How to become a Good one if u r not one already ?

active
the courage to drive anyone in the project group,even your boss/PM

Hi mary,
this problems are common in all projects. sometimes project managers are not familiar with planning and organizing people and planners don’t have enough authority to make decision and execut the plan. also your plan is based on some assumptions that depends on you strategy you want to follow during project and sometimes lack of detailed information at the biggining of project (when you have to prepare the plan. all of mentioned problems and success of a project depends on a good cooperation with other departments and discipline engineers,
to become a good one, you have to coordinate every thing and cover all weaknesses. and so you have to have general information in all disciplines and depatements are involned in your project.

Best Regs.
M. Joudi

Mary,

IMHO the only way to have a successful plan is to get all the major players to buy into it. Once you stop people calling the document "your plan" and start getting them to speak about "our plan", then you are on your way to a winner.

Regards

WG

Gents,

I think my basic question still remains unanswered.

Mary

Mary,

Your question is really quite difficult to answer as none of us are psychologists. I don’t think there is a type of person who is a ’natural’ planner, but there are, perhaps, types of behaviour which make some people better planners than others. The best I can come up with is a list of some Dos and Don’ts. It’s not exhaustive but may give you a start.

Do - be meticulous and thorough in your work;
Do - present your work in a ’user friendly’ format;
Do - pay attention to detail, sometimes you’re the only one who will;
Do - try to foresee and avoid difficulties and potential problems;
Do - be aware of new developments in your field, not just your planning expertise, but the industry in which you are applying it;
Do - stick to deadlines for the submission and approval of the plans you produce;
Do - be pleasant to people, even the ones you don’t like much, you never know when you might need their help;
Do - Develop a skin like a rhinocerous, some people tend to think that if anything goes wrong it’s the planner’s fault;


Don’t - endulge in wishful thinking, tell it like it is, not how you or the project manager would like it to be;
Don’t - guess, if you don’t know find out;
Don’t - let yourself be passed off with insufficient or questionable information;
Don’t - accept or offer excuses when something goes wrong, if it’s your responsibility, put it right. If it’s not give the person responsible the opportunity to put it right if this is possible;
Don’t - let people tell you that you don’t need to know, if you need certain information to do your job effectively;
Don’t - let people or a situation get to you, if you need to scream, cry or lose your temper, go somewhere private and do it;

I hope this helps

Chris Oggham

Chris,

Now, thats what you call an "AWESOME REPLY" !!

Thanks - I think you hit the bulls eye.

Mary

I think being a good and successful planner one should the following qualities other than master brain & experience.
Good listener
Convincing ability
Polite
Ready to accept new things
Positive thinker
etc.

IMO your attitude as a planner differs from a project to another , its proportional to what is your position on the functional organization chart, what is your scope and your access limits, your managers mentality and their understanding for planning in general,

U have to listen alot,

U have to plan the work then u convience and push the other parties to work the plan,

U have to accept and deal with people with mentalities wither u respect or not,

U have to be very staight-froward as well, u have to keep warning’m,

U have to highlight mistakes and to give solutions as well

Do not ever give the feeling that u see the plan in a different way than the others.

Let the people speak ur language (planning).

Always suggest.

and the most important thing is to know exactly how to present your work in an easy way for anyone to understand.

just be yourself .

Cheers,

Removed due to the use of bad language.

Hi Mary,

I try to resurrect this thread. The fundamental in “How to become a good planner? ” is proper attitude towards work and skillful in basic planning.

Proper attitude towards work is an evolution meaning it is not something acquired from birth but rather it is a continuing process as we grow and move on with our life. It is a brave decision to acquire proper attitude towards work in consideration of our work environment.

The world change and gone were the days in constructing the ancient seven wonder of the world with slaves. And, the new generation planner must be skillful in the use of planning software, Primavera P3 and others. A good planner must be analytical. The qualities enumerated by Chris Oggham, Raj Maurya, Planner Planner, and Bill Guthrie (Courage) and the rest are also important (same level of importance).

Another factor that makes you a good planner is also the project management team that you are in. While we are aware that planning is a function of management and planning is the most important function of project management, it is still the character of the project managers that will help you or us become good planner. Why is this so? This is because a lot of project managers run the project where planners work. It is the project managers who decide to utilize planner’s expertise, hence the greatest performance in your life. The project manager may also play politics, use his instinct in planning and relegated his planner to a small cubicle as if the planners do not exists.

The greatest factor that helps you make a good planner is the company you work in. We know most companies now got planning department. But, a lot of companies operate their planning department for showcase only and run the planning department like circus with planners as clowns.

However, there are few companies that are serious with their planning. These companies create a department called: planning and cost control department PCD). Project performance is dependent on the report of the PCD. All activities were planned, tracked, monitored and evaluated by PCD. By using database, the actual productivity of all workers (direct and indirect, laborers doing excavation, etc.) were captured and compared to baseline. All costing were referred to relevant Work Breakdown Structures and compared with budgets. All decision regarding bonus, project awards and recognitions were based on the report by PCD. These companies also used the PCD in evaluating company wide (all department) performance.

In my experience, it is only in this kind of company where you will find good planners or maybe the best.

Practice! Practice! Practice!
Experence! Experence! Experence!
Innovate! Innovate! Innovate!
Enjoy ! Enjoy ! Enjoy !

Mary,

I see your original question has been answered by a few people.

In November last year I gave a talk entitled "What makes a good Planning Engineer". This was at a conference organised by Asta who produce software called Powerproject. This was centred around how planners in the UK construction industry work.

The talk was filmed and I have a copy. If you contact me, I could arrange for a copy to be sent to you on CD.

Gary France
Planning Engineers Organisation

Beside all the that has been mentioned already The plan /programme of works which you have created is not yours, it is the construction teams. They are the guys/girls who are going to impliment it and they have to belive in it. The only way you can get them to do this is by ensuring that each member of the team feels as if they have had and imput. IE they get ownership.

Better to get experience as well as work within team as team member not individually.

Teamwork always provide you excellent exchange of ideas rather than you work individually

Hi Andrew,

Another idea is to empower the team with regards to the project plans.

Just an idea.

How????

Remains to be seen.

Regards,

charlie

To become one,

Just start planning...

then try to figure out if your not lost in your career.

If your not lost, then, you are in the right directions to become a good planner.

Cheers,

Charlie

Further to my previous posting #15, I have had a lot of requests for copies of the video of my talk on the subject of “What makes a good planning engineer”

These are available free of charge from Asta’s website.

If you would like a copy, click on the following link.

Free Video – What makes a good planning engineer



Gary France
Chairman
Planning Engineers Organisation