Engineering Professional Programs

Course Faculty: Geoff Baillie and H. Wynnlee Crisp

Successful project managers control projects by carefully monitoring, measuring, and managing performance. This course goes beyond controlling performance in the fundamental areas of budget and schedule. It also addresses the monitoring, measurement and management of the project’s scope, quality, owner satisfaction, customer satisfaction and the interdependent team relationships. Effective management of these important elements is what distinguishes the exceptional manager from the average manager.

Earned Value is one of the techniques taught in this class as a way to more accurately measure and manage project performance to enhance control. It allows simultaneous measurement of budget and schedule conformance, and captures their interrelationship better than any other method. Its power lies in measuring the efficiency at which work is produced, forecasting the resulting cost-at-completion while there is still time to recover, and pin-pointing the source of project problems.

This practical course is taught one day in a classroom setting with another day of web-based material.

Course Topics

Comparing cost versus budget

Using the planned cost over time and the cost per unit time

Determining cost and schedule efficiency

Forecasting the cost at completion based on data streams

Forecasting the cost at completion considering efficiency and schedule

Measuring performance of large and small projects

Determining project risks

Controlling quality of the product and service

Determining owner satisfaction

Interpreting customer satisfaction indicators

Evaluating project partnerships

Participants learn how and when to apply each performance management method to small and large projects.

This course extends the knowledge from TRANSPEED's Managing Scope, Schedule and Budget workshop. Consequently, participants are strongly encouraged to obtain that or equivalent background prior to taking this course.

Who Should Attend

Monitoring, measurement and management of project performance are skills that are needed by program managers, project managers, task leaders, discipline managers, division/department heads and project administrators. Participants usually come from the fields of engineering, architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and the sciences.

Continuing Education Units and Professional Development Hours

Course participants will earn 1.4 CEUs/14 PDHs upon successful completion of this course. The CEU is a nationally recognized measure of participation in a noncredit continuing education program that meets established criteria for increasing knowledge and competency.