

Project Management Assessment

November 15th, 2016|0 Comments

Project Management Assessment Assess your project management practices against the best project execution teams in the Capital Construction, [...]

  • 1716
  • Review & Approvals

Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1357

Aligning Document Control and Cost Control

February 15th, 2016|0 Comments

Align Document Control with Cost Control and create seamless progress and earned value reports to stay on budget and improve cash flows.

ProjecTools Videos, Demos, and Webinars

  • 1519
  • Review and Approvals

Optimizing Review and Approval Processes for Engineering

October 14th, 2021|0 Comments

Let’s talk about review and approvals, and closed-loop systems, and how to execute the review and approval processes for engineering and commercial...

  • 1567
  • Document Management

The Keys to Successful Document Management

November 23rd, 2020|0 Comments

Let's talk specifically about document management software, and the key factors for clean and organized documentation, accessibility, finding a system...

  • 1716
  • Review & Approvals

Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1631

Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction

August 24th, 2016|0 Comments

Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.

Supplier Document Management for Construction Projects

Supplier document management is a vitally important component of design and build projects. Often times projects don’t plan for supplier document management, so there is a scramble to process the documents, execute reviews, and provide feedback. The most common result of this scramble is throwing manpower and spreadsheets at the problem.
Missing the mark in managing supplier documents leads to delays, shutdowns in operation, and upset investors and asset owners. The best way to hit the mark is planning for supplier document management alongside document management planning (preferably before the design phase).

Supplier Document Management for Construction Projects

Supplier document management is a vitally important component of design and build projects. Often times projects don’t plan for supplier document management, so there is a scramble to process the documents, execute reviews, and provide feedback. The most common result of this scramble is throwing manpower and spreadsheets at the problem.

Missing the mark in managing supplier documents leads to delays, shutdowns in operation, and upset investors and asset owners. The best way to hit the mark is planning for supplier document management alongside document management planning (preferably before the design phase). This planning should eliminate the typical confusion, allowing the relevant stakeholders (engineering, suppliers/vendors, buyers, clients, etc.) to be on the same page about where the documents will live, how they are processed, who processes them, and how the review/approval/revision workflows will work.

The most common supplier document management problem is poor planning

In the engineering, procurement, construction industry, there are a few typical problems that seem to plague supplier data management and vendor document management. The first is using a bad system. Bad systems come in all shapes, sizes, brands, and price points. While the  absolute worst system is no system, paper-based systems that rely on file cabinets, pen and paper, and couriers produce similar results. Not far ahead are systems that rely on emails and spreadsheets. The best systems are software applications that have vendor document management functionality built right into your procurement software or document management software. These systems should centralize vendor documents, allow vendor submittals to the correct document (independent of a document controller), and have workflows for executing reviews/approvals and revise/resubmit situations.

The second problem is that suppliers give procurement teams the runaround. They do it because they can and because it seems in their best interest at the time. If you have a bad system that doesn’t offer visibility and accountability, suppliers can hide their incompetence and deviousness by blaming you and your systems.

The third problem is confusion. If supplier documents are scattered throughout your company’s file cabinets (virtual or physical), you are going to have a tough time keeping track of simple things like revisions and document numbers. It also makes it more likely that the stakeholders in this process (suppliers, engineers, document controllers, procurement, and clients) are confused and frustrated with the process.

Properly integrating teams means each team has access to the right documents and it also holds their feet to the fire by making them accountable. Whether an individual needs to submit a document, update a file, initiate a workflow, review a document, or send a transmittal to the client – all of it needs to be accountable. If there is a due date, missed due dates need to be reportable and activity needs to be logged, time stamped, and reportable.

The fourth problem is integration. When the different stakeholders don’t know the location or revision of a supplier document, they can’t effectively participate in the process. The remedy here is to integrate the teams. You can integrate through software or organizational process.

For more information about how ProjecTools can help you avoid the supplier data management mess, submit the form below.

ProjecTools Product Information

  • 817

ProjecTools Client Spotlight

September 24th, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools Client Spotlight "I don't see how companies can manage projects like [...]

  • 568

Standard Project Management Features

September 2nd, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

  • 545

Security and Reliability

September 1st, 2015|0 Comments

Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

  • 492

Construction Project Management Services

August 31st, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

ProjecTools Resources

  • 1872

Spreadsheets and Email as Project Management Tools

March 9th, 2017|0 Comments

Projects have too many moving parts and too many players to be trusting critical data to spreadsheets and emails. You need a spreadsheet reduction strategy.

  • 1811

Project Management Assessment

November 15th, 2016|0 Comments

Project Management Assessment Assess your project management practices against the best project execution teams in the Capital Construction, [...]

  • 1716
  • Review & Approvals

Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1357

Aligning Document Control and Cost Control

February 15th, 2016|0 Comments

Align Document Control with Cost Control and create seamless progress and earned value reports to stay on budget and improve cash flows.

ProjecTools Videos, Demos, and Webinars

  • 1519
  • Review and Approvals

Optimizing Review and Approval Processes for Engineering

October 14th, 2021|0 Comments

Let’s talk about review and approvals, and closed-loop systems, and how to execute the review and approval processes for engineering and commercial...

  • 1567
  • Document Management

The Keys to Successful Document Management

November 23rd, 2020|0 Comments

Let's talk specifically about document management software, and the key factors for clean and organized documentation, accessibility, finding a system...

  • 1716
  • Review & Approvals

Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1631

Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction

August 24th, 2016|0 Comments

Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.

Are you software buyers making the 10 critical demands they should be

10 Critical Demands Software Buyers Should Make

Software buyers need to make the 10 critical demands that ensure highly successful software purchases.

10 Fatal Mistakes of AEC/PPM Buyer

Shopping the AEC/PPM Software market is usually driven by legitimate, pressing problems that need to be solved. Schedule slippage, cost growth, and preventable stoppages in production may tempt you to settle for applications that look good but just don’t deliver.

Be the hero, not the goat, by avoiding these ten common mistakes buyers in the AEC/PPM Market make.

Focusing on price rather than value. When low price is the primary factor in choosing an application, the old adage “You get what you pay for” usually rings true –It’s easy to approach software with a low price mentality. Don’t do it! Step back and make sure the application will solve your problems and add value to your company before signing a contract.  After all, it’s easier to deal with price once rather than suffer with poor quality forever.

Insufficient due diligence. Buying software that will change the way you do business is a big deal. Improperly vetting customer support, reputation, financial viability, innovative ability, and integrity of your software partner will lead to a painful (possibly fatal) software purchase.

Hidden costs. You couldn’t see the hidden costs because they were… hidden. We get it.
These hidden costs can be avoided by proper due diligence. Take extra care to read the service agreement. Pick up the phone and call the references provided by the sales team. Heck, even call other users that aren’t on the reference sheet.

No roadmap or growth plan. If an application works like you need it to work, you will be solving real problems and creating real value for your company. Chances are, you are going to want to roll it out to more divisions or company-wide. To avoid unexpected jumps in price, make sure to get pricing for plausible growth scenarios from years two through five.

Focusing on technology and features rather than solving business problems. Don’t let this be you. Always have your problems and objectives in mind. Don’t get distracted by bells, whistles, and unproven technology. This seems like a simple concept, but we hear of this mistake time and time again.

Settling for software that requires major customizations. A blank slate can sound nice, but not in the context of business-critical software. Extensive customization is expensive, time consuming, and slow to be delivered. If an application has your key functionality already – go with it. The customization route spells money, anguish, and uncertainty.

Lacking industry Experience. There is great risk in being the guinea pig for any software vendor trying to branch into a new vertical where they have no expertise or experience.  Your business is too important for that. Find a software application that is proven in your industry.

Overlooking Integrations with other business-critical applications. If a software company can’t or won’t deliver a key product integration, look elsewhere. This is not 1998 – your applications need to work together.

Underestimating Training & Implementation Needs. Can your team leverage your new tools, without adequate training?  Probably not. Is the software partner willing and able to thoughtfully map out and deliver meaningful training and implementation that will make your power users and your casual users successful? Do they offer a train-the-trainer approach, so your on-staff experts can bring your other team members up to speed?

Culture doesn’t change with the new application. Not everyone on the team will be in love with a new application, or welcome any change. It’s important to recognize this. Nothing can rally a team around a new application like strong leadership and executive buy-in. Make sure your executive team will help lead the charge.

ProjecTools Product Information

  • 817

ProjecTools Client Spotlight

September 24th, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools Client Spotlight "I don't see how companies can manage projects like [...]

  • 568

Standard Project Management Features

September 2nd, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

  • 545

Security and Reliability

September 1st, 2015|0 Comments

Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

  • 492

Construction Project Management Services

August 31st, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

ProjecTools Resources

  • 1872

Spreadsheets and Email as Project Management Tools

March 9th, 2017|0 Comments

Projects have too many moving parts and too many players to be trusting critical data to spreadsheets and emails. You need a spreadsheet reduction strategy.

  • 1811

Project Management Assessment

November 15th, 2016|0 Comments

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How Data Silos and Spreadsheets Hurt Energy Projects

…will give you a competitive advantage particularly on large complex projects and that managing those large projects with spreadsheets, email…

How Data Silos and Spreadsheets Hurt Energy Projects

How Data Silos and Spreadsheets Hurt Energy Projects is presented by ProjecTools and MSS project analytics.

Webinar transcript of Nate and Eric from ProjecTools and Mary Williams of MSS Project Analytics.


Eric:

My name is Eric and I’m joined today by Nate, ProjecTools’ channel manager. I’m very pleased to be joined by Mary Williams, the president of MSS project analytics. She is an expert at primavera integration and project management. We will be discussing how Data Silos and Spreadsheets hurt energy projects, but just to get started here today, I’m going to tell you just a little bit about ProjecTools real quick and then I will talk a little bit about MSS Project Analytics, and get into the content. ProjecTools was founded in 1994. It started out as a project management consulting company for oil and gas projects. They built an application to help manage these projects. Over time the application got bigger and deeper and became a pendulum product, which they launched as a staff application in 2000. The application is divine for oil and gas and capital construction projects. ProjecTools has headquarters outside of Houston, Texas.

Don’t let these small town roots fool you. ProjecTools has thousands of users from over 50 countries. Now let’s talk a little bit about project analytics. Mary, would you like to tell us a little bit about that.

Mary:

Yes, thank you. Good morning, folks and thank you for joining us this morning. My name is Mary Williams and I’m the president of MSS Projects Analytics. Our company is a privately owned business and we were founded in 1985. Our primary focus since our inception has been to provide project control solutions and education to clients in the AEC, oil and gas, and air, space, and defense industries. We actually specialize in planning and scheduling for oil and gas projects. MSS is headquartered in Houston, Texas with satellite offices in Tampa, Los Angeles, and Seattle. We are a ProjecTools partner. We’re an Oracle Primavera partner. We’re also a certified education provider for Oracle University.

Eric:

Perfect. Thank you, Mary. We are very proud to have MSS project analytics as a partner. Real quick, before we get to the meat and potato, Nate will you tell us a little bit about why we’re here.

Nathan:

Sure, thanks Eric. Morning folks, thanks for joining us. It doesn’t make a lot of sense in the beginning to try and address problems in capital instruction without and oil and gas products without establishing that there are problems in capital instruction and oil and gas products. You can see here, this data is not provided by us. We did not come up with this data. This is not a wild guess. This is the a couple years of survey and research compiled by IPA which is a third party project analytics company. You can see here the issues that they found. These are median and mean, meaning that this is compilation data and this is what it averaged out to. This is not a one-off situation. This is across the board. You’ll see 15% cost deviation, 18% scheduled deviation, totaling to 55-75 million dollars in work scope and delay. The issues can be significant. This isn’t necessarily a statement about the oil and gas industry as a whole, it’s more a statement or a nod to the complexity of these projects.

Eric:

All right, thanks Nate. Jumping right in, the first part is talking about spreadsheets, and we’ll get to silos in a second. Nate, you’re very knowledgeable about spreadsheets. You’ve done all the research. Will you take us through the spreadsheet portion?

Nathan:

Sure, sure. The thing about spreadsheets is, first of all, they’re ubiquitous, everyone uses them. We acknowledge that. Even here inside of ProjecTools for some things. Where we believe that the line should be drawn is that you can’t use spreadsheets to manage very large and complex things. Where lots of money, lots of people depend on. Excel is a very powerful tool. We all agree and we all acknowledge that. Here at ProjecTools we use Excel. Here at ProjecTools we’ve made mistakes with Excel. Equally importantly all of our clients use Excel or did use Excel before switching to ProjecTools. It’s almost across the board that we talk to our clients and say hey what were you using before ProjecTools. It will be some combination of disparate systems that update, always including Excel. There are some issues with Excel. If you do a simple Google search with this, the Google machine will tell you that there are standards that there are many, many cases and many news reports about Excel costing companies millions and even billions of dollars.

The problems with spreadsheets as a whole can be boiled down to the fact they’re a stand alone system. They don’t encourage collaboration. 88% of spreadsheets actually contain errors. 1% of formula cells contain errors. The last two here are kind of interesting. Don’t mess with my spreadsheet is something that we hear internally and we’re sure that everyone else here has heard it too, and them as well. What that means is someone spent an inordinate amount of time creating a very complex spreadsheet that is no doubt very powerful. They need to share that data and get input from other project teams and things like that. They send that, maybe they send that Excel spreadsheet in an email and someone opens it up. In that email, there’s also hey don’t change anything in here, because even one transcription error or small change in the spreadsheets can effectively wipe out the whole thing. The last one is, I think the buzz word around is corporate data loss, or memory loss. Effectively what it is is, let’s use Bob for an example here. Bob creates this spreadsheet. It’s complex. It’s very powerful.

It manages a lot of things and many other project teams or kind of other project data is tied into that particular spreadsheet. Bob goes on vacation to the Bahamas. He’s unreachable for a couple of weeks and we all need access to the data inside the spreadsheet, but none of us really knows where to find that data and how to get a hold of it. Or, even worse, Bob takes another job somewhere, so then he’s completely off the grid. We’re unable to contact him and with him goes that knowledge that we need to operate that spreadsheet. Getting into a couple of actual examples, we’re going to use some fairly high profile examples. There are many, many others out there. In 2013, Forbes had an article titled Microsoft Excel Might Be The Most Dangerous Software on the Planet. That’s kind of a bold claim, but they do a pretty good job backing it up. In this particular case, the case study that they used is Excel was being used to move billions of dollars in JP Morgan. There was a very simple transcription error. That error cost them and JP Morgan several billions of dollars.

Obviously, all their stakeholders suffered as well. People working in the company suffered. It actually impacted the financial market, the entire financial market. Equally interesting is this quote that we pulled out of there, a collection integrated automated software would have avoided it. The implication there is that Excel was actually at fault. Human error is a given. It’s going to happen and so you should do everything in your power to avoid that. Another example is a company called Red Envelope. They’re an ecommerce platform and when they were hoarding financial metrics, they were using Excel to do so. There was one wrong number in one cell and that error made the stock lose a quarter of its value in a single day. There was a human cost to this. The CFO resigned immediately. All of this once again could have been avoided using integrated automated software rather than spreadsheets. If we haven’t convinced you that spreadsheets are dangerous, that’s fine. We encourage you to do your own research on that. Even in 1999 which seems like a very long time ago, 15 years ago, there was an entire conference founded upon the risks of Excel.

In that there’s a mint amount of research on that, on that particular website. I encourage you to go look around. One of the things that really came across was that 50% of the executives that they surveyed have actually dismissed that due to spreadsheet errors. There’s a significant human cost associated with the spreadsheet errors which is something that doesn’t get reported all the time. They also break down what their buckets are in terms of what the causes of spreadsheets are. Human error obviously being a big one. Fraud, over competence, interpretation, and archiving. The fraud one isn’t one that we really talk about that much or we hadn’t really thought of. Over competence kind of falls in that same category.

Eric:

Thanks, Nate. That was a pretty categorical explanation of why you shouldn’t be using spreadsheets to manage your energy projects. Because it’s just too complex and too sensitive. The next part of the presentation is we’re going to talk about data silos. First thing is what is a data silo. Data silo is a stockpile of information held by a department team or person. It’s information that can’t be accessed by other teams or departments, so it’s in silo. I saw some information that doesn’t interact with complimenting information from other teams. A good example of this is the project document don’t interact with the procurement department and that link between the data doesn’t seem like it involves much emails, maybe even a paper file, which isn’t the way to go. Moving on a little bit, why are data silos harmful? Why are we talking about them? If information’s been siloed, teams don’t have access to other team’s information. They probably shouldn’t have access to all the other team’s information, but some information can lead to better decisions. If you’re not making informed decisions based on the whole data set for the project, you’re probably making misinformed decisions.

There’s also a contextual issue. When data is in silos and then it gets shared around, the teams that didn’t build that information, they don’t know how it’s built so when they finally get their hands on it they might interpret that data differently or not know what it means and that can lead to issues as well. Another issue is redundant effort. If Nate and his team are working on a project that affects my area and I’m expected to produce the results for this project or the purple part of it and I don’t have access to what he’s doing, I might be doing the same thing. That’s redundant effort. It’s a waste of time, a waste of money and time that would be better spent working together. Then you also get into reformatting when it comes to sharing information that’s in silos. If Nate sends something to me and I need to use some of his data, it’s probably not going to be in a useful format for me. I have to go and reformat that and that takes time and effort kind of sucks that we’re doing that.

Then when information from silos you also encounter visibility and accountability issues. By the nature of having integrated information, a lot of that accountability, visibility, takes care of itself because everybody can see, at least aspects of other team’s and other department’s data. What is the opposite of a data silo because we’ve established that that’s not bad. The answer is integrated. Integrated data and integrated team. The definition of integrated is having different parts working together as a unit. When these information silos are connected, they’re no longer silos, they’re a unit. Integrated also means that allowing all types of people to participate or be included. Once you have an integrated team and integrated data, the data doesn’t have to flow completely freely. I don’t need access to everything Nate’s doing. I just might need to see a little piece of it that pertains to me. Your integration should be thoughtful, not wide open. Now that we’ve covered that a little bit, Mary, who clearly rose as an expert on integration, will you tell us the reasons to integrate.

Mary:

Yes, thanks Eric. As we noticed in the previous slides, Nate and Eric did a great job outlining the risks involved with managing project data in multiple non-integrated silos. When we as a project team don’t have access to one centralized integrated set of project data to be used for decision making we don’t have any basis for holding anyone accountable for any project deviations. Since we have no established reliable centralized source of project data, we are also unable to really determine the health of our project. The results will be cost overruns, schedule delays, and ultimately liquidated damages. Now, the data on the slide that we’re doing at this moment is provided by IPA. It illustrates that projects managed in an integrated environment experience significantly less deviation in cost growth and schedule slippage than projects managed in a non-integrated environment. This data suggests that projects managed with integrated data experience less than 10% deviation in cross growth and schedule slippage versus non-integrated projects. In other words, project teams using integrated data are able to make better, more informed decisions and are better able to predict the ultimate outcome of their projects.

One of the most strategic areas of integration involve integrating the procurement and scheduling process. Now, we all know that procurement, or contracts, and those requirements affect the cost, schedule, and resource plans and that the results of the procurement process actually become inputs into the planning, scheduling, estimating, and budgeting processes. One error in the procurement process has a domino effect on all of those other phases of the project plan. When you couple that with a lack of communication existing because we’re operating in separate silos, it makes the situation even worse. When we have access to an integrated environment, we actually can benefit by having real time, accurate and reliable data. That data enables everyone to make decisions because it’s the same centralized set of data. Our data integrity is improved because we are removing all of the human intervention required to keep these systems standing up together. We’re able to lower our project costs and improve our project efficiency. I’m not going to cite two examples that we’ve experienced at MSS with several of our clients. The first is going to be a discussion where we integrated an estimating tool with a primavera p6 schedule.

Our client was required to produce a cost voted schedule and submit that schedule to the stakeholder. You all have probably had to do that at some point or another. Not only did they have to load that schedule and submit it to the stakeholder, but that schedule was then going to be used as a basis for billing that stakeholder and ultimately being paid. Our client needed to replace our existing manual method of transferring data form their estimating tool to the P6 schedule. We helped them to integrate their estimating tool with primavera. As a result, they significantly reduced the time to load the schedule with all of that cost information. They improved the accuracy of the data and the reporting to the stakeholder and were therefore able to bill and get paid more expeditiously. It also enabled them to respond to any changes in the scope of the project much more quickly. The second example that I’d like to cite is for an oil and gas client that we helped integrate their procurement and scheduling process. The problem that this client encountered is that their contract award and delivery dates were not accurately updated on the schedule.

Once again, due to the fact that they were being manually transferred. This caused delays to important schedule milestones, to deliverables, and to the overall project schedule. More importantly, the stakeholder lost confidence in the schedule. We assisted them with integrating that procurement process with the schedule. Afterwards the schedule obviously more accurately reflected those procurement dates, allowing the client to deliver the project on time and avoid liquidated damages. Additionally, they were able to establish much better communication with the stakeholder of the project. An added benefit is it even improved the process of integrating those two systems. Improved communication within their own organization.

Eric:

Thank you, Mary. Now we’re going to talk about the solutions here. Nate, will you take us through that?

Nathan:

Sure. Thanks Eric. Your solution to many of these problems can be boiled down to integration. As we saw in the data sets from IPA, having an integrated projects, having integrated teams is crucial. In fact, when we talk to many of our clients we ask them things like hey what’s the definition of project success. Typically in the cost and scheduling department it means less than 10% cost growth and less than 10% schedule slips. According to the data we saw bacK there in IPA, simply put, the difference between successful and unsuccessful projects is integrating those teams and those departments. The solution is use software that encourages that. Use software that encourages people to work together, different departments to work together, and centralizes that data so it’s always up to date. Use software that also integrates the project stakeholders, not just your project teams, your third parties, your contractors, and your suppliers. You don’t want them to have access to all of the data inside your system. You want them to have access to the right data based upon rule based access.

What we mean by that is that a supplier should only see what a supplier should see within the system. You want to use the software that encourages that. Moving your systems online to empower departments with real time data without sacrificing economy. What we mean there is that we want to have all of the latest data in one place where people can access it through their web browser having an on premise system doesn’t make sense anymore when you have offices in multiple places, when you have contracts and suppliers all over the world. You also quit using email spreadsheets, share folders, file structures, and stand alone systems to manage your projects. The truth is – those can work for smaller projects, but they dramatically inhibit your ability to react to change, your ability to make good decisions. It has been proven to hurt both cost and scheduling. A lot of people say well how does ProjecTools do this. The answer is – that we have broken our product into four separate modules based upon kind of a combination of job rule and a project team mentality. It all integrates to the same central data set.

ProjecTools is a centralized database with each one of these four modules built into it operating on the same data. It’s entirely integrated, and integrated in a way that most software systems can’t be in that ProjecTools was actually built together and built to work together. They can be deployed individually or as a single unit. That integration is inherent within the ProjecTools application. We talked a little bit about online access. Let’s talk about what that really means. You want to have that centralized data set and you want to have it somewhere where people can access it in real time from anywhere in the world at any time. If you have somebody working on one area of the project from Louisiana, one area of the project in Texas, and another area of the project in Singapore, which is actually what some of our clients do, the ability to have that data just a couple of mouse clicks away is incredibly important. It also allows your third parties, your contractors, suppliers, and owners to have a very simple point of access to the right project data.

Once again, you don’t share everything across the board, but you do give them rule based access to that data.

Eric:

Thanks, Nate. Mary, having covered all of that, what does this all mean to us?

Mary:

Okay, thanks Eric. Well let’s recap what we’ve learned this morning. First of all, we’ve learned that integrated teams in conjunction with integrated software will give you a competitive advantage particularly on large complex projects and that managing those large projects with spreadsheets, emails, stand alone systems, is a distinct disadvantage. The right software, such as ProjecTools, combined with online accessibility facilitates integration of the software as well as our project teams. The next question is well okay, how do we get there? How do we actually get to the point where we are integrated? Obviously the first step is that we need to identify what the critical integration points are through our project life cycle. We need to take into consideration the schedule, document control, cost control, procurement, commissioning. The next step is to identify which data sets that we want to integrate. The example on the slide is that we want to integrate accounting data with cost control data. Other examples are integrate the procurement process with the schedule or integrate the estimate with the schedule. Always take into consideration what future needs you might need to take into account.

What types of projects are you planning to seek in the future? Once you’ve established what you want to do, the next step is to get it done. Develop your implementation plan. The first step in the process is to clearly identify and explain your business need and objectives. Next, figure out which resources you need to get it done. You’ll have some internal resources and you’ll probably want to use some external resources such as ProjecTools and MSS as we do that every day. Try it on for size. Request a free trial of ProjecTools. We’ll help you get it set up. It’s important to put the proper planning into this implementation plan so that you’re doing it right the first time. In conclusion then, we all know software is powerful, but integrated software is more powerful. Don’t overlook the fact that through integrating your software systems you also have the opportunity to integrate your various project teams and improve the communication process. Seek support from outside resources. Use your own IT department. Decision makers in your organization, third party experts, and don’t forget that end users are a very valuable resource as well.

Develop your implementation plan, execute it, and evaluate it. Remember that it’s a competitive advantage. Hopefully you’ve been able to see that throughout the course of the morning in our discussion. It’s a competitive advantage to move toward integrated systems and integrated teams.

Nathan:

We’re going to take a minute here and just wrap up and do one final overview on what ProjecTools does. This is a common question at the end of our webinars here. ProjecTools is a single, centralized, online, cloud based, backed up, secure database that has four separate modules that can be deployed independently or together to create either one aspect of the project team’s database or to serve as an entirely integrated project management sweep. We integrate with a variety of third party applications. Primavera, for scheduling, is a very common one. Other common ones include accounting and many of our clients come to us with that question. It’s typically Microsoft Dynamics SL. There are a variety of other things that we can integrate to. We’ve had document integrations with other things like Documentum and things like that. We go through the entire concept of the ProjecTools application is to have a single set of accurate data that can be accessed in real time and to have that integrated, to move and flow smoothly between project departments. If you want to see more, the thing to do, we encourage you to go to MSSProjectsAnalytics.com.

They have an excellent website. You can click on the products tab. Click on ProjecTools and there’s a form below it to get you set up with a free trial. They can answer questions. They will get a little bit more data from you and we can spin up an essence of ProjecTools and deliver that to you so you can try it before you buy it.

Eric:

Cool, thank you Nate. A free trial doesn’t sound like what you’re after, I encourage you to contact MSS Project Analytics directly. AJ Williams is the guy to contact there. His number here is on the side, along with his email address. Feel free to take a screenshot if that interests you. The next thing we have is questions, but before we get into this, I want to thank Mary for joining us today. It was a pleasure having you on the call and we appreciate your insight.

Mary:

Thank you very much, it was a pleasure to work with you.

Eric:

Thank you. First question, how do you integrate primavera with ProjecTools. Mary, since you’re the expert here, will you answer that one for us?

Mary:

Sure. I’d be happy to. All integrations take a different flavor. It’s difficult to describe one particular integration. What I would like to say is because integrations are different, our typical process is to have a thorough needs analysis with each client where we determine what their specific integration requirement is. Then we proceed to develop that. If anyone has any questions about that, please feel free to reach out to us and we can discuss it further.

Eric:

Thank you. The next question is, is ProjecTools integrated with accounting. I’ll take that one. Short answer is yes. Many clients of ProjecTools have integrated their accounting systems with ProjecTools cloud control. How that generally works to the actual financial data gets pushed to ProjecTools. The relevant data, commitments and so forth gets pushed to the accounting system. That’s cool because it eliminates a lot of the interface between cop controllers and accounting. Cop controllers help control the project on schedule and accounting do whatever accounting does. The next question is what does an implementation look like? Mary, do you mind answering this one for us.

Mary:

Once again, implementation times can vary based on the needs of the client and the software that they’re trying to deploy. I’ll give a range. First of all, some of the clients that we work with already have resources on their staff that have used ProjecTools in previous positions. In that kind of a scenario, you could literally deploy ProjecTools in a day. Other more complex systems where the client is purchasing document control, cost procurement, and commissioning will require a little bit longer implementation time. Let’s just say a week or two. The important thing to remember is that the Project Tool staff along with our staff at MSS will help you go through the implementation, help you set up numbering, structures, work flows, permissions, and then actually help you load your data so that you’re off and running as quickly as possible.

Eric:

Perfect, thank you. Last one I have here is, kind of around cough. Nate, we talked about the pricing ProjecTools.

Nathan:

Sure. One of the areas that ProjecTools differs pretty significantly from many other similar applications is that ProjecTools is a stacked application which stands for software of service. That is a subscription fee for access to the system. We managed all of the technicalities on our side. We keep the severs up. We keep all your data secure. We do everything along that. We employ the staff that are experts in those areas so that you don’t have to do that. We procure all the hard work. What this means is, it’s very, very cost effective to get into. In fact, I was at my client’s to prepare the two different cost scenarios for ProjecTools, one being and on premise application and another being SAS application. The difference for the first year was about six times the cost the ProjecTools staff application. Then for the maintenance of the hardware alone, it was about 2 or 3 times the cost of ProjecTools. Fact application. Every year. The answer is, it’s very very horrible for a company to get into ProjecTools at that level. If you want to get more information, we encourage you to go to ProjecTools.com/get-started.

Eric:

Thanks. Just to add a little bit, more than cows. I mean with the SAS act you can get more benefits when they fax us. Especially when you have global things.

Nathan:

It helps to Mary’s point there when we can deploy a couple days as opposed to what the alternative is for an on premises application, where you end up having to wait a couple of weeks to buy the hardware. The hardware comes in. You have to hire some specialists to set up the hardware. Then you have to actually deploy all the software systems to on the hardware in order to support our software. It dramatically decreases the implementation of costs as well.

Eric:

I mean, I’m sure we’ve all heard the horror stories of implementing things on premis systems, implementation and installation of the last big month or even years.

Nathan:

Years. Certainly years. That just doesn’t happen. Plain old, that’s not happening at a Project Tool level. All right.

Eric:

It looks like that is the end of our questions and I appreciate all of you guys joining us today. Thank you very much. We will have another webinar next month. I don’t know exactly what the topic’s going to be, but I will send an email and let you know. Thank you guys for carving out some time out of your Wednesday and joining us.

 

ProjecTools Product Information

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ProjecTools Client Spotlight

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Standard Project Management Features

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ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

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Security and Reliability

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Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

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ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

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Spreadsheets and Email as Project Management Tools

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Project Management Assessment

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Project Management Assessment Assess your project management practices against the best project execution teams in the Capital Construction, [...]

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Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

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Align Document Control with Cost Control and create seamless progress and earned value reports to stay on budget and improve cash flows.

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Optimizing Review and Approval Processes for Engineering

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Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

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Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction

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Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.

Managing Quality Surveillance for Accountability and Efficiency

So how do you approach adding order, precision, and efficiency to quality surveillance? One thing to look for is a system that…

Managing Quality Surveillance for Accountability and Efficiency

Let’s talk about Quality Surveillance, PO inspection and all that great stuff because even after procurement delivers the greatest PO on earth, from technical and commercial standpoints, the last thing you need is the supplier to fail to deliver.

First let’s get into the problems that the oil & gas, EPC, and capital construction industries are facing when it comes to quality surveillance and PO inspection. Our clients and prospective clients, when we talk to them they are saying to us that it’s hard to plan and budget and coordinate for these PO inspections. Your inspectors are on-site at client locations, they’re doing a whole lot of work on the other side of the world, and it’s difficult to manage. Our clients and prospective clients are also telling us that PO inspectors don’t have on-demand access to the right documents and forms, so inspectors are sitting idle at their location waiting for a document controller to wake up or for a thumb drive to arrive via courier.

What’s happening here is they’re using thumb drive and emails to transmit these documents and equip these PO inspectors with documents and in some cases the inspectors are just asking suppliers for the documents that they need, which isn’t the greatest option because you never know if the supplier has the correct documents or the latest revisions.

We’re also hearing that most Quality Surveillance management tools are incomplete and don’t provide closed loops and paper trails.

Final thing that we’re hearing is that email spreadsheet management isn’t effective and these ad hoc systems present a huge margin for error.

So how do you approach adding order, precision, and efficiency for managing quality surveillance? One thing to look for is a system that
1.  gets your Quality Surveillance team inspectors working in the same system
2.  uses an optimized workflow for your industry to manage quality surveillance and PO inspection
3.  provides a single place for inspectors to find documents and log results
4.  provides accountability and visibility for inspectors and suppliers.
I’m going to go through these four points here and describe how ProjecTools accomplishes all of them. Number 1: Quality Surveillance teams and inspectors work in one system. ProjecTools application is Cloud-based, so users have on demand access to documents and inspection reports. There’s quick and robust searching so team members can quickly access the progress results. There are role based permissions as well, so you can set permissions to allow access to technical and commercial documents, supplier documents, without sacrificing security. There’s levels of security built in based on the user’s role.

Finally, there’s inspector integration. ProjecTools has developed a special web portal to incorporate onsite inspectors. This is a dumbed down version of the ProjecTools homepage that just provides, strips it down and provides only what the inspectors need to get the job done, so there’s not a whole lot of training required and it reduces the margin for error.

The second thing I mentioned earlier was an optimized workflow for your industry. With ProjecTools you can enforce the right workflow for Quality Surveillance and you can automate that workflow somewhat to minimize the effort on the coordination team and the manual oversight and progress reporting. ProjecTools also provides in-application tasks and task management, and this is a huge benefit that a lot of other Quality Surveillance management apps don’t provide. You can create and assign a complete task in the application. What this does is it ensures data is in 1 place. It’s not in an email, it’s not in a spreadsheet, it’s not in 4 different systems. It’s all in 1 place, it’s archived and it’s reportable, which is where you want it to be.

Another thing that ProjecTools does with the workflow is it personalizes all of these tasks. Tasks go out to individuals, so accountability lies with individuals rather than groups. You run into problems if you use round robin task management, where people just see things that and hope that they know that they own those things and they pick up the task and they complete it. There’s no accountability there, so we don’t do any of that. It’s all personalized tasks and coordinators are assigned per PO. We’ll talk about that a little bit later.

The last thing that I wanted to mention about workflows is that time and expense is integrated with the application, so PO inspection can log mileage, time, and expenses to specific PO inspections.

The third thing that I mentioned is there’s easy access to information. ProjecTools provides an online tool that provides inspectors from all over the globe with technical documents and commercial information without a bunch of IT hassle and expense. ProjecTools does provide the latest rev every time. This is ProjecTools after all, the latest revs are always available to inspectors can work from the latest documents.

The document distribution matrix provides another way that inspectors can access the forms and documents they need. PO inspection also have access to the unpriced PO within their little portal so they can see basically the whole PO, just won’t see dollar amounts because that’s probably not relevant to what they’re doing. They can log real time site visit reports, and once they are submitted these site visit reports are immediately available to the Quality Surveillance coordinators.

The fourth thing I mentioned was accountability and visibility. ProjecTools is user based, so tasks are directed to specific inspectors and PO coordinators rather than groups. Notification and due dates are build into the app. PO inspectors can log concerns directly from the applications so if they’re on-site and the supplier is making them wait before they get out on the floor to inspect an item, and they suspect that it’s because they’re hiding things, they can log that as a concern and it’ll be in the system and just adds a layer of visibility and accountability to the process.

There’s also reporting because ProjecTools maintains detailed records of what’s needed, and the paper trail, as with everything, ProjecTools does keep a track record of what’s done in the applications.

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Document Management Software ROI

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Applying Earned Value Management to Document Control

Let’s talk about the importance of earned value and where most applications fall short in measuring earned value for document control. We will also…

Applying Earned Value Management to Document Control

Let’s talk about the importance of earned value and where most applications fall short in measuring earned value for document control. We will also look at the types of tools that put you ahead of the pack and will help you manage earned value for your project documents.


Typical document control problems as they relate to earned value are basic. It’s hard to measure your earned value for documents that are deliverables. It’s hard to translate that into getting paid sooner.

The root of the problem here is, you’re doing all this work and you’re not getting paid for it in a timely manner. Why is that? It’s hard to measure and report on document progress.

We talk to prospects all the time and they’re telling us that documents often reside in separate systems. It is hard to aggregate all of the progress on the different documents when they’re in different systems. Additionally, these documents are often in uncontrolled environments. This is code for residing in folder structures or just floating around email inboxes or in a system that doesn’t really manage revision or revision purpose.

We’re also hearing that it’s often unclear which revision is the latest approved revision. That’s just endemic of using spreadsheets and sub-par document management applications and folder structures. We’re also hearing that email and spreadsheets aren’t effective. We see this all the time. Passing documents back and forth via email and managing it in spreadsheets, there’s really no control there. Spreadsheets as project management tools breakdown quickly and without fail. We’re also hearing that most document management systems don’t even think about the cost element. They don’t think about earned value and tying that back to your project cost.

Let’s take a look at what ProjecTools does to solve these problems. ProjecTools is the best solution for earned value and document management, because we get all of your project documents into a single controlled environment. More than that you can get all of your project documents, or all of your projects, in a single controlled environment. ProjecTools will enforce and automate all the workflows to process project documents. We’ll address that a little bit later and how that ties into the earned value.

The application natively integrates the ProjecTools cost control which is a unique element of the tool. Something that other document management systems simply don’t think to or are incapable to address. We have addressed the earned value aspect of engineering and other project documents because our business and application has deep roots in the oil and gas and EPC industries – which structure cash flows on earned progress.

The first thing I mentioned before was all the project documents are a single application. ProjecTools is cloud-based so users have on demand access to what they need. More than that contributors, so your engineers, clients, and subs can be anywhere in the world. Whether your project teams are in Korea, Aberdeen, or at home for the day – it doesn’t matter. They can still contribute to the project document register from anywhere in the world. The central repository gathers up all the documents from all the different players in the one system and uses role-based permissions to dole out responsibility without sacrificing security.

The send thing I mentioned was optimize oil and gas workflow. In ProjecTools you can enforce the workflow you’re already using. You can automate this optimized workflow that has made you guys a successful company to this point, and basically just configure the application to reflect what you are already doing. It will automate all of the management portion of it. Which minimizes your document control effort, and eliminates a lot of the human error. That last point is that ProjecTools lets you use your workflow to determine earned value for a document or set of documents.

We understand that you’re already doing the work already. You’re already running your documents through workflows, reviews and approvals, revisions, assigning revision purposes. With a couple minutes of setup in ProjecTools you can use your task metadata and your revision control metadata to link to your cost control and determine your earn value, so you guys can get paid quicker for the work that you’re already doing.

A big part of this is eliminating revision confusion. ProjecTools does this with revision workflows. You can standardize your revision purposes. You can tell the application that released revisions need to have a revision purpose in ProjecTools. What we recommend is, using that revision purpose disposition. If you feed it for review, issued for review and approval, as built, etc. That tying to your earned valued. That being your milestone for payday. When you do that you can really tighten up the loop between cost and document control.

There are some other features in here that eliminate revision confusion that don’t so much tie to earned value, so I won’t mention them here. There’s a document distribution matrix. Which basically serves up all of your documents to your engineers, and suppliers, and clients in a really easy to navigate register. It will always show in the latest revision. The workflow is such that you can even download a superseded revision. If you view one it has a nice watermark over it.

ProjecTools natively integrates with cost control. We’ve kind of danced around this a little but we’ll talk about it a little bit more. In ProjecTools, document controllers, or engineers, can define work packages. They can group document and work documents into work packages. Once they’ve done that they can link these packages to milestone chains. They can use the revision purpose to tie to your percent complete per document or work package. Then you link these work packages to your WBS. As your documents progress it will trigger progress in your document area in your cost control module. Additionally you can report on document progress your percent complete. You can always run reports in your document control module that will reflect the earned value and the progress that you see in your cost control module. You can really corroborate what your billing to your clients. You can report on your progress from a cost perspective as well as from a document progress engineering perspective, and they’ll both tie together.

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  • 1357

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The Solution to Defeating Spreadsheet Hell

Let’s talk about spreadsheet hell. The troublesome representation of information, breaking data trails, ownership, security, costly management of time and resources, and efficiency all seem to plague us as we rely more and more on our “trusty” spreadsheets. Well, spreadsheet hell has a cure.

The Solution to Defeating Spreadsheet Hell

Let’s talk about spreadsheet hell. The troublesome representation of information, breaking data trails, ownership, security, costly management of time and resources, and efficiency all seem to plague us as we rely more and more on our “trusty” spreadsheets. Well, spreadsheet hell has a cure.

Real quick before we dive into getting you all out of spreadsheet hell, I’m going to tell you just a little bit about ProjecTools. We are a software and project management services company that was founded in 1994 as an oil and gas consulting company. We thrive by solving the problems that folks face when using spreadsheets as a project management tool. We understand spreadsheet hell and built our careers on getting people like you out of the many pits of spreadsheet hell.

To get started, we’re just going to go through some common pains that we feel every day. I’m sure we’ve all gotten a spreadsheet emailed to us. We’ve opened it up and we’ve been very confused as to what the data is representing. We have all seen bizarre column labeling and said, “What is this? What is this information? Why is this spreadsheet mostly useless to me?” That is a huge pain that we can all agree on.

Some other pains that we see pretty often are formatting woes. This is particularly bad because our preference for building spreadsheets can obscure our interpretation of the data on the spreadsheets. For example, if I was to open a spreadsheet I wouldn’t like to see text oriented vertically. That might obscure how I view the data. This how the flexibility of spreadsheets destroys their ability to impart information.

The next one we’ll move into is data trails. Often times when folks use spreadsheets to manage big projects. Usually there are a lot of spreadsheets that roll up into a couple middle management spreadsheets. Then those spreadsheets roll up to a master spreadsheet for the project. Sometimes people manage their business this way or even their department. This presents a problem, and that problem is the data links between the spreadsheets. They are fragile, and they break often. When they break it is a huge pain to go back and fix that.

Most of our clients come to ProjecTools having moved out of Excel, or wanting to move their project management duties out of Excel. Usually once you get to the level of our clients, you’re trying to figure out ways to get outside of Excel and the problems that it costs.

One particular client with this exact problem walked in and said, “We’ve been managing all of our projects, all of our documents, our costs, engineering commissioning, in Excel. We have this very complex spreadsheet or series of spreadsheets. One person manages it. It breaks all the time. We’re having issues with it.” We said, “Okay.” We got to know a little bit about how they were doing business. Determined that, yes we could help them. The next day we ask them, “Hey can you bring in an example of what you’ve been doing so we can make sure that we configure the right stuff into ProjecTools for your particular organization.” We walked into the meeting room the next morning and there was a stack, textbook size, college textbook size, of Excel documents that he had printed out. They were scattered all over the desk. We said, “Okay, what is this?” He said, “Well, this is the way we manage our projects.”

He had arrows drawn all over the place and this huge stack of papers, and it was very complex and convoluted. In fact, he was the project manager and he couldn’t explain exactly how the spreadsheet worked. We didn’t have enough information to set up ProjecTools correctly from that one meeting and a lot of other people had to come in and explain their processes. This just goes to illustrate how complex these projects, especially these larger projects, can be, and how Excel isn’t probably the ideal solution for managing them.

Those big project spreadsheets can get very cumbersome and cause some problems. Another common problem that we’ve probably all faced with spreadsheets is ownership. You probably sent a spreadsheet out, and got it back only to respond with, “Oh, you deleted which row? Why would you do that?” Which leads to the common sentiment of, “Don’t mess with my spreadsheet.” Especially when they get more complex you don’t want people messing with your spreadsheet because they break or disturb the integrity of your data.

Now, to combat this a little bit, Excel has added some rudimentary protection features. You can protect worksheets with passwords. You can protect the entire spreadsheet with passwords. You can set permissions to allow users to edit ranges. You can track changes. I wouldn’t exactly call these features robust, but they’re better than nothing. The bad news is that people don’t use these settings. There are a lot of spreadsheets with business critical information floating around that have none of these protections.

Finally, the last pain in the butt we’re going to talk about is security. You may or may not have encountered a situation where you emailed a spreadsheet and included an extra worksheet tab in there. Say you email a client a bid, and sheets 1 and 2 have the bid information, but sheet 3, which you forgot to delete, has all of your internal bid calculations in there. Client looks at sheet 3 and sees what your margins are and you’ve just given them some negotiating power over you.

Another security thing that I’m sure people run into is having spreadsheet files on desktops and thumb drives. You don’t want to be explaining which Starbucks you left your thumb drive at with these business critical spreadsheets on. Another thing is, “Just email me that spreadsheet.” We shoot around emails with spreadsheets all the time, and we shouldn’t be doing that. Emails aren’t secure. They get lost or forwarded to personal email accounts, or even the wrong person. It is really an unacceptable way to do business these days.

 

We’re here for a reason other than spreadsheets being a huge pain in the butt. They are very costly.

There are, in fact, some pretty big issues. In fact, this is data which was provided by an independent 3rd party analysis group called IPA, Independent Projects Analysis. What you see here is the results of a survey that they did across big offshore projects (FPSO projects in particular) in the oil and gas industry. They found major issues to the tune of $55 to $75 million of work scope and delays, 2 year delivery slippages, 18% schedule deviations the median, and 15% cost deviations were the median.The Solution to Spreadsheet Hell

You add all that up and then you take into account that you only get up to the 74% production capability and you can quickly see that the project outlook you’ve modeled out doesn’t work in the real world where there are bottom lines, debt service, and livelihoods attached to the project.

It’s important to have the right systems in place so you can maximize the chance of getting a project correct and out on time. But a disclaimer. The truth is, I love Excel and I love spreadsheets. I’ve heard this batted around a couple of times, our prospective clients say, “What happens? How does it get to that point?” The first thing that happens when an engineer runs into a problem is that they open a spreadsheet. That’s fair. I do it all the time. We at ProjecTools use spreadsheets, but we at ProjecTools also have issues with spreadsheets. It’s very common. Excel is an incredibly powerful tool and everyone uses it. I get that.

All of our clients, in fact, report using ProjecTools to replace many Excel functions. The thing here is that Excel is good for a limited scope. When you start scale, in terms of project size, project cost, team members, etc., Excel quickly becomes more of a pain than a benefit. Excel problems are big. They’ve been around for a long time. Since Excel’s been out there people have been making mistakes in Excel. If it gets to a point that people like the folks making Dilbert are making cartoons about problems within Excel we can safely say that it’s a pretty big problem.

Spreadsheets are dangerous. We ran across an article that we found in the 2013 issue of Forbes: “Microsoft’s Excel might be the most dangerous software on the planet.” The highlights were that Excel was being use to move billions of dollars. It was the tool that they, J.P. Morgan, were using to decide yes or no on transactions and investments. There was a simple transcription error in the Excel formulas. That particular error cost several billions of dollars. We found so many disaster stories on the internet of people losing money because of spreadsheet errors. In fact, this has happened so many times in the financial industry that the SEC has actually spoken against using Excel to make decisions at certain levels in the financial industry.

Probably the most relevant thing that came out of that article wasn’t just that Excel causes problems. We know that.  It was that the selection of integrated automated software could have avoided this. That’s kind of a big deal, and that’s something that we have seen at ProjecTools. That’s the reason that our clients come to us.

 

Excel’s used across a broad category and throughout every industry.

Marketwatch produced a report, and their stock lost a quarter of its value in a single day. The problem was traced back to Excel. Excel was being use to calculate the financial metrics. There was a single wrong number in a single cell. The error made the stock lose a quarter of its value in a day. A quarter. Everything that everyone had worked so hard for over the preceding years, a quarter of that was lost in a day. The employees of the company weren’t very happy to see their net worth decrease so much, and obviously the stockholders were terrified.

Once again, this is another one of those things that could have been avoided using software to help check errors and show you where things might be wrong, highlight certain things, or not even allow you to put in incorrect information in many cases. Using a smart system that puts things in their places and checks your work rather than spreadsheets obviously is the right way to go.

It doesn’t just happen in financial companies. Again, there’s an Excel snafu here for $24 million. TransAlta is a Canadian power generator firm. In 2003 the register reported that TransAlta lost $24 million in cash due to errors in bids. This was traced back to some simple cut and paste errors in some of the cells in an Excel spreadsheet. Once again, all of this could have been avoided by using the right software to help track those errors.

If you don’t really dig into Excel and the problems that it causes, you may not be aware of this. Often times, it is too late when people notice. It turns out a lot of other people have had these problems that there’s an entire conference and risk interest group that was founded in 1999.  The most interesting thing that came out of this is that 50% of executives actually dismiss staff due specifically to spreadsheet errors. 50% of the executives that they surveyed have actually fired people based around spreadsheet errors. That’s a pretty big number. That means out of every company out there, 1 out of 2 have actually fired people based upon spreadsheet errors. That is a significant human cost.

Overconfidence in the numbers is another problem directly related to spreadsheet errors. You get some numbers and you say, “Okay, well these are right.” And you make decisions. We all have so much to do in our daily lives. They haven’t gotten any simpler. Only more complex so we tend to make quicker decisions. Excel can really hurt you doing that.

The interpretation of data is another interesting point this group brings up and this goes back to a little bit earlier in the article when we talked about labeling. Spreadsheets have no standards to have things labeled in a way that everyone can understand them. Two people can interpret data different ways and that isn’t good. Data should speak for itself.

Also, archiving. Archiving is very difficult to do correctly in Excel and relies upon people manually labeling things, and then inputting the data necessary to archive. We all like humans, but humans make a lot of errors, which is the number 1 cause of Excel spreadsheet mistakes.

 

Accuracy, Security, Visibility, Teamwork, and Collaboration

Accuracy really comes down to human error, fraud, and over confidence. Excel is really just a blank template. It’s a blank canvas. You can paint whatever picture you want on there. When you open it up it’s a nice pretty thing of white, blank, empty cells and you can mold it into whatever you want with data and formulas and formatting. If your folks that are making these spreadsheets don’t have the proper training, if the spreadsheets don’t have the proper auditing, you open yourself up to a whole lot of accuracy issues, which as we saw can impact the bottom line.

The next thing is security. The current business environment where we heavily value information security. You don’t buy an application unless they have a proven track record of security and demonstrated security measures. The question I’d ask is, does an Excel file that holds business critical data secure? The answer largely is no, they’re not secure. We talked a little bit earlier about the rudimentary security features that Excel offers. Again, they’re rudimentary and probably under utilized so spreadsheets aren’t secure. Then there’s the other aspect of sharing, which we briefly touched on. There are better sources on this than me personally, but spreadsheets aren’t shared securely. They’re often emailed, put on thumb drives, housed on your desktop or laptop, and available on shared files which have some level of security but ultimately these spreadsheets are only as secure as your building and a thumb drive.

The other thing about it is the lack of task management. If we’re circulating work outside of excel that needs to be recorded in excel, how does that happen? Doing squad checks, and approvals of design documents, how does one person know that they need to go in and look at one thing, or check off a comment, or make an addition, or pull something out of a design document? Unless there’s a manual process involved, there is none. The spreadsheet owner calls and says, “Hey, take a look at this.” That person does it.

Relying on manual processes is not something we’re particularly fond of. We don’t believe that’s an effective way to scale or be very efficient. The notification of updates, very closely related to the task management. If there’s been an update in an Excel spreadsheet how does everyone know? The only way you really know is you email everybody, or you give everyone a phone call, or you call a meeting. We’re not particularly fond of this either because this is, again, a manual process.

No understanding of changes made. This one is huge. If we have a spreadsheet circulating, and someone sees an error in it, and they go in and fix that error, very rarely if ever is it appropriately commented saying, “Hey. I saw this. I changed it for this reason. This is what it was. This is what I changed it to,” and then sent it to the next person so they could do the same thing. Then that person, if they see something different, has to make their comments about the changes. It’s very difficult to do and it’s not an ideal solution for that particular reason.

Visibility, and teamwork and collaboration are very closely linked. We went ahead and separated them out just to keep it less heavy. Spreadsheet visibility. The truth is that within spreadsheets, Excel has made some efforts to provide additional security to the spreadsheets to enable people to share and actually be more visible. The truth about that is though, is that people don’t use it that way. It’s a nice feature to have in there, and it’s a good practice to use those, but the reality of what we’ve seen is that it’s simply not used that way.

quality surveillance

Spreadsheet teamwork and collaboration. Collaboration is a buzz word of this particular time. Everyone uses it. Everyone says it. There’s a reason behind that, and the reason is we need to collaborate more. We have so much information out there, and we have so many systems, and we’re trying to protect so much it becomes very difficult. For oil & gas and construction projects in particular there are people all over the world working on the same projects. People in various departments working on the same projects that need to access this information within that project to do their job. We really do believe, buzz words aside, this is the age of collaboration.

However, not everyone needs to be involved. This is kind of a catch-22. Not everyone needs access to all information within the project. Restricting that access appropriately is a very difficult thing to do. Use and role based permissions are very difficult to do within Excel, but they’re an absolute necessity for capital instruction projects, oil and gas projects, anything where there’s a ton of people working on it and what they’re working on is of incredible value. Everyone needs to know some information to do their job. This is the flip side of that. Maybe you don’t need to know everything, but you really need to know a couple of things. To that end, if you don’t have access to the information that you need to do your job you can’t do your job. The project doesn’t progress and no one wins in that particular scenario.

Moving past that to revision control. We’ve discussed that to some degree here. Revision control, changes, updates, archiving, these things are incredibly important and it’s something that is seriously lacking within Excel. I have, on more than one occasion, sent around a spreadsheet and said, “Hey, take a look at this and tell me what you think.” Then I get it back and it’s a completely different thing than what I sent out originally. Now, these are for very small things. They’re not for anything of major consequence, but when I get it back and it’s totally different than what I’ve sent, then we have to go back and figure out who changed what when they changed it, and make sense of the changes. That, even on a small scale, is a huge waste of time for me and my collaborators.

Single owner spreadsheets are the norm. We talked about this very basically in the visibility part. The idea is that it would be better to have more people all having access to the individual sets of information that they need, so that no one really owns it, so that no one owns the entire thing. Everyone owns their part of the particular spreadsheet, or data, or data set, but that’s not the way it’s used. That’s not the way Excel is used. In that example I gave at the very beginning, that potential client that came in and said, “Hey, here’s what we’re doing, and here’s how we’re doing it,” with this huge stack of Excel spreadsheets, there was one owner for that spreadsheet. That one owner had been building that spreadsheet. That was his job, to build and maintain that spreadsheet for 2 years. What happens then, and this leads very nicely into our next point, what happens when that person goes on vacation? A single owner spreadsheet creates what we call “corporate knowledge debt.” That is, let’s call that single owner Bob.

Bob leaves on vacation. He goes sailing in the Bahamas. He has no access to a cell phone or his Internet connection. We’re all jealous of Bob. When that happens, work that relies on that spreadsheet can very quickly slow down and stop, or let’s say you do what most companies would do and you turn it over to the person who knows the next most about it. Very easy for them to break said spreadsheet, throw everything into complete chaos. Bob can’t be reached. Progress grinds to a halt. Taking it a step further, what happens if Bob leaves the company? Bob gets a great offer to go work in Indonesia on a totally different project. He’s making a lot more money so obviously Bob takes the offer. Now you’re stuck, because who has access to the spreadsheet that knows anything about it? You have to train someone up on the spreadsheet, maybe even create an entirely new spreadsheet to manage that data.

If you have a system that’s behind the scenes that’s managing all of that, there is not one, single owner of the entire project, they only own their section in the project, then someone like Bob can come in, and manage his very small section of that project. Taking it one step further, let’s say Bob gets hit by a bus. Worst case scenario. What happens then when we can’t replace Bob? Then all of that knowledge is gone and there’s no way to retrieve it. That can put things in a tailspin as well. It is a dark prospect for Bob, but a completely avoidable data/process loss for Bob’s company.

The real takeaway is, if you’re not in spreadsheet hell, relying too heavily on Excel to do complex things can very quickly put you in spreadsheet hell.

 

Conclusion

To kind of wrap this up I have a couple suggestions. If you have to use Excel, make sure that your folks that are using Excel have the proper training. There are some good online universities, education places where folks can get some free training on Excel. I suggest the Khan Academy. They have a lot of good online courses. The other option is get industry specific software that eliminates heavy reliance on spreadsheets and will keep you out of spreadsheet hell altogether. ProjecTools, for instance. I told you a little bit about the application earlier. All of the products we offer are built on top of a single database that’s shared by all of these applications. It eliminates the rolling up of spreadsheets for reporting and the mess of linking those things together.

ProjecTools project management tools are really seamless and your project management will no longer involve hunting people down, offline communication, and those ugly productivity killers that we’re all trying to avoid. That would be my suggestion – get an application that’s built for your industry and limits spreadsheets to what they do best, work data sets, not managing projects.

If you would like to get started with ProjecTools, please follow this link – https://www.projectools.com/get-started/

ProjecTools Product Information

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ProjecTools Client Spotlight

September 24th, 2015|0 Comments

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  • 568

Standard Project Management Features

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ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

  • 545

Security and Reliability

September 1st, 2015|0 Comments

Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

  • 492

Construction Project Management Services

August 31st, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

ProjecTools Resources

  • 1872

Spreadsheets and Email as Project Management Tools

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Projects have too many moving parts and too many players to be trusting critical data to spreadsheets and emails. You need a spreadsheet reduction strategy.

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Project Management Assessment Assess your project management practices against the best project execution teams in the Capital Construction, [...]

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Document Management Software ROI

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Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1357

Aligning Document Control and Cost Control

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Align Document Control with Cost Control and create seamless progress and earned value reports to stay on budget and improve cash flows.

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Optimizing Review and Approval Processes for Engineering

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Let’s talk about review and approvals, and closed-loop systems, and how to execute the review and approval processes for engineering and commercial...

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Let's talk specifically about document management software, and the key factors for clean and organized documentation, accessibility, finding a system...

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Document Management Software ROI

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Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1631

Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction

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Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.

Aligning Document Control & Engineering Teams

Aligning document control and engineering groups is terribly important for oil & gas, engineering procurement construction (EPC), and…

Aligning Document Control & Engineering Teams

Aligning document control and engineering groups is terribly important for oil & gas, engineering procurement construction (EPC), and capital construction projects.


Typically, when we talk to document controllers, engineers, directors of engineering groups, executives – they tell us that there’s a lack of alignment. After investigating we find that there is no enforced work flow. There is no automated workflow. More than that, the manual work flow’s not optimized for oil and gas EPC, so people are wondering what to do, when is it due, from whom is it due, what does complete look like, how do we report on it, simple things like that.

We also hear that contractors and partners and engineers are working outside the system, if there is a system. That circumvents the work flows designed to keep documents moving and progressing, which is even more important if your project bills based on engineering progress.

Another thing we’re hearing is that teams are working from old document revisions. These team members waste valuable time updating out of date documents because there’s not a central place to quickly find the latest REV. We’re also hearing it’s impossible to make and manage SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound). We’re not really going to talk about the obtainable or realistic, but we can talk about the specific, measurable and time bound portions of that. You can’t make SMART tasks when you don’t have a quality document control system or use dumb systems like file folders, spreadsheets and emails.

How does ProjecTools address those things? It gets your engineers and your document controllers working on the same system. It enforces and automates optimized oil and gas and engineering workflows. It’s a single place to quickly find the latest revision of documents, and it’ll enforce your standard numbering. These are all key components to aligning document control and engineering.

You want everybody speaking the same language and working in the same system and agreeing to a workflow and working within that workflow. It’s a pretty simple concept that is surprisingly difficult to put into practice if you have the wrong tools for the job. Fortunately, ProjecTools application and methods will help you.

Watch the video above to see how ProjecTools will help align document control and engineering teams.

ProjecTools Product Information

  • 817

ProjecTools Client Spotlight

September 24th, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools Client Spotlight "I don't see how companies can manage projects like [...]

  • 568

Standard Project Management Features

September 2nd, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTools subscriptions provide valuable standard features that support projects. ProjecTools standard features are available to each user to complement core application functions and business processes. Utilize the modules below to increase top-down visibility, communication, accountability

  • 545

Security and Reliability

September 1st, 2015|0 Comments

Users need a secure, reliable environment to access project information and perform work. All applications and client data resides in a private cloud network with data replication and failover to geographically diverse datacenter equipment. ProjecTools provides 99.5% Network Availability

  • 492

Construction Project Management Services

August 31st, 2015|0 Comments

ProjecTeams is proven for flexible on-site or remote project deployments. Each ProjecTeam specialist has deep work history with a career of improving project execution, information management processes, with tools that make projects efficient, timely, and profitable.

ProjecTools Resources

  • 1872

Spreadsheets and Email as Project Management Tools

March 9th, 2017|0 Comments

Projects have too many moving parts and too many players to be trusting critical data to spreadsheets and emails. You need a spreadsheet reduction strategy.

  • 1811

Project Management Assessment

November 15th, 2016|0 Comments

Project Management Assessment Assess your project management practices against the best project execution teams in the Capital Construction, [...]

  • 1716
  • Review & Approvals

Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1357

Aligning Document Control and Cost Control

February 15th, 2016|0 Comments

Align Document Control with Cost Control and create seamless progress and earned value reports to stay on budget and improve cash flows.

ProjecTools Videos, Demos, and Webinars

  • 1519
  • Review and Approvals

Optimizing Review and Approval Processes for Engineering

October 14th, 2021|0 Comments

Let’s talk about review and approvals, and closed-loop systems, and how to execute the review and approval processes for engineering and commercial...

  • 1567
  • Document Management

The Keys to Successful Document Management

November 23rd, 2020|0 Comments

Let's talk specifically about document management software, and the key factors for clean and organized documentation, accessibility, finding a system...

  • 1716
  • Review & Approvals

Document Management Software ROI

October 5th, 2016|0 Comments

Document management is massively important for engineering and construction projects. Take the approach and use the tools that add the most value.

  • 1631

Document Distribution and Access for EPC and Construction

August 24th, 2016|0 Comments

Global projects have global teams that need to be in the loop. Cloud technology takes the pain out of giving teams on demand access to project data.