A Good Planner?

Go to site a LOT. Dont just sit in the office behind your screen. try to follow the progress on site and see what the problems/difficulties happening and see how the project manager/construction manager is handling them.

Hi Haitham

Excellent advice - a planner has to know how to build it before he can plan it.

Mia - Why not be quite radical and work in the concrete gang for month - you will learn more about the construction process than from any books.

Apart from that I guarantee you will have a great time.

Best regards

Mike Testro.

Hi Mia,

First of all we need to accept the fact that Construction is business and the bottom line is profit. As a planner, we need to produce a viable plan or programme including the resources required based on what we priced during the tender stage. You need to talk to and in synch with the construction team and find out how they plan to build the project (methodology). It is up to us (planners) to put together a viable programme and advise them the basis and assumptions we made in the programme such as production rates they need to achieve, schedule risks, project constriants, interface, critical path, etc.

In addition, a good planner must understand the process, the sequence and resources required to finish a certain task and experience in my opinion is our best teacher. However, having said that we also need to accept the fact that the construction industry covers a a very wide area and learning the whole damn thing may take a lifetime so my philosophy is "dont be afraid to ask questions"

keep on planning!