The following are the twenty-one lessons. I’m developing an index to make navigation easier. If you have an experience (stories, vignettes, examples) with any of these lessons, I’d like to hear from you.

Lesson 1: Family and friends

Make time for your family, your friends, and you. As things become more and more hectic during the project cycle, make sure you spend time with your family and try to cultivate friends outside of your work circle.

While this project is important, it is temporary. Set aside time for them and you. You need the perspective and relaxation that comes from time spent away from the project.

Personal time is important. Make time for it.

Lesson 2: Go with the flow

You won’t always have control over your situation. Make a plan and develop contingencies, but accept sometimes things will be beyond your control.

John had a plan for selecting the best contractor. He had selected that contractor, but all for naught. As Robert Burns said many years ago – “the best laid schemes of mice and men oft go awry.”

This will happen often, more often than you expect and more often than you like. There are multiplicities of forces at work on a project, some are obvious, and some are more insidious. You may never know them all, so try to anticipate all you can, but accept that you cannot know or control everything.

To paraphrase Reinhold Niebuhr: Change the things you can, accept those that you can’t change, and have the wisdom to know the difference.

Lesson 3: Fair is fair

Know what you want and be prepared to fight for it. In negotiations, the hungriest always loses.

Also, never enter negotiations without a walk away position. If you cannot walk away from the deal, you won’t get a palatable offer.

Fair is fair. No purpose is served by one-sided negotiations. If you squeeze all the profit out of your project, you will force the contractor to find other means to make money. If the contractor loses money, you could face excessive extra work, claims, delay, staff deterioration, quality erosion, and a strained working relationship. All of these will damage your project. Be forceful, but be fair.

Another point is to avoid negotiating alone (I would say never), especially if the other side has two or more negotiators. If they have two, you should have two.

As a corollary, whenever more than eight people at the table (or in the room), some of those people are unnecessary. Try to keep the negotiating teams small.

Try to balance power to power. If they bring in VP, you should have a VP. However, try to avoid bringing the final say to your negotiations. Give your company the opportunity to evaluate your decision. If the person with the ultimate authority is in the room, that opportunity for evaluation is lost. They should be present at final acceptance, but not during negotiations.

As always, there are exceptions to these rules.

Lesson 4: Get the Best

There is more art than science to selecting the best core group members. The core group should be your project engineer(s), project controls manager(s), procurement manager(s), construction manager(s), and the project secretary/assistant.

Personal chemistry, gut feel, or a sense of ease must be part of the selection criteria. Focus on the candidate with the best training and experience, but if you don’t feel comfortable with them, move on to the next candidate.

Try to imagine how the candidate will relate to the other members of the core group. They have to work together. They have to like each other. You have to like them and they you.

If your original assessment is wrong, right that wrong as soon as possible. Do not let disharmony or acrimony take root on your project. It is essential that your team function as a team.

Corollary: Do not hire a friend just because he/she is a friend. An incompetent team member is as destructive as an angry, hostile, disruptive teammate.

Get the best, but make sure they fit.

Lesson 5: Define your project

Take the time to define your project. Check with all the project customers or stakeholders. Verify that they understand what you will give them and when. Make sure their expectations are the same as yours.

This verification applies to the project sponsors or underwriters as well. Only when you have defined your project should you begin detailed design.

It will be tough to resist both the natural impulse and the external pressure to push your project along, but resist it you must. Spend the time now, so you don’t have to spend much more time later.

Think of it as an investment. You are investing in your future.

Lesson 6: Focus on equipment

Drive the equipment and any other long lead items (permits, easements, access, etc.). If there is one focus item, it should be the equipment. Both design and construction depend upon timely output from your vendors.

Should you not pursue an aggressive campaign of requisitioning, procurement, and expediting; you can count on having problems meeting your deadlines. If you show a sense of urgency, urgency with purpose, early in your project’s life, it will stand you in good stead throughout the life of the project.

This is not hurry for the sake of hurrying. It is moving with all deliberate speed, in a well thought out direction. It is urgency with purpose.

Corollary to Lesson 6

Do not assume that once you placed the order, your problems are through. You must maintain effective communication with your vendor to make sure your equipment is progressing through his shop as promised.

There will be times when he may drop your order to work on another. Do not let this happen. Stay on top of your vendors. This is called expediting.

Make sure you allocate enough money to do expediting properly. It will take three times as much as you think – to do it right. Expediting is good insurance; do not skimp on it.

Lesson 7: Have a plan

Develop an execution plan or project plan. This plan should tell any who read it what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how you’ll achieve your goal.

The ‘how’ will set the rules of the game. The plan will delineate policies and procedures that govern all aspects of the project. You might be tempted to postpone development of the execution plan, do not. You must have the plan as soon as you finish the process for your project.

Do not begin basic design without an execution plan.

Lesson 8: Work to a budget

The estimate/budget is the base, the foundation for project control. Spend the time and the effort to ensure the estimate is as accurate as possible. If the budget is flawed, you cannot control your project.

Be prepared to revise the estimate/budget, as you discover new facts. Never try to control to unreasonable or unrealistic budgets. You will alienate your people, and likely fail. If management insists, get your objections on record and be prepared for an unpleasant experience.

Estimates come in many forms. They will vary in levels of accuracy depending upon the stage of the project. The estimate can be as simple as the best guess of your leads or superintendents, or as complex as detailed material take-offs.

When the estimate is informal, it’s a good idea to record who provided the data. Be sure to record the ranges given by the leads or superintendents. This will be useful when it comes time to establish cost/schedule contingencies (more on this later).

Lesson 9: Keep it simple

It’s not likely you will have any say in the reports your project will produce. If you do, keep them simple. If you make the system too difficult to maintain, you won’t get the data you need. You will fight for compliance, which is a distraction and waste of energy.

Keep the coding structure simple. Use existing codes whenever possible. Here novelty is the enemy of compliance.

Do not make your report more detailed than can be supported by the time card system. Control only to the WBS level where you can collect hours.

Insist on an earned value measurement system. Chances are one exists already, but if it doesn’t, develop your own. There is no substitute for an earned value measurement system. If your contractor does not use an EVMS, you are in trouble. It should be the basis for all progress payments.

Lesson 10: No surprises

Get the best people you can, and treat them right. They will have more impact on the outcome of your project than you will. That said, the project manager is the single most important determinate of project success.

Make sure everyone on the project knows what to do. Once they know, start measuring progress. Remember; you can’t control what you can’t measure. Make sure promises made are promises kept.

Keep your schedule as simple as possible. There is no shame in tracking non-linear, multi-faceted functions off schedule. Use the best tool for the job – spreadsheet/database.

The schedule is indispensable for project management, but a complex, difficult to maintain schedule will be of little use. Large, cumbersome schedules require more effort to develop and maintain, and provide very little return. As a rule of thumb, try to keep the number of activities of the Master Schedule to less than 3000.

Involve your customer in your project as soon as possible, but do not let them control your project. Requirements yes, direction no. Remember, no surprises for you or for your stakeholders.

Lesson 11: Maintain focus

Develop a project road map – project plan – as soon as possible. It needn’t be a fully developed project schedule, but it must capture the immediate, identified tasks and/or deliverables.

Make sure the project team knows what to do and when they need to do it. You and your team should issue periodic progress reports. Know where you are and where you are going. Do not allow the project to ‘flounder’. Your project must have direction, purpose, and incentive.

Everyone must understand what they need to do and when they must do it – get buy-in and feedback. You must know who has problems, and what they are doing to address those problems.

Remember, management by walking around. Spend as much unstructured (outside of meetings) time with your team as possible. There is no substitute for one-on-one discussions with project team members. You can sometimes learn as much in the coffee room as in meetings.

Be open to input from any quarter – a good secretary/administrative assistant can be worth far more than their salary, so choose wisely.

Identify the critical items and track them as soon as possible. A handful of project elements – contracts, purchases, crafts, disciplines, key personnel, etc. – will exert a major impact on the successful outcome of your project. Discover them early and watch them closely.

The Prado rule applies here, though the percentages might vary.

Lesson 12: Understand your project

You should spend as much time as necessary to clarify and understand the project Scope of Work (SOW). This is not a waste of time. It may be the best investment you make as a project manager.

You will not achieve the project goals/objectives, if your team doesn’t understand what is expected and when. Formal acceptance of responsibility is essential. Be sure to crosscheck the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RACI) and project schedule against the statement/scope of work. Expand and clarify as needed.

The major players associated with the project, especially the owner/project sponsor, must accept the SOW. Every person assigned a deliverable must formally acknowledge responsibility. They must accept the scope of the assignment and the date of delivery. Formal means a signature somewhere.

The same holds true for the WBS. Think through the steps and stages your project will pass, and make sure the WBS reflects those steps. This is an iterative process. The WBS will gain complexity as the project gains greater scope understanding/development.

Make the WBS construction-centric. Design and procurement must fit/follow the construction structure/sequence. Operations or accounting has no voice in the development of the WBS.

The sole focus of design and procurement should be support of construction.

Time spent on the RACI and WBS is an investment. The payoff is effective coordination, ease of communication, and acceptance of responsibility, each necessary to achieve project success.

Lesson 13: Assign responsibility

Develop a plan or schedule as soon as you understand your project. It need not be a complete understanding. There is not enough time to wait for a complete understanding of your project before you plan.

Get your team working to deadlines. Identify deliverables and assign responsibility for the completion of those deliverables. Hold assignees accountable, including you. If you fail to live up to your obligations, you cannot expect your team to live up to theirs. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’, will not work here.

Always track your performance against your plan. You should change your plan, when you can no longer realistically follow the original plan. Before you change, know why. This is not a trivial exercise. Changing the plan is an admission that something was wrong with your plan.

If the scope of work is misunderstood, or has changed, find out why. If the estimate is flawed, find out why. If the project team is not working efficiently, find out why. Once you understand the reason(s) why, fix it (them). If you can’t fix the problem, you won’t have a successful project.

Another essential step is ‘buy-in’. If the person assigned the task does not accept ownership of that task, that task will not be delivered when expected or to the degree expected. Incomplete performance is not acceptable. Make sure the assignee knows what you expect, along with when you expect it.

If they need more resources – staff or time – make every effort to get it for them.

Lesson 14: Have a solution

Never go to management with a problem without a plan to solve it. If you need additional resources – that includes time – tell them what you need and why.

Go to management as soon as you know there’s a problem, when there is still time to do something about the problem.

You don’t want to go to management with a problem without a solution or not enough time to do anything about it. If you rob them of options because you delayed, you will lose whatever support you could have had.

A problem without a solution, or too late to address, will cost you. No one wants to feel powerless, especially management.

Lesson 15: Do not assume

Assume nothing. Review all data given you. If it doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t. Trust your gut, your intuition. You won’t have that much intuition at this point, but you will have some. Use it. You will make some assumptions, especially early in the project, but don’t let those assumptions go untested for long.

Logistics is a prime example. Know the site and all its limitations. Anticipate the things that can go wrong and develop a plan for dealing with them. The plan might not work, but at least you have a plan. Inaction in the face of a crisis will make matters worse. There could be times when doing nothing is the right course of action, but that should follow from an analysis of the situation, not paralysis

Lesson 16: The estimate is the key

The estimate is the ‘linchpin’ of effective project controls. Your budget flows from it, as does the project schedule. The estimate holds the project together.

Get the best estimators; give them enough time to develop the best possible estimate. Provide sufficient resources (time) to review every estimate. You must understand all the qualifications, assumptions, and metrics used by the estimators.

The estimate must reflect the current scope. Change the estimate as you receive new information. As significant discrepancies are discovered, adjust the estimate. Do not wait for the next planned update.

You must control to the best information, otherwise you risk demoralizing your project and/or disappointing your bosses.

This is your project. If you don’t get it right here, the rest won’t matter.

Lesson 17: Team building

While staffing is a crucial element in project execution, a team that doesn’t work together is not a team. You must make your team coalesce, come together, work together.

Team building is what you must do to make the disparate project elements work together. If most of your people knew each other and worked together on other projects before, that might not be a problem. They know what to expect, what to do, and what not to do.

People, being people, might not always get along as they should. If it’s the result of dis-familiarity, you can correct that. Get them together as much as possible in an informal – read fun, setting. Let them be themselves. Usually this will work. If it doesn’t, don’t hesitate to replace the ‘flat spot on the wheel’.

The old saying about the one rotten apple spoiling the barrel is appropriate to project cohesiveness. It’s your project, your family. Protect it, nurture it, and let it grow.

As a client PM, you won’t have much say in promotions of contractor staff. When appropriate, be free with public praise. Similarly, let your displeasure be known, immediately, but less publicly.

Another element of team building is to get your customers involved as much as possible and as early as possible. Here your customers are the operators, the crafts, and the home office. Operations and construction involvement is critically important.

More important is your boss, or bosses involvement. If you don’t keep your bosses happy, it will not matter. They might tolerate you for the duration of the project, if they have no other option, but you won’t advance your career. Do not embarrass them, do not surprise them, and do not disappoint them.

Lesson 18: Procurement

It is impossible to over-state the importance of effective equipment/material management – procurement. This is not the place to economize. Get the best people, get the ‘best’ vendors, and get the best information.

Set up your control methodology early. Organize the procurement effort around the project WBS (insist on this). The goal is to feed construction.

Setup and maintain strong communications, especially with your expeditors. Above all, keep on top of material status. This is the ‘basket’ you want to watch. Know where your equipment/material is – do not take your vendor’s word for it. Remember: Trust but verify.

Lesson 19: Due Diligence

Due diligence refers to the care a reasonable person should take before entering into an agreement or a transaction with another party. In this case, hiring Steve as the project engineer is such an agreement.

While I strongly urge reliance upon ‘your gut’, or instinct, or the ‘quiet voice within’, augment your feeling with review and investigation. Here John was correct to ask for references even though time constraints limited his options.

Later, Ed will suggest that John go beyond those references to talk to others, those not on the reference list, when they talk to Palindrome. Having the wrong person on your team will cost you – morale, productivity, aggravation, frustration, and eventually anger.

You owe it to yourself and the project to get the best people available, that requires due diligence. Take nothing on face value. To torture the phrase: Trust, but verify.

Trust your instincts, your judgment, but get corroboration.

We all rely on the personal interview. It is not as reliable a gauge as we think. People can fool us. Go beyond your first impression and get data, get confirmation, or refutation, as the case may be.

Lesson 20: Uncertainty

A project, as is most of life, is surrounded by uncertainty – risks. These risks can be specific, as in a hurricane, or more generic as in labor productivity. You should develop a plan(s) to deal with the risk, should the risk occur.

Caution: You are far better off having a plan than trying to develop one under the stress attendant with something going wrong.

The risk register is where you start. You and your team need to peer into the future and imagine what could go wrong (or right) with your project. Then evaluate the identified risk. Next, assign responsibility of monitoring and preparing for the event, to a specific team member.

It is up to you to make sure that your people are working the register. Uncertainty/risks need to be re-visited periodically. Once is never enough. As time passes, we will know more. Some risks will fade away and others will appear, and still others will change in impact. Stay on top of your project uncertainties.

Most schedule risk arises from the imprecision of estimate unit rates. This imprecision reflects the effect of location, skill levels, craft availability, complexity, or whatever has on the unit rate. It takes time to understand the actual impact of these factors and adjust the unit rate. Do not be concerned with productivity until you achieve about fifteen percent of the specific task (or group of tasks that use the unit rate) completed. Before that, you are measuring mobilization, not productivity.

Lesson 21: Change

Change on a project is inevitable, its impact and frequency are not. You can take steps to minimize both the number of changes and the magnitude of those changes.

Those steps are inclusion, review, and response. You must include all project stakeholders in the design process. Follow your RACI explicitly.

Do not short-circuit the review process, both internally and externally. Involve your client and other off-project stakeholders. Double the time allocated for model review, it’s a wise investment.

Process all change order requests and requests for information quickly. Make sure that change orders have both cost and schedule impacts assigned, even if they are wild guesses. It is better to have a sense of the size of the change than no measure at all.

Should any changes need immediate attention (actual work) before approval, regard that as a red flag. Your policies and procedures are not working. There should be time to evaluate a change before it’s necessary to effect the change. If there’s not enough time, your system is broken. Fix it at once, before change takes over your project.