How a Professional Planner can support a Project Manager in a complex, large-scale project
A well-known brand aimed to open a factory and distribution centre in the Humber region to be better placed in the centre of the UK. Land was available at Europarc which had good road links and access to suppliers in Grimsby & Hull and surrounding areas.
A Planner and Project Manager (PM) were employed from the beginning of the Project with support from the business. A high-level plan was drawn up from the business objectives in the form of a Milestone plan. Estimated duration 2 years with 18 months construction to be complete. Cost was approx. £2.5 million +/- 30%. The planner was also to estimate costs as well as activity duration, resources required, labour required as well as considering any legal requirements.
Findings from an initial Feasibility study were passed over to the project team with recommendations to be applied to the Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) study where the team were starting. The planner and PM built up a detailed plan for the FEED study after meetings and consultation with the business engineers, local planning authority and Europarc engineers to ensure the infrastructure could accommodate the factory needs. Water, drainage, electric, gas, roads, waste, traffic, pedestrians, parking, security, lighting etc were all discussed, and it emerged that the waste-water drainage was inadequate and that Europarc would install larger drains up to the boundary of the factory.
Following several reviews and revisions two planned options were submitted showing
- an overall duration of 2 years 6 months based on a standard working week (M-F 8hrs/day) at a cost of £3 million +/- 10% or
- a fast track plan working a number of weekends, additional teams and extended hours with an overall duration of 2 years but with an estimated cost of £4 million +/- 10%.
The business agreed to sanction the fast track option, the plan was finalised, and work began. The planner led weekly meetings with the appropriate people informing of progress, any slippage against, recommendations to recover and any additional costs. S-Curves, resource profiles and reports were produced to communicate this information with a high-level summary being forwarded to the business each fortnight.
The outcome?
Problems encountered were long lead items delivery, materials damaged, a small amount of additional scope from the business, design clashes and rework but the project managed to deliver on time by careful re-scheduling, increasing hours worked as required and ensuring there was very few delays and downtime. The project came in at £4.35 million which was within the 10% contingency.
The project was deemed a huge success.
