Engineering and Procurement Progress

Hi,

You should work backwards knowing when you require on site, material on site, procurement period, negotiation and order, aprrove drawings / materials, submit drawings /materials for approvals from start of work.

The above to be codinated with your construction team, Procurement and design.


Hope the above clarfied in general

Cheers

sunil

Dear Sunil,

Thanks for your reply but my problem is that:

how to specify a weight factor containts the the three phases to estimate the overall progress of the project, in other words how to convert the weight factor of construction, engineering and procurement into union weight factor in order to estimate the overall progress "drawing the S-Curve"

Hi Moutaz,

There is a forth phase, i.e. testing and commissioning. The first thing to do is use a constant weighting factor, this is normally manhours, the second point is that the manhour ratios in these disciplines vary to a great extent. Therefore your reporting has to be based on manhours, but you report every discipline in percentage complete. You might have 30 000 manhours for design, 10 000 for procurement and 500 000 for construction, and 8000 for testing and commissioning. How do you compare them? It is simple, use percentage complete, Always remeber compare apples with apples, and pears with pears.

Regards

Hello Philip,

Thanks a lot for your explanation, it is great but another question came up, how to estimate the manhours for procurement, as far as you know the procurement phase consists of vendors quotation, selection vendor, P.O until material delivery, each stage has been given Percentage complete of completion, you can notice there is no manhours involved here.

regards

Hi there,
For a such type of projects called EPC it’s preferable to depend on TIME wight percentage of comletion which it will be applicable across al the project phases (Enginering, Procurement and Construction).
I mean to transfere the (Original Duration) to be the spcific wight for allocated on each activity
And after you could report for the different phases based of different indicators like for example:-
-Man hour for the ENGINEERING Phase
-Man hour for the Construction Phase, and
-Time wieght(Hours or Days) for the Procurement Phase
hope this will be helpfull to you
good luck
sameh wagih

hi there,

you can divide the procurement activity into many activities starting from issuance of order to delivery to site, including RFQ, PO, and technical submittals, and allocate manhours and weight percentages accordingly.

I hope this is helpful to you.

smile

Hi There,

If your project includes Engineering and Procurement activities you may follow the Philip Jonker’s recommendations.

You could use the sample activities below during the development of your schedule,

Engineering Activities:

CALCULATIONS AND REPORT
CALCULATIONS SUBMITTAL FOR REVIEW
CLIENT REVIEW & COMMENTS
CALCULATIONS REVISION
CALC’S APPROVAL/ENDORSEMENT FROM CLIENT
DRAWINGS IFC (INCLUDING ENDORSEMENT PERIOD)
DRAWINGS REVISIONS
AS-BUILT DRAWINGS SUBMITTAL

Procurement Activities:
PAR/RFQ/PO - U/G Pipe, Fittings&Flanges
Fabrication- U/G Pipe, Fittings&Flanges
Shipping -U/G Pipe, Fittings&Flanges

Of course to be able to draw S curves or prepare any reports together with Construction activities you should load the same Resource on Engineering and Procurement activities as Construction activities. Mostly it is Manhours. But you should decide how much or how many...

I hope this helps.

Hi

An alternative would be to apply a “monitory” values as the “weighting” to each phase of the work i.e. Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Commissioning and not the man hours for this purpose.

Normally I find the true value to the project for the procurement of materials, plant, equipment etc is not fully reflected in the overall status of a project when I have used the standard procurement chains / man-hours.

In some cases it has been as high as 60-70%% of the project spend, which has taken a relatively low level of man hours from engineers, buyers, expeditors to achieve, thus totally distorting the completion status of the project when compared with the more labour intensive phases of the work.

My personnel preference is not to quote an overall value, but values by each of the above phases or use the cost curves.

regards

John

Hi Moutaz,

Hope I got that right, but I would use a manhour loading in the instance of procurement of about 10, spread overe from 5 to 10 days, this is because they are not dedicated to one aspect, but have to provide the servive, ie long duration, short manhours.

Dear Planners,

Thanks for all responces. to use the manhours as a tool for the progress, we need to identify how to estimate the manhours. for example, in construction civil works some companies use the concrete to convert it into manhours, e.g. "1 m3 equal to 20 hours" it is the productivity of the company. and I do not think that we can estimate the manhours based on the duration of the actvities, e.g actvity "A" needs 60 days, it means the manhours "60X9 hrs = 540 hrs" and so on for all the construction activities, this is also not logic to use it with the procurement and engineering activities.
can any planners give a brief example for the three phases showing how to use the manhours for the above phases in order to estimate the progress?

Thanks in advance,

Moutaz

I have a note on the first post

it say
"e.g actvity "A" needs 60 days, it means the manhours "60X9 hrs = 540 hrs" and so on for all the construction activities"

I am not fully agree with it

Let assume activity A reppresent 5400m3 of concrete.

Assuming 60x9=540equivalent hours you assume one man assigned to the task and a productivity of 540m3/day=60m3/hour

What about if you had two men?

Cheers
L

Dear Luca,

If you read my statement carefully, I wrote that I do not think that the manhours based on the duration can be used as a tool to estimate the progress, I do not agree with that.

Regards,

Moutaz

Man-hours can (should?) be used to measure progress for many project activities. As with physical quantities, to make it work, you must divide man-hours spent by the sum of man-hours spent plus estimate of man-hours remaining.

Hi Tom,

I wonder if you have productivity rates for Engineering (Design) & Procurement activities?

would be a big help...

regards

The simple answer is no. I’m not aware anyone has ever "published" such rates. Certainly companies develop "guidelines" from which to establish budgets; however, contract requirements and human factors must be considered on a job by job basis. Because productivity rates for Engineering (Design) & Procurement activities are dependent on many factors they need to come from the folks managing/doing the work. Equally important in planning is the sequential nature of the tasks and inter/intradiscipline coordination.

Hope this helps.

Hi All,

I would like to spend a couple of words about how calculated the duration of a specific activity. I guess it is very clear; it is possible by relating the physical quantity with the productivity. I mean the average productivity for that activity.

Example: 1,000 CM of CONCRETE FOUNDATION for equipments in Refinery – The productivity is, here in Singapore, 33 Hr per CM, which is meaning, will be necessary 33,000 M/hr to complete the job. So, 1 man, which is working on average base, let say 8 hr per day, will complete the job in (33,000 / 8) 4,125 days or 687.5 weeks or 171.9 months or 14.33 years. But our Project need to complete this 1000 CM of foundation in 5 months maximum, so the question is how many men we need to reach our target? We now that our man can work for 8 hr/day or 48 hr/week or 192 hr/month, then in 5 months he will work 960 M/hr; Therefore, 33000 M/hr divided by 960 M/hr and we obtain 34 men. The next step is to analyze if this 34 men can work effectively in our place (location), if there is enough accessibility, if our contractor can supply the required resources in that period.

Moreover, mean average productivity as referred to the activity irrespectively from the percentage of physical quantity implemented and the specific productivity that takes into account also the percentage of physical work implemented at the time. For example, while the mean average productivity for an activity can be say 10 h/per unit, at the beginning from 0 to 10% ( more or less) of physical work and at the end from 90% till 100% of physical work, the specific productivity is higher than the 10h/per unit. It derives that between 10% and 90% of physical work the specific productivity shall be lower that the mean average one, if not the work will not be completed by the target date. Lastly, the regular monitoring of the physical progress implemented and the hours spent allows to keep track of the specific productivity and, depending on the outcomes, enables the early identification of problems and the selection of corrective actions that have to be taken.

Ciao

The system I saw and used to assess the design progress is based on a document progress register (DPR)

In the DPR you list all the deliverables (documents, calculations, data sheets, etc..) each one with it own weight (nominal point, equivalent size, estimated engineers hours required to produce it).
You need also to allow some contingency for not foreseen deliverables (for example in the early stage of a oil and gas project list all the piping docs as the isometric is quite difficult, …)
Then the lead design with the planner work out the dates for each deliverables
With the Client you need to discuss the progressing method.
For example document issued for Review 15% of the weight, Issued for Approval 40% and Issued for Construction 45%.
Of course if a document is in aping pong loop for example in the IFA status you do not earn nothing, but also may ring an alarm as something is going wrong!

The procurement is following a similar process with differences for material or equipment, but as before you step the process defining point for example Issue RDA, Bid Close, Issue PO, Vendor Design, 50% manufacturing, Material ready ex-work, Material on site. This really depend on the project size, the client need as well as the degree of control on the supplier (expediting) depend on you confidence on it performance (you are using him from 10 years without problems, etc…)

Hope this help

L

PS
I would rather use the physical work done to assess the construction progress
For example activity A represent the pouring of 10.000m3.
You go on site and estimate that just 4.000m3 have been poured it mean approx. a 40% progress

Absolutely. I too have used the milestone approach for measuring engineering and procurement progress. I would add that for engineering, the degree of monitoring depends on if engineering is being self-performed or subcontracted. When self-performing engineering, the Technical Services Manager and discipline leads must be concerned with acutual and bugeted hours in addition to meeting scheduled delivery dates. As a lesson learned, to improve the budgeting process, each deliveralbe should have a labor log sheet to which each person involved the deliveralbe, including checkers and reviewers, would record his/her time. The log is used throughout the life cycle of the document be it drawing, calculation, specification, study, or report. Once the deliverable is finaled or otherwise issued as a record document, actual labor data is now documented for future reference. Although I have not seen this done, this approach could equally apply to procurement work packages.

This is standard practice in the Process Industry. Booking to discipilne design work packages, comparing EV progress with budgets via an agreed Progress Measurement System for overall percent payments. It doesn’t matter what the system is so long as planned and actual are on same basis. This is all written in SoP’s, WI’s etc.

There are several Process Industry publications on UK productivity rates together with suggested factors for world wide use. These are based on actual site returns but in general are optimistic when compared to norms used in EPC bids etc

I know you asked this question some 5 months ago but Co-Pilot suggests the following definitions. Do they help? SoP’s (Standard Operating Procedures): - Formal, documented instructions that define how routine tasks or processes should be carried out. - Aim to ensure consistency, compliance, and quality across teams and projects. Example: An SoP for “Progress Measurement” might outline the steps for recording earned value, updating schedules, and reporting variances. WI’s (Work Instructions): - More detailed, task‑specific guidance than SoPs. - Provide step‑by‑step instructions for performing a particular activity. Example: A WI for “Concrete Pouring” might specify the exact sequence, equipment setup, safety checks, and quality tests required.

Post seems to have strayed from original question so here goes 1 PMS needs a Rule of Credit system for all disciplines. Company needs to define how it will record progress for all activities and have a coding system that budgets and collects actual work to a granulated level for analysis. This can be by various milestones or linear time progress. It should be aligned with manhour burn, an actual measurable deliverable or budget number. Data should be collected from estimate/procurement/BoQ make up sheets and progress measurement via document control, procurement system or construction valuation. 2 QA - All work in a company should be covered by a SoP which is part of an overall ISO9001 QA System. This is externally audited and reviewed and recertified every 3 years. Below that Departmental Procedures should exist to cover the work scope of each department setting out company best practice for operations, training, personnel, support etc. These should be internally audited and reviewed every year either by the audit department or internal managers. Departmental Instructions / Guidance notes can help personnel interpret the Procedures, provide best practice advice, typical examples of schedules, supporting information (productivity databases, software etc). Use of these documents on any project is signed off by the PM via the Quality Plan.