18 Sept 2026 Planning Planet News

Dear Planning Planet Members,

Welcome to this week's Planning Planet News

The world of project controls, planning, risk, data, and delivery continues to evolve at pace, bringing new challenges, fresh thinking, and valuable lessons from across our global community. In this edition, we've gathered thought-provoking insights, industry perspectives, and practical knowledge designed to help you stay ahead in an increasingly complex project environment.

From challenging established delivery approaches to exploring emerging trends and professional best practices, this week's newsletter highlights the conversations shaping the future of project controls. Whether you are a planner, scheduler, cost engineer, risk professional, project manager, or programme leader, you'll find ideas that inform, inspire, and spark discussion.

As always, thank you for being part of the Planning Planet community. We hope you enjoy this week's selection and discover something you can apply to your projects, teams, and professional journey.

Let's dive in.

It’s free, and it strengthens the collective knowledge of our global community.

Big Bang Agile is no longer a contradiction. It is becoming the norm.

Many organisations proudly embrace Agile practices, complete with sprints, stand-ups, backlogs, and velocity tracking. But as Alex Lyaschenko provocatively argues, a critical question is often overlooked: when does the business actually receive value?

In this thought-provoking post, Alex challenges the growing trend of what he calls"Big Bang Agile": environments where teams successfully deliver sprint after sprint, yet stakeholders must still wait for a single large release before seeing any real benefit. The result? Agile ceremonies may be thriving, but true continuous value delivery remains elusive.

The article encourages project professionals to look beyond story points and velocity metrics and focus instead on whether scope, dependencies, testing, approvals, and business readiness are genuinely converging to deliver outcomes. It's a timely reminder that adopting Agile rituals is not the same as achieving Agile delivery.

A compelling read for anyone involved in project, programme, portfolio, or transformation leadership who wants to challenge conventional thinking and refocus on what really matters: value realised, not just work completed.

Read the full post...

Source: Alex Lyaschenko

The activities that matter, every update, one page - the variance heatmap

The variance heatmap in SMACT® takes the activities you decide are worth watching and lays them against every schedule update you have issued. Each cell carries the date and the variance since the update before it, shaded by how far it slipped, so the pattern lands before anyone reads a single number.

• Select what matters. Pick the activities worth watching, define and group them however you want, and pull them in from Excel if that is where they already live.
• Let the colour do the work. Pull ins sit plain, slips shade amber through red as they grow, and actuals are flagged so finished scope stops competing for attention.
• Put it straight in the report. Print or export the heatmap and drop it into your monthly pack as it is.

One slip is an excuse. Six in a row is a trend.

Build a variance heatmap free for 7 days. Bring your updates in as XER, MPP or XML, no credit card, no commitment, cancel any time.

Build a heatmap from your own updates...

SMACT® is a registered trademark of FSH Tech Solutions Pty Ltd, Perth, Western Australia. smact.com.au

Monte Carlo Analysis Challenges: Predicting Project Cancellation

Statistically, we know that some projects will never be delivered. Projects are cancelled for a variety of reasons.

Other projects go through multiple reincarnations and deliver after several attempts. Decisions to stop a project, redefine its scope, or change the delivery strategy are common realities of project delivery.

Project analysis methods should be able to predict such possibilities. However, none of the commonly applied methods today can reliably estimate the probability of project cancellation.

There are two primary reasons for this: mathematical and psychological.

Read the full article...

Source: Alex Lyaschenko

P6 EPPM - Run a project audit report

Gain full transparency into your project data with a comprehensive audit trail report that tracks every modification made across the system. The report clearly identifies the selected Project Name and Project ID, along with the reporting period, showing the exact dates and times covered by the audit and when the report was generated.

Dive deeper into every recorded change with detailed information on who made the update, when it occurred, and where it originated. Each audit entry captures the timestamp of the change, the application used, and the username responsible, providing a complete history of user activity.

For every audited transaction, the report reveals the specific database table affected, including the primary key, database column, previous value, new value, and the operation performed whether it was an insert, update, or delete. This level of detail makes it easy to investigate data changes, support compliance requirements, improve accountability, and maintain confidence in the integrity of your project information.

Discover the complete story behind every data change and ensure nothing goes unnoticed.  Read the blog...

Source: P6 Blogger

P6ETL for BI Reporting – Automate and Modernize your P6 and OPC Reporting Systems

Accessing Primavera P6 and Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC) data for Business Intelligence reporting can be challenging, especially when your databases are hosted by Oracle, Loadspring, or another cloud provider. P6ETL® eliminates these obstacles by automatically extracting and organizing your data into a reporting database optimized for Microsoft Power BI and other BI tools. In this webcast, we'll demonstrate how P6ETL simplifies data access and explore the key features and benefits that make it the fastest way to build powerful Primavera dashboards and reports.

When: Tuesday September 22nd at 10am US Central Time
Duration: 1 hour

Register or read more...   

How to Choose the Right Procurement and Contract Type for a Project

From project objectives and scope maturity to risk allocation, delivery method and pricing strategy.

Choosing a construction contract is sometimes treated as a relatively simple decision. Is it lump sum? Unit rate? Design and Build? Cost plus? FIDIC Red Book or Yellow Book?

Those are important questions, but they come too late if the project has not first answered a more fundamental one: What contract strategy best supports the way this particular project needs to be designed, procured, constructed and controlled?

A contract does much more than establish how the Contractor will be paid. It determines, among other things:

• who develops the design;
• when construction can start;
• how much price certainty can realistically be achieved;
• where major project risks sit;
• how changes are dealt with;
• how much control the Employer retains;
• how interfaces are managed;
• and how responsibilities are divided when something does not go according to plan.

A technically sophisticated contract cannot compensate for a procurement strategy that does not fit the project. Likewise, transferring a risk in the Conditions of Contract does not necessarily mean that the risk has disappeared from the Employer's project.

The starting point should therefore be project strategy, not contract terminology. The World Bank takes a similar fit-for-purpose approach to procurement planning: project objectives, operating environment, market conditions and project-specific risks are considered before the procurement approach is selected.

For construction professionals, this leads to a useful principle: There is no universally best construction contract. There is only a contract strategy that is more or less appropriate for the project's objectives, scope maturity, risk profile, market conditions and required allocation of responsibility.

Read the post...

Source: Mohammad Khalifa Talafha, MSc, PMP

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT: IAMTECH KNOWLEDGE: TWO PLANNERS. SAME JOB. TWO ESTIMATES

IAMTech Knowledge: Two planners. Same job. Two different estimates.

It happens on every shutdown planning team, in every industry. Not because planners don’t know their craft — but because every experienced planner carries their own norms, their own assumptions, their own bias.

AI doesn’t replace the planner’s judgement. It standardises the baseline.

When every work order is estimated against the same decades of industrial maintenance norms, the inconsistency disappears — and the schedule becomes something leadership can actually plan around READ MORE.

Wish your planning team all planned consistently? First look at iPlanSTO AI-Enhanced Planning: WATCH VIDEO — or VIEW BROCHURE. How would this transform planning in your world?

To arrange your demonstration, contact jonswift@iamtech.com.

VALUE-ADD and FREE WEBINARS

• 22 Sep - P6ETL for BI Reporting  – a utility to extract P6/OPC data from any hosted environment (Mustang Technologies) -  Accessing Primavera P6 and Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC) data for Business Intelligence reporting can be challenging, especially when your databases are hosted by Oracle, Loadspring, or another cloud provider. P6ETL® eliminates these obstacles by automatically extracting and organizing your data into a reporting database optimized for Microsoft Power BI and other BI tools. In this webcast, we'll demonstrate how P6ETL simplifies data access and explore the key features and benefits that make it the fastest way to build powerful Primavera dashboards and reports.  Register now...
   
• 24 Sep - Template Loading and Updating with the P6-Loader (Emerald Associates) - P6-Loader is not only for cleaning up and maintaining your P6 database. It has some amazing automations for fast building, maintaining and updating. Our Template loader or fragnet generator is one time saving and easy to use automation.  Taking advantage of 31 years of integration expertise, Emerald’s P6-Loader Template tool empowers users to grab a project, a fragnet, or template and make placeholder replacements into activity IDs, names, UDFs, codes, WBS, and more. This feature is fantastic for automating program or capital project development, commissiong schedules or turnaround and outage schedules by calling different work and work order maintenance types. This new feature allows you to load a schedule and reload the template multiple times as templates change or reforecasting is needed. It is a game changer on bid schedule development that can’t be missed. Register now...
   
• 21 to 24 Sep - Managing Risk in Safran Risk training course (Emerald Associates) - Safran Risk has been designed to be the next generation of probabilistic analysis tools - one with the unique ability to create both cost and schedule risk models and map the two together. Safran Risk is developed by the same team that developed Pertmaster, long the industry standard.  This software has been developed with a visually appealing and accessible user friendly interface, with a fully integrated scheduling environment. Safran has developed its software to integrate seamlessly with Oracle Primavera (P6) and Microsoft Project tools.  Online Training / Live virtual course where attendees can join from anywhere / Participants will be able to communicate with the instructor and engage with peers through an online training platform.  Register now...
   
• 25 Sep - Spider Project Introduction (Salute Enterprises) - Most project management tools and methodologies focus on activities, dates, and reporting progress. However, project success is ultimately determined by the availability and effective utilisation of resources, the management of uncertainty, and the ability to make informed decisions before problems become visible.  Spider Project Introduction introduces participants to a different way of thinking about project planning and control. Based on the principles of resource-constrained scheduling, Resource Critical Path, project optimisation, and Success Driven Project Management (SDPM), the course provides practical insights into how to create and manage realistic project schedules using Spider Project.
• Participants will gain an understanding of the basic concepts that underpin Spider Project and learn how these concepts can be applied to improve planning, forecasting, and decision-making across projects, programs, and portfolios. Register now... or 10 to 12 Nov... or 8 to 10 Dec...
   
• 29 Sep - Cleaning Up Your Primavera P6 Database with P6-Loader (Emerald Associates) -  Consolidating code types in bulk is an important and time-saving measure that is not supported in Primavera P6. When you've had the same database for years at a time, you often end up with the same code/UDF type repeated several times over, with a copy per project. You can also encounter two code/UDF types that mean the same thing, but have slightly different names. This leads to an exercise in frustration where you have to merge each by hand, re-coding every activity, resource, or role that carries a value from the type that you want to retire. In the latest version of P6-Loader, we have added six worksheets that do this work for you. Activity Code Rollup, Activity Code Type Merge, Project Code Type Merge, Resource Code Type Merge, Role Code Type Merge and Resource Assignment Code Type Merge have been added to our already existing Activity Code Rolldown and UDF Type Merge utilities.  Want to see it in action? Register now for our upcoming free webinar, and see just how easy P6-Loader makes it to clean up your database.  Register now...
   
• 14 Oct - The Administration side of Oracle Primavera Cloud (Emerald Associates) - Join us for Administration in Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC) v26, a live, interactive virtual course where you’ll gain hands‑on experience with OPC’s most powerful administration tools — from mastering Global Admin Apps to creating new users and assigning them to the right groups . With real‑time access to an expert trainer, peer engagement, a comprehensive PDF manual, and a certificate upon completion. Online training details PDF manual Live virtual trainer based in Canada or the United States Training runs from 8:30am M..., this advanced session is ideal for anyone looking to deepen their Primavera expertise and confidently manage OPC environments. Led by one of Emerald’s most sought‑after instructors with decades of project controls experience across major industries, this webinar delivers practical knowledge you can apply immediately — making it a must‑attend for professionals ready to elevate their project management capabilities.  Register now...
   
• 14 Oct - EVA34 High Performance Resourcing, 34% Discount HPRESOURCE34, London (Steve Wake) - The theme is High Performance Resourcing. Forget AI for the minute or at least put it in the toolkit until you've decided what you want it to do for you. Now think about High Performance Resourcing. And the people doing the work. Where are they? How well are they doing? What can you do to help them? Do you know what they are working on. Do you know what they did today? How do connect the people not just on one project but all the people on all the projects. How's the whole organisation doing? How could AI help? Really help or just automate chaos? Is it about Controls or Skills? Or both?  Register now...
   
• 2 to 4 Nov - Project Controls Expo UK - (PC Expo) - Join the 15th edition of Project Controls Expo UK, bringing together project controls professionals, industry leaders and experts for three days of insights, innovation and knowledge sharing.  Register now...
   
• 23 Nov - Primavera advanced topics of dashboarding and reporting including templates, filters, views, formatting (Emerald Associates) - Join us for a focused, high‑value webinar on Dashboarding and Reporting in Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC), where you’ll learn how to turn complex project data into clear, actionable insights using OPC’s powerful templates, filters, configured fields, views, and formatting tools. Whether you’re a program manager, project manager, planner, scheduler, or simply moving to OPC, this session will give you practical techniques for comparing baselines vs actuals, standardizing workspaces, managing cost breakdown structures, and building dashboards that elevate decision‑making across your projects. It’s an ideal opportunity to sharpen your skills and get ahead with OPC’s latest capabilities.  Register now...
   
• 14 Dec  - Primavera advanced features of baselines and comparing them to the current file (Emerald Associates) - Unlock the full power of Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC) by joining this focused webinar on Baselines and Baseline Comparison, where you’ll learn how to create, categorize, display, and compare baselines with confidence, turning raw project data into meaningful insights that drive better decisions. We’ll walk through essential OPC capabilities—from project and cost breakdown structures to schedule scenarios, progress updates, and portfolio KPIs—giving program managers, project managers, planners, schedulers, and anyone moving to OPC the practical skills they need to manage multiple projects with clarity and precision. If you want to sharpen your OPC expertise and elevate your reporting, this session is the perfect opportunity.  Register now...

Contact us to get your event here - PPAdmin@planningplanet.com

Bringing Intelligent Planning to the Field: Free 14-Day FieldPlan Trial

Translating master schedules into daily field coordination usually requires hours of tedious setup and manual rework whenever site conditions change. ALICE FieldPlan replaces the manual process of building and updating lookaheads with a continuous, connected workflow. Experience AI-assisted area detection, automated inventory tracking, and dynamic lookaheads generated directly from your drawings. Sign up for a no-obligation, 2-week free trial today and give your field teams full visibility into what work happens next, in what sequence, and where on the jobsite.

Read the full article...

Sunchana’s 10 Reasons Why Good Project Planners Are Still Like Gold Dust

A friendly recruiter once told me something I've never forgotten:

"Are you free for a new contract? It’s based near where you live, with a great team at the international bank. Why? Because all good project planners, like you, are like gold dust."

At first, I assumed it was simply recruitment salesmanship. Oh, they are so good at it! In fact, they get me every time. They phone for a new gig, and I’m hooked.  Recruiters make us feel special, like we are the only ones in the world. Behind the scenes, they are only human. In reality, recruiters are trying to fill difficult vacancies. After some thought, I wanted to discover the truth behind the off the cuff comments.

Spending over three decades in project management, I’m a dedicated follower of business trends. With over two decades planning some of the UK's largest and most complex programmes. I've worked across public sector transformations, financial services, ERP software implementations, construction, utilities, and technology. Every project has been different. Every schedule has presented its own challenges.

Back at my office desk in Glasgow, battling with the PMO to understand P6 scheduling algorithms, I still wondered if we were like gold dust. And what would that mean for a day rate contractor like me?

So, I looked it up.

According to the online Cambridge Dictionary, something that is like ‘gold dust’ is extremely difficult to find because so many people want it.

That definition certainly felt familiar. Organisations could usually find someone who knows how to operate Microsoft Project or Oracle Primavera P6. What they struggled to find was someone who could transform uncertainty into a credible delivery strategy that senior leaders could trust to make the right decisions.

To test my own assumptions, I asked experienced planners across the UK, Europe and North America for their views. Their responses confirmed something I've believed for years. Great planners aren't valuable because they can update schedules. They're valuable because they influence others and achieve successful project delivery within time and budget constraints.

Ten years ago, I wrote an article on this issue. This year, I’ve decided to support our beloved Planning Planet community even more by sharing my knowledge and rewriting some of my articles. As a tight knit community of technical specialists highly experienced with Oracle Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project, we deliver the best value for money solutions. Here are ten reasons why. I hope you’ll read through them, make up your own mind and comment on this:

1.  Good Planners Master the Tools.

Planning software is incredibly powerful. Oracle Primavera P6, Oracle Primavera Cloud (OPC), Microsoft Project and similar applications can model programmes containing tens of thousands of activities, multiple calendars, resource profiles, critical paths and complex dependencies.

Learning where the buttons are is only the beginning. Exceptional planners understand how the software calculates dates, how scheduling logic works and, perhaps most importantly, when the software is telling them something that doesn't make sense. All project plans should result from active analysis.  The software should never drive the schedule, or we are most likely to end up with unusable plans.  

1. Planners Start With the Six Questions.

The best planners have endless curiosity. We politely challenge assumptions. We often ask uncomfortable questions. We refuse to accept overly optimistic delivery dates without understanding the logic behind this.

Armed with decades of hands on experience, good planners build credible schedules that start with six deceptively simple questions:

• Why are we doing this?
• What are we delivering?
• When is it happening?
• Who owns deliverables?
• Where will the work take place?
• How will it actually be achieved?

Those six planning questions often uncover risks long before they become someone else’s expensive issues.

1. Planners Stay Above Office Politics.

Stakeholders are full of meaningful conversations, more or less. Tight office corridor discussions after the monthly Steering Committee meetings. PMO debates and supplier disagreements, mixed with executive optimism. Sometimes, it’s pure and unfounded office gossip we hear in corridors. As senior planners, we must maintain both an ethical and a moral stance that goes beyond the call of duty. Good planners learn to separate facts from noise; it’s crucial we do this. We listen carefully, evaluate evidence objectively and avoid becoming part of potentially damaging organisational politics.

1. Planners Stay Calm Under Pressure.

Complex mega projects rarely follow the original plan for every activity, even if it’s been nicely baselined. There are multiple reasons, such as suppliers missing milestones, budgetary constraints, testing overruns, SME unavailability, regulatory approvals arriving late, and, most importantly, disagreements among senior stakeholders.

When pressure increases, experienced planners become calmer. OK, they may go out for a walk in the woods. And hopefully come back. In my experience, rather than reacting emotionally, we are most likely to analyse impacts, identify recovery options and explain the consequences to senior stakeholders.

1. Good Planners Are Always Learning.

Unlike many other professions, there is no single route into project planning. Some planners begin as engineers. Others come from IT, finance, construction, defence or business transformation. While most of us learn through experience, others gain skills through ongoing learning. As one of the senior chartered project professionals, I’d recommend this. The strongest planners continuously invest in themselves through professional qualifications, communities such as the Association for Project Management (APM), PMI, Planning Planet and continuous practical learning. Soon, many of us become mentors, trainers and coaches, raising planning capability across entire organisations.

1. Senior Planners Are Sociable Loners.

Project planning attracts unusual personality types. Once, long, long ago, I completed the Insights training. My personality came up as purple, with blue/red in equal measure. I’m not joking; some of us are ‘planning royalty’. In the real world, one morning on the job may involve several hours analysing schedule logic inside Oracle Primavera P6. The afternoon may involve facilitating a planning workshop with fifty uninterested stakeholders. Great planners are equally comfortable working alone with thousands of activities as they are leading discussions with senior executives. Senior planners beautifully combine analytical thinking with communication skills.

1. Planners Connect Strategy to Delivery.

It’s a tricky one, and yet it’s an imperative we get it right. While most senior leaders think strategically, we in highly technical teams should only think tactically. Project planners connect the two. We translate ambitious business objectives into achievable delivery sequences. We can integrate engineering, procurement, finance, governance, testing, deployment, and operational readiness into a single, coherent schedule. And without that integration, every individual team may believe they're succeeding while the overall programme quietly drifts towards failure. Planning is about connecting the dots.

1. Senior Planners See Problems Before These Become Issues.

One of the greatest values that senior planners bring to the project, and the whole organisation, is their foresight. A credible schedule isn't just a list of activities. It's a decision-support model. By integrating Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies (RAID), critical path analysis, scenario planning and forecasting, planners can identify emerging problems months before they become visible elsewhere. Stakeholders often joke that planners can predict the future. I wish! We may watch sci-fi movies, but we are not clairvoyant. Saying that, we can usually identify where today's decisions are likely to lead tomorrow. That's often enough to save complex transformational programmes.

1. Senior Planners Reduce Stress.

In my experience, good project plans create confidence. Bad planning creates surprises. When delivery teams understand priorities, dependencies and realistic timescales, uncertainty reduces. This results in senior leaders making better decisions. Teams know what success looks like, risks become visible earlier, and recovery options remain available. Perhaps the greatest compliment a planner can receive is when a Programme Director says: "Thank you, now I understand what's happening behind the scenes."

1. Senior Planners Are Multifaceted, Matrix Thinkers & Doers.

Good Project Planners are able to work across different industries, from construction and typical waterfall engineering projects of building bridges and rail links in construction and utilities, to the Agile setup of ERP IT software platforms and business transformation projects in retail, healthcare, financial services, and the NHS. One such planner stated that “When you focus exclusively on the planning skills within your industry, you close down your mind to new and progressive methods of tackling the problems that arise in a poorly planned project in areas around additional things like KPIs, dependencies, risks, cost, and project control disciplines.”

So… Are good project planners still in demand, should we still feel like gold dust?

Almost all senior project planners I’ve worked with bring together technical expertise, commercial awareness, communication, diplomacy, curiosity, analytical thinking and professional integrity.

We don't simply update schedules. We help organisations make better decisions.

Post COVID-19 pandemic, the business world around us has shifted significantly.

Do you agree that good project planners are becoming increasingly difficult to find? Which quality do you think separates an average planner from an exceptional one?

Happy planning to all of our respected peers

Source: Sunchana Johnston NED FAPM CHPP ERP P6 Master Planner

 6 Weeks To Go Until Project Controls Expo Uk 2026!

The countdown is on!

Join the 15th edition of Project Controls Expo UK, bringing together project controls professionals, industry leaders and experts for three days of insights, innovation and knowledge sharing.

2–4 November 2026 - Wembley Stadium, London

Agenda Highlights:

• Development Resource Integration & Value Enhancement (DRIVE)- Petronas
• The power of an enterprise project performance mindset: Transforming Performance Management Across 24,000 Projects- AtkinsRéalis
• Computer, Enhance: AI, Judgement and the Project Controls Dividend- Laminar Projects
• From Reporting to Insight: The Thames Water SRO Digital Controls Journey- Octave and Turner & Townsend
• Lessons Learned from procuring and mobilising major capital works- Arcadis
• Aligning Construction Management Education with Industry Priorities- University of Portsmouth

…and much more!

Explore the full agenda and discover the sessions, speakers and programme highlights waiting for you at PCE UK 2026.- Online Brochure

Places are filling up fast!

If you haven’t registered yet, now is the time to secure your place and be part of the conversation shaping the future of project controls.

Register today and join us at PCE UK 2026! 

CONSTRUCTION CPM CONFERENCE 2027

We’re finalizing plans to bring the Construction CPM Conference back in 2027 at the Hilton Palacio del Rio on San Antonio’s River Walk. 

Mark your calendar for February 23–25 and get ready to register your team, as we continue building a conference for Constructors, by Constructors. 

Our focus will be strengthening Planning to drive Performance—so every attendee leaves with practical takeaways they can use right away.  We will be continuing the legacy that Fred has built since 2011.

Are You Measuring Progress... or Just Updating the Schedule?

Many projects report progress every week, but how much of that progress is truly measurable, objective, and reliable?

A schedule is far more than a planning tool. It should be a living management system that helps teams understand where they are, how efficiently they are performing, and where they are likely to finish. Without robust performance measurement, forecasting becomes guesswork, risks remain hidden, and corrective actions often come too late.

In this article, we explore the practical techniques used by high-performing project teams to measure actual progress and improve schedule reliability, including:

• Physical progress measurement
• Resource and productivity tracking
• Variance and performance analysis
• Incremental milestone assessment
• Field verification and validation methods
• More accurate forecasting approaches

Whether you're a Project Manager, Planner, Scheduler, Contractor, Consultant, Owner, or Project Controls Professional, understanding how to convert field performance into meaningful schedule intelligence can significantly improve project outcomes.

Discover the complete performance measurement framework and learn how leading teams turn project data into actionable insights.  Read the full article and share your thoughts: How does your team measure actual progress during project execution, and what methods have proven most effective?

Read the full post...

Source: Kareem Khattab

Project Dashboarding with Cleopatra Enterprise

Across our global Planning & Project Controls community, few capabilities are transforming project performance as rapidly as modern dashboarding — and Cleopatra Enterprise’s approach shows exactly why. Their Project Dashboarding solution enables teams to visualize, analyze, and report live project data with clarity and confidence , offering customizable dashboards that adapt to the needs of executives, project managers, and field teams alike. 

All of this, with customizable dashboards to meet the information requirements of different stakeholders.. With rich visualization options — from S‑curves and bubble charts to pivot tables and waterfall charts  — practitioners can track KPIs such as CPI, SPI, planned vs actual spending, and resource utilization in real time. 

Cleopatra’s project controls software makes it easy to track the KPIs that project managers rely on most, including cost.... Seamless integration with ERP, scheduling tools, and BI platforms like Power BI ensures data stays current, consistent, and aligned with corporate reporting standards . 

For anyone seeking to reduce surprises, strengthen coordination, and elevate decision‑making across projects, this is a powerful example of how dashboarding can reshape project outcomes.

Read more...

EVA34 HIGH PERFORMANCE RESOURCING

EVA34 High Performance Resourcing

Wednesday 14 October

Armourers Hall

34% discount

Its on Wednesday 14 October at the Armourers Hall as usual. ONE day and optional dinner.  The programme is coming together rapidly.  A few slots are available for Speakers Sponsors Supporters and Exhibitors.

My gift to you is a 34 % discount for 34 days until Monday 3 August which as everybody knows is National Clean Your Floors Day.

The theme is High Performance Resourcing. This is where the improvements in efficiency and benefits are. Huge and significant for Controls and PMO people.

Forget AI for the minute or at least put it in the toolkit until you've decided what you want it to do for you. Now think about High Performance Resourcing. And the people doing the work. Where are they? How well are they doing? What can you do to help them? Do you know what they are working on. Do you know what they did today? How do connect the people not just on one project but all the people on all the projects. How's the whole organisation doing? How could AI help? Really help or just automate chaos? Is it about Controls or Skills? Or both?

Info and Tickets are here...

www.stevewake.com
34% Discount HPRESOURCE34

LET'S OPEN UP OPPORTUNITIES TOGETHER

To support every practitioner, employer, consultant, and recruiter in our network, we’re opening up free job postings for everyone. Whether you’re:

• An employer with a vacancy
• A regular practitioner looking to strengthen your team
• A consultant searching for standout talent
• A recruiter with a role to fill

…you’re invited to share your opportunities with the entire Planning Planet community.  

No charge.   Simply contact PPAdmin@PlanningPlanet.com and we’ll help you get your role in front of thousands of committed project controls professionals.  

Let’s make this a space where opportunities flow freely, careers grow, and our community continues to lift one another.  View Jobs... Post Jobs...

• Senior Project Controls Manager Permanent Employment London (EU.UK.LON)
   
• Senior Project Controls Manager (Change Baseline) Permanent Employment London (EU.UK.LON)
   
• Senior Planner Contract Employment Warwickshire (EU.UK.WAR) £690 per day

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT: SUPERIOR ALTERNATIVE TO  "MOST POPULAR" SOFTWARE FOR US PLANNERS?

A superior alternative to the "most popular" software for us as planners?

Spider Project Team is a group of project management consulting and training companies. With headquarters in Moscow, Russia, we have branches, partners and representatives in other Russian cities, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Romania, USA.  We develop professional PM software Spider Project that is the most powerful and functional tool for project, program, and portfolio management.

We develop advanced approaches and methods of project management that are widely used by our customers in 37 countries. We provide training on project management and Spider Project software for our customers around the world.

We manage projects for our customers and implement corporate project management systems in companies of different industries.  We believe that good project management can improve our world and are happy to provide the best services and tools to our customers.

We are proud of our achievements.  The current version is used in 37 countries. Spider Project offers numerous unique functional features and is the only PM software that optimizes resource, cost, and material constrained schedules and budgets for projects and portfolios.

Spider Project offers numerous unique functional features and is the only PM software that optimizes resource, cost, and material constrained schedules and budgets for projects and portfolios.

Check it out here...   Ask questions here...

WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADVERTISE ON PLANNING PLANET?

We want to give more of our members the opportunity to advertise on our site. Click here to get started!

THANK YOU FOR READING OUR MESSAGES

If you’d like to lend a hand to the small but enthusiastic team behind this newsletter, feel free to reach out to us at ppadmin@planningplanet.com. We know there’s still a lot of work ahead to make this an informative and eagerly anticipated bi-weekly read, so get in touch and be part of the journey.

Regards...

The Planning Planet Team