The value of mentorship within the project controls industry

At any stage in your career, learning and developing your skills is essential - and in a complex field such as project controls, mentoring from industry friends and your team is an essential part of growth.  Equally, the commercial benefits for organisations and individual projects can be huge. But all too often, mentoring is overlooked due to conflict management, time management, resistance to change and growth. “I don’t have enough time” is something that is often said, without fully understanding the benefits that mentoring can offer. 

Whether you’re at director level, a junior consultant, or transitioning from another field, mentoring is a vital tool that presents the opportunity for knowledge transfer, improved performance, career development and better-rounded project teams. 

In this blog, Associate Director,  Kate Young (who also comes from a non-project controls background) delves into the value of mentorship within the project controls industry and the benefits it can offer.

---

BLUEPRINT’S APPROACH TO MENTORING

“Tend to the people and they will tend to business” - John C Maxwell - Author

At Blueprint, we’re fortunate to have access to a whole host of talent across our team, so to maximise knowledge and expertise, we take an inward focus approach when it comes to mentoring. The aim is to provide the team with mentorship not only from top to bottom but also upwards and across - 360 mentorship. The mentorship process at Blueprint is free-flowing, creating an open atmosphere that allows for both growth and questioning, from graduates and the senior team alike. 

Our approach is that mentoring should be a personal experience that is bespoke for each individual. There is no one set framework but purely an aim to offer professionals new to project controls, such as ex-forces and young individuals, space and time to develop their skill set and mature their own unique transferable skills. Doing this allows them to not only better understand their expertise, specialisms and value but also to address gaps in their knowledge to deliver successful projects. 

The key ingredient is to encourage individuals to learn without fear of expectations or of getting it wrong, and to create a space where all team members feel empowered to get involved in the business plan. Ultimately to achieve the goal of developing the organisation from the inside out. 

---

THE VALUE OF MENTORSHIP WITHIN THE PROJECT CONTROLS WORLD

There are many benefits to mentoring and different ways you can implement it across your organisation, but in its simplest form, mentorship is the patronage, influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor, to help with personal and professional growth.

Cross-sector skills exchange for career development:

A great example of cross-sector skills exchange in the project world is onboarding ex-service personnel. They may not consider their skills as a fit for project controls, but they have many transferable skills that lend themselves to a career as project controllers. They have the ability to effectively communicate, manage time, problem solve, conflict manage and be resourceful. They understand the fluidity of situations and adapt. These skill sets lend themselves to project controls, but without an effective mentor, they may not be aware of these transferable skills.  Equally, from their time in the forces, they will have many skills which they can share with existing project controllers. Mentoring is about exploring strengths and offering guidance on career paths and skill development, which can massively support an individual's career progression.

Knowledge transfer:

Project controls is a unique and specialised field and so naturally it requires specific skills, knowledge and understanding of how the industry operates. The transfer of knowledge and wisdom from experienced professionals to those just beginning their careers, such as ex-military and young professionals, is invaluable. This will create an environment where individuals feel empowered to ask questions, learn and make a difference in the future of project controls. 

With that being said, mentoring should not just be from the top-down. Young professionals who are new to the industry offer valuable insights into best practices and  are often able to think outside the box, suggesting new, innovative ideas and processes that those with experience might not have thought about before. Granting these junior members of the team space to voice these questions and provide insights will benefit both your organisation and project in the long run. 

Improved Performance & Confidence:

Aside from the above, mentoring can be incredibly beneficial when it comes to an individual's performance and confidence, developing leadership skills, being exposed to different thoughts, building on personal networks and personal development opportunities - for mentees and mentors alike. For example, if the individual is currently making a big career change or starting a new role in the team, consistent and purposeful mentoring can make this a smoother transition. Equally, becoming a mentor allows team members to recognise and validate their own potential, skillset and value. 

---

CONCLUSION

The benefits of mentorship in the field of project controls  goes beyond career development. Not only can mentees learn from the knowledge and experience of their mentors to progress, but being a mentor can have significant commercial benefits - helping to build confidence, expand networks, gain a deeper understanding of the industry and inspire those who doubt they have what it takes to pursue a career in project controls. All of the above helps create stronger, more integrated teams and helps to ensure project success. 

The future of the project control industry is on the shoulders of those who are beginning their careers in this field. A mentor's job is to help get them ready to handle the challenges they are bound to face.

So, if a career in project controls intrigues you and you’re looking to take that next step, then please get in touch to discover how we can help you.

Get in touch to find out more.

Project Controls and the Relationship with Project Management

As a project controls professional, you may have noticed that some people confuse your role with that of a project manager. While this mistake may be understandable for a family member at a summer barbecue, it is a common occurrence in the industry, where the two terms are frequently used interchangeably.

In this article, to help iron out any misconceptions, we asked our team to  reflect on both definitions and outline why project controls are the secret ingredient to a successful project, a happy client and a motivated team.

• What are project controls?

  At its core, project controls plays a fundamental role in helping to manage and control the project’s cost and schedule position. Who looks after this side of the project will vary on a case-by-case basis but, as a general rule, project controls are the processes, tools and expertise used throughout a project to analyse cost, schedule, risk and other performance data, helping to ensure that projects are delivered on time and on budget.

  Project controls are used by experienced project managers to overcome common obstacles to success. These obstacles can include delivery risks, challenges of robust forecasting, errors in data input or storage, improper allocation of resources, overly optimistic budget or timeline expectations, and lack of data to make informed decisions.

• Inside the mind of a project manager v project controller

  All of the above means a project controller approaches a project with a very different mindset to a project manager. For example, the project manager owns the project and it is their priority to delegate the work across the project team, consume the information generated and have the final call on decisions. The project manager relies on the project controls team to plan, monitor and control projects.

  For a project controller, their responsibility is to make sure processes head towards success by managing the project’s cost and schedule, as well as advising the project manager of possible risks and advising on recovery plans. This process involves providing project KPIs and delivery reports throughout the project cycle.

  A useful way to illustrate the difference between the two is to look at the different questions project managers and project controllers ask themselves throughout a project lifecycle. On the one hand, project controllers are charged with answering (and controlling areas around) key project questions such as:

  • How much is the project costing?

  • Will it be completed on budget?

  • How long is the project taking and how does this compare to the plan?

  • Will the project be completed on time?

  • What are the future threats and opportunities that may impact the project objectives?

  • How can we mitigate these risks and optimise the opportunities?

  On the other hand, a project manager will ask the project controls team, the wider project team and the client questions, such as:

  • What are the business goals/benefits the project is aiming to achieve?

  • Is the project on track?

  • What parts of the plan and estimates are we confident and not confident about?

  • What are the worst-case scenarios for which we might have to anticipate and prepare?

  • What support or additional resources do we need?

  • How did the project contribute to our client’s goals?

  In this way, the major difference between project management and project controls is that a project manager takes a holistic approach, while project controllers will have a natural curiosity for the detail, asking the difficult questions and analysing budgets and timelines as the primary factors in project success.

  Where the project manager will be heavily focussed on delivery, the project controller will be sitting on the PM’s shoulder, acting as their ‘conscience’ and helping them to make the right decisions at the right time, using the data to support. A useful analogy can be to think of the Project Manager as the pilot of a plane (responsible for getting the crew and passengers to the end destination) and the Project Controller acting as the Radar, advising the PM of what is around them, where the potential threats are and how to navigate around them.

• When should you get a project control team involved?

  While it may seem that project controls fall within the execution phase of project management at a first glance, it’s crucial for project controls to be involved in all aspects of project management. Ideally, these controls will be implemented as early as the initiation stage of a project as this will ensure that project controls are considered up front, saving time and effort in the execution phase. Then the Project Controls team can assist with the planning of the cost and schedule portion of the project, feeding in throughout the project cycle and advising if there are any deviations.

• What outputs do a project controls’ team provide?

  It is a project controller's responsibility to utilise data received from multiple project team members to develop project plans for management. This can include:

  Consistent Data Structures such as WBS/CBS

  • Project Cost Estimate

  • Project Schedule

  • Resource Plans

  • Risk & Assumptions Registers

  • Risk Analysis and Contingency outputs

  • Project Controls Plan

  Once the project’s integrated baseline is developed, the Project Controls team obtains regular input from the project team and are able to generate different kind of analytical reports, such as:

  • Project Cost and Schedule status and performance

  • Project Cost and Schedule forecasts

  • Risk Analysis and helping to predict future outcomes

  • Scenario & Recovery Plans

  All of this information is reported back to the Project Manager and the project team members, so they can make informed decisions across the project, which ultimately leads to successful delivery.

  We hope the above provides a clearer understanding of where project controls exist within the wider project management framework. Not only do project controls allow greater insights about a project’s performance,, but project controls are a crucial tool used by smart project managers to help ensure on-time delivery, better forecasting, staying within budget, increased visibility and greater job satisfaction.

  To understand how we can support your project team with our project controls’ services, get in touch. We’d love to chat.

IS WORKPLACE CULTURE OVERLOOKED AS A KEY SUCCESS FACTOR IN PROJECT DELIVERY?

Many factors influence whether a project will be delivered successfully - robust planning, sufficient controls, a risk-based approach, effective management and communication - just to name a few. However, and somewhat ironically, where project teams are diligent in their approach to recognise and respond to risks that would set a project back, all too often we overlook how an organisation’s culture can serve as a block or catalyst for success.

In a nutshell, a strong workplace culture steers an organisation’s decision patterns, guides actions and drives the behaviours of the team. All organisations exhibit a culture in some form, and equally, so do project teams. In this sense, culture serves as an invisible glue in every project and should be better considered an essential factor for delivering successful projects.

In this blog, our Founder and Managing Director, Simon Kirkbride, shares his thoughts on how culture impacts project delivery and how we can better leverage workplace culture as a tool to influence success. 

Why is culture overlooked? 

No project sets out to have a negative culture, however, some of the root causes can often be traced right back to the early stages of the project lifecycle. During this period, the primary focus is on areas such as the business case, requirements, scope, funding, strategy, schedule, cost and risk (all of which are valid considerations).  However, more often than not, there is not enough consideration as to what the project culture should look like. 

This approach means that culture is often overlooked right from the outset - left to develop without intention or guiding principles. 

On top of this, projects are transient in their very nature. They come and go with a fixed timeline and end date, whereas organisations are permanent. This can mean leaders question the return on investment if they push resources and time into creating the right culture for what is seen as a temporary endeavour.  

As well as being temporary in their timeline, project teams are temporary too. They knit together people from a multitude of organisations and frameworks, all of which have their own cultures and value systems.  As a result, there can often be poor alignment between parties when it comes to agreeing and embedding a project's culture and values.

If you work in the project world, you will be familiar with challenging delivery expectations that can lead to pressure and stress, which resonate throughout the project team and supply chain. Bonuses and incentive fees may be placed on short-term milestones and in some cases, completely the wrong priorities.  This can lead to focus being placed on the delivery of certain milestones at all costs, regardless of the impact it is having on the team.

Team disillusionment and frustration may also be heightened by a lack of structured rotation of the team and development pathways, which leaves people feeling like they are purely there to deliver the project and their development has been pushed to the sidelines. 

Perhaps the most influential factor is that the criteria for leadership positions in the project world often focus on factors such as technical ability, tenacity, resilience and delivery focus. These attributes (which are great in themselves) can often be put before other attributes such as people skills, leadership, empathy and the ability to galvanise a team and set a clear vision. 

---

What are the signs of poor culture in project delivery? 

There are a number of ways a negative culture can manifest itself during project delivery. A high turnover of personnel is a strong indication of disillusionment as well as a breakdown in communications between teams and stakeholders.

Interface management is a key area of project delivery and this can become harder to manage as teams gravitate to working in silos with the greater interest of the project being overlooked.   

Equally, a lack of innovation and loss of productivity is also a natural output as the team does not feel they have the autonomy or freedom to make meaningful change.

In some cases (often when a project is struggling), the culture can become toxic, where there is a complete breakdown in open and honest communication and people become afraid to speak the truth. People who would usually feel passionately about a problem are quickly shut down for speaking up.  Where this becomes the norm, this will start to have detrimental impacts on people’s health presenting itself in higher rates of anxiety, depression and absence.

As a result of all of this, ultimately cost, schedule, quality and safety will all be impacted in some way by poor workplace culture.

---

Solving the culture problem in project delivery 

While a huge focus has been given to safety culture over the past decades, some may argue that equal time and focus have not been given to the general workplace culture in project delivery environments. So, how can we start prioritising culture to help deliver successful projects? 

A key step is allowing for sufficient training of the project leadership team as well as allocating time and headspace to think about a culture strategy.  This strategy needs to integrate with the supply chain and not just be considered at the client level.

Think about how you will measure the culture, often organisations may have some insights but these are usually not distilled down to the project level.  Start with the basics, what is the turnover of staff for the project (including the supply chain), and what are the root causes for staff turnover?  Conduct team pulse checks.  Make culture a focal point of discussion at regular meetings.  

Consider setting KPIs relating to culture.  KPIs exist in the project delivery world for everything else but are normally lacking when it comes to culture.  This is counter-productive given that a poor culture will lead to a high turnover of personnel, a loss of productivity and will impact mental and physical health.

For a healthy culture to flourish, leaders need to foster an environment that encourages open and transparent conversations where people do not feel scared to discuss bad news and challenges on the project. This communication is vital between the project team and the supply chain so that a culture and value system can be agreed upon for every level of the project. New starters should be immersed in this culture too. 

To encourage development, consider rotating team members around a project or programme to give people the opportunity to develop and upskill throughout the lifecycle of a project. This will lead to greater job satisfaction and prevent frustration, minimising staff turnover. 

Most importantly, leaders need to create a project culture where it is OK to fail.  This is how we learn and it is how we will improve and innovate.  When we are scared to fail, we stop speaking up in meetings and voicing our opinions and that’s not good.

And finally, leaders have to ‘walk the walk’ when it comes to creating and embedding the right culture. They must live and breathe the project values and demonstrate this daily through their actions.  Only through this, will the culture resonate throughout the entire project organisation.

Conclusion

Of course, building a healthy project culture isn’t an overnight win - it will take time and vital investment from the people at the top. However, better communication, boosted morale and higher staff retention make it all worth it.

At Blueprint, we have worked hard to create a culture that allows our team to bring their authentic selves to work, which in turn helps us to deliver success for our client’s projects. Our founding principles of the ‘Blueprint Way’ act as an anchor to remind us of the importance of our culture and values.  All of this has meant our people feel enabled to question, challenge and effectively do their job, to ensure the best outcome on a project. 

To understand how we can support your project team, and work towards creating a culture that delivers success, get in touch. We’d love to chat.

Get in touch to find out more.

HOW TO PREPARE FOR UNCERTAINTY WITH A BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN

With the current cost of living rising and a recession on its way, as well as unrest in Europe, many businesses are understandably facing a huge amount of uncertainty - which is coupled with the burden of likely cuts and difficult decisions next year.  While most of these factors are outside businesses control, planning for uncertainty is key to surviving it - and this is where a business continuity plan comes in. 

Pre-pandemic it was not uncommon for organisations to underestimate the cruciality of a business continuity plan - largely because no one notices its absence until a disaster like the pandemic strikes and it’s already too late. The pandemic taught us all the immense hurdles and costs that unplanned interruption to business processes can cause, leading to a shift in attitude from businesses to explore processes to help deal with similar unexpected disasters in the future. 
Whether it’s a complete shutdown of your IT systems, a major fire or flooding at a key facility, or something as simple as a power cut, with a business continuity plan in place, you are immediately armed to minimize the impact and damage of an unexpected event. In this article, our risk manager Johanna Barton will share what a business continuity plan is, why we took the first steps to create one at Blueprint and the key reasons you should too. 

What is a business continuity plan?

At a very basic level, risk and continuity planning is about building business resilience and identifying the actions needed to maintain essential business processes and ensure recovery from operational threats.  Nowadays, the terminology refers to a ‘Business Continuity System’ but this isn’t to be mistaken for software or an IT system; rather it is a combination of components that work together to achieve resilience. The plan will recognise that there is a whole host of elements that are required to successfully develop business continuity capability from leadership, risk management, documentation, exercising, approaches to learning and improving, communication and awareness – and more. 

Building the Blueprint business continuity plan 

When we first set out on our business continuity journey, we recognised the need to achieve more resilience as the company grows. This was both in terms of being less vulnerable to potentially disruptive events and to demonstrate to prospective clients that we can achieve continuity in the service we provide to them. 

During the process, we realised that like many organisations we were significantly vulnerable to anything that affects our IT services and that we needed greater awareness of our key supplier’s business continuity plans. Outsourcing our IT systems and asking more direct questions when it came to liaising with our suppliers, were all key to improving our resilience and reassuring our clients. 

What are the major benefits of a business continuity plan and why is it important? 

There are many benefits that come out of the whole process and some are more obvious than others. The first is a more intimate understanding of your organisation and what resources and processes need to be prioritised if an unexpected disaster occurs.  It can help you identify single points of failure you hadn’t previously recognised.  An obvious and key output is more focus on evaluating your biggest risks and what you’re willing to do to address them. For example, outsourcing some essential services like IT can be beneficial for smaller companies. IT resilience and disaster recovery require a level of expertise many smaller organisations just don’t have in-house, due to costs.  

The bottom line is about protecting revenue but a well-defined and communicated business continuity plan also means that when a disaster occurs, your team are clear on the role they need to play to maintain essential processes. Today, there is so much instability coming from different directions that Business Continuity planning should now be at the forefront of any leadership responsibilities. 

The magic formula: The key steps to creating a business continuity plan 

The first hurdle is to be sure your leadership team is committed to investing time, effort and potentially financial investment into the process, otherwise, it simply won’t get off the ground. Once you have this commitment, there’s a structure to follow and it starts with understanding the context your organisation operates in, both internally and externally to examine the types of threats that could arise.  

The next step is to evaluate where your organisation has vulnerabilities that make those threats more likely to cause a significant problem.  Business Impact Analysis is a method used to evaluate the key products and services an organisation needs to protect as well as the essential internal business processes and resources that need to be maintained to deliver them.  

It’s also vital that you take a risk-based approach to plan resiliency measures. This is about understanding where you will get the most benefit from applying resource, effort and investment into protecting the things you have identified as being a priority. Most organisations have finite resources and need to know how best to use them.

Conclusion

As we head into 2023, business continuity planning is a process every business should build into its operations. Boiled down, it’s about an honest examination of your business vulnerabilities and taking action to build resilience into the foundations of your organisation, as well as planning and organising better in the face of a disaster. The output will be unique to each business but in all instances,  it is not just the document that is important,  it’s the components of your continuity plan that fit together as a whole to achieve your business continuity capabilities that count. 

If you’re considering a business continuity plan, you will be pleased to hear that we’re beginning to offer this as a service for our clients and network alike. Get in touch to find out more.

Get in touch to find out more.

TOP TIPS FOR IDENTIFYING THE RIGHT PROJECT KPIs TO DELIVER SUCCESS

If you work in the project world, you’ll be familiar with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). They help to measure the success of a project based on key business goals - and should align with the wider strategy of an organisation. They’re useful to project managers because they demonstrate how work is progressing and can draw attention to any areas of weakness that need correction. 

Project management KPIs aren’t to be confused with metrics which are more operational and help measure performance or progress for specific business activities. Only the most important metrics will be used as KPIs - and it’s important to have a limited number to help meet the project objective and create true indicators of success. 

A common problem we see in our industry is KPIs existing in companies that don’t link to a specific objective. It may be that some metrics will be requested as contractual requirements by clients, but these won’t always add value to a project from a delivery perspective. If this is the case, it’s vital to have a strong set of carefully considered KPI’s alongside these to ensure your project stays on track. 

There are lots of standard metrics industry-wide that you can develop into KPIs, but there’s no universal framework for selecting them - this is an art form in itself. While there’s not a set right or wrong way, there are useful considerations our team will make when choosing project management KPIs. As one of our Directors, Andrew put it, “the more time you spend measuring things you don’t need to measure, the more resource wasted in your organisation”. 

---

Think about the benefits

An important first step before selecting your KPIs on a project is to consider the benefits you want to drive in the organisation. A benefit can best be described as the positive consequence of a change and a project is a vehicle to deliver this benefit to its stakeholders, whether it be improved quality, reduced costs and so on. Identifying and measuring these benefits will allow you to maximise the outcome of your project. According to the PMI, many organisations don’t measure benefits - but this should be a bare minimum as without, it becomes very hard to meet project expectations post-completion. Equally, without these benefits agreed upon, you will be plucking metrics out of thin air, rather than choosing specific and meaningful KPIs that help keep your project on track.

---

Consider the industry

KPIs are conditioned to specific industries so it’s important to be aware of this and tailor your KPIs to each organisation. At Blueprint, we may be working on a nuclear and rail project at the same time, but the metrics are different for each. A good tip is to have an understanding of the industry standard and use this as a benchmark to give context to your clients when selecting or reporting on KPIs. 

---

Be aware of limitations

There will be times when you are reporting on project management KPIs where the underpinning information isn’t at a place where you can rely on it, potentially resulting in misinformed decision making, leading to roadblocks in your project. Making limitations and assumptions clear are vital to understanding the integrity of data and which metrics you consider reliable enough to focus on.

---

KPIs need to be relevant and insightful to communicate to stakeholders

A KPI is only helpful if it can generate insights so that a project decision can be made. Be proactive when selecting KPIs rather than reactive, asking yourself does it answer the ‘so what’ question i.e. should my client be worried or happy? A KPI that answers this will be vital for highlighting where a project is failing which prompts management to drill down to the details of what is going wrong and fixing the issue. Equally, KPIs that monitor project health and forecast trends are crucial to take corrective actions, so it’s a good idea to pin down how you will measure performance over time. 

---

Include a blend of Lag and Lead indicators

Many project management KPIs tend to be backwards-looking rather than forward-looking. The terminology to differentiate these is a lagging or leading indicator. For instance, leading indicators predict future conditions but lagging indicators assess the current state of the project. The issue with relying on lagging indicators is that while they are easier to measure, they are harder to change. Leading indicators are more dynamic and inform decision makers on how to produce desired results.

---

Less is more

While it can be tempting to measure everything on a project, in our experience, this leads to a lack of focus as it’s impossible to have control of so many outcomes. Instead have three to five clear and specific KPIs that focus on key objectives and business goals. The number of key metrics you choose should be directly influenced by the number of business goals you have. This is why it’s vital to pin down your benefits at the beginning of your project as discussed above. Once you establish strategies for these specific KPIs, you can extend the list.

---

Spend time on this process

Analysing data takes time and it’s important to get it right - especially when the numbers coordinate the next actions on the project. Don’t be afraid to put in additional time to select and analyse your KPIs regularly. Whichever way you look at it, if you don’t interpret data correctly, or don’t study it at all, your project suffers which may impact the wider business.

---

Concluding thoughts

There we have it. Our top tips for selecting the best KPIs for your project. Remember you do not have to manage every detail from the start. The best overall approach is to focus on the key metrics that will influence your project’s success -whether that be staying under budget, ahead of schedule or showing a return on investment - and stick with these through the duration of the project. Equally, have an appreciation that some metrics are indicators of performance and don’t give the full picture. Interpreting the data here and understanding its limitations is the final step to ensuring your project is a success.

Our team bring a wealth of experience in delivering project controls services, including robust and integrated reporting, so our clients can make proactive and informed management decision across a diverse range of projects and sectors.

Get in touch with our experts today…

OUR DELTEK JOURNEY: WHY ACUMEN IS THE BEST RISK MODELLING SOFTWARE FOR US

In the project world, the prioritisation of risk and uncertainty - and managing it effectively - has never been higher on the agenda. The pandemic showed us all the unpredictability of the world and, at Blueprint, we’ve seen first-hand how our clients have become more conscious to gain an early understanding of the potential risks and areas of uncertainty that could impact a project. 

On the ground, this has meant more time spent on the risk management process upfront and greater confidence in prioritising risk and uncertainty into other key controls, such as timelines and budgets. All of this meant that it was no surprise that in mid-2020, one of our key clients reached out to us to advise on the best risk modelling software package, that in turn led us to our partnership with Deltek today. 

How it began

As specialists in quantitative risk analysis, we were already familiar with the many risk modelling software packages on the market, but to deliver the best service for our clients, we were determined to find the best product out there to meet the specific requirements of our clients. After an extensive research exercise testing the market for options, Deltek quickly came out as the first choice. We then both recommended the software for implementation by our client and also invested in the software ourselves for use in all our quantitative risk analysis requirements. 

There was no initial plan to form a long-term partnership with Deltek. We simply bought their product back in 2020 because we believed that their software was a market leader when it came to a single product that could carry out both schedule and cost risk models for our clients. 

A relationship was built over this period that culminated in us being invited by Deltek to speak at their Deltek Insight 2021 event, to share our experience embedding Acumen Risk and the benefits we, and our clients, have enjoyed since using the software. As a result, a natural next step was to form a co-seller advocate partnership between Blueprint and Deltek.

---

What is Deltek's PPM Acumen? 

Acumen is a suite of 3 distinct products known as ‘Fuse’, ‘Risk’ and ’360’:

Deltek Acumen Fuse diagnoses and resolves schedule shortcomings, helping you create the soundest schedules possible, and execute them with consistent success.

Deltek Acumen Risk helps you effectively account for and proactively reduce risk exposure for an accurate forecast you can rely on.

Deltek Acumen 360 generates schedule scenarios in real-time, allowing you to hypothesize acceleration opportunities or even threats of delay, and immediately see the impact.

---

Acumen benefits 

As most project managers will know, for successful project delivery, proactive analysis of schedule risk and uncertainty is imperative. Deltek Acumen helps us to deliver Quantitative Risk Analysis for our clients, identifying possible risks and informing reports about the probability of these threats happening as well as the potential impact such risks can have on your project.

For us, Acumen has allowed us to move to a single product for all our risk modelling needs, with huge benefits to our clients and projects:

• Uncertainty and Risk Data Entry

  The software has full uncertainty and discrete risk modelling capability with multiple methods of data entry, which can be imported directly from the schedule, within Acumen itself or via a spreadsheet, enabling us to create models and templates quicker than ever before. This simplicity has been key to helping our clients understand the data being modelled.

• Understandable results

  For us, the tornado charts or ‘Risk Drivers’ as they are known in Acumen are a stand-out feature. In the past, quantifying how much uncertainty and risk were contributing to risk exposure was difficult to explain via other software to clients. But rather than a difficult-to-interpret coefficient or sensitivity percentage, Acumen provides real numbers in terms of days or cost allowing us to offer Tornado charts that any member of a project team can understand.

  This has greatly improved our ability to refine iterations and mitigated scenarios. Tornado Charts can also be presented at a summary or WBS level, which has been incredibly useful to us when presenting to senior clients who are solely interested in the results at the top level or project stages. For those in the project delivery team who are interested in the detail, you can also generate these charts at activity level - with the same level of functionality. Alternatively, the Tornado charts can be presented to show the contribution of each risk and uncertainty including the impacted activities. This allows us to provide our clients with a clear understanding of the impact of individual risks and overall uncertainty and helps them to focus attention on specific areas of the project that either need to be mitigated or managed.

  What’s more, this functionality is available both at the overall project level or on individual activities and milestones allowing a true understanding of what is impacting specific parts of a project.

• Risk Exposure Curve

  Building on the understandable results theme, the Risk Exposure ‘S’ curve is a key feature that is used on all our projects. The histogram displays both a cumulative and non-cumulative chart showing the distribution of duration, cost, float, and start or finish dates for the project or individually selected activities or milestones. There is the ability to graphically plot contingency (the difference between a deterministic value and a P-value) at any given value allowing contingency values to be easily identifiable to all.

• Scenario comparisons

  A key benefit has been the ability to show our clients how different factors impact on the risk exposure across different scenarios, comparing these risk scenarios to make more realistic schedules and cost estimates and help with making smarter decisions to keep projects moving forward.

• Critical Risk Drivers

  We’ve also been able to better highlight how risk models impact the critical path, with top critical paths shown along with the percentage of times a specific occurs. The activities within the critical path are listed and the schedule can even be filtered where necessary.

• Views dates/durations in the schedule

  Risk-impacted dates and durations can be easily shown within the schedule activity view in Acumen, allowing multiple confidence level dates or costs to be shown against specific deliverables in the schedule.

• Cost modelling

  Finally, the best bit is that Acumen has the same comprehensive cost modelling capability, with the same outputs available as with schedule, including Risk Exposure charts, exposure comparison functions and the Tornado charts. Cost models can either be run independently of the schedule or using our preferred method of combined schedule and cost modelling to ensure the impact of schedule prolongation gets factored into the cost estimate. This allows us to provide our clients with a comprehensive risk modelling service with a standardised data set for them to understand across both schedule and cost.

• Acumen Fuse – Schedule Diagnostics

  A major benefit of using Acumen Risk is that it includes Acumen Fuse, Deltek’s market leading schedule diagnostic product. This provides us with the ability to check schedules are of sufficient quality for risk analysis against a comprehensive list of criteria including industry standards such as DCMA 14 point. This has enabled us to develop the highest standard of modelling schedules for our clients and ensure that time isn’t wasted running models on schedules that aren’t of sufficient quality to produce reliable outputs.

• Acumen 360 - Accelerator

  Also included is Acumen 360, also known as the ‘Accelerator’, this is a schedule scenario tool capable of assisting planners with schedule acceleration (or deceleration) and recovery effortlessly, in seconds.

  The truth is that in the world of project controls, the pressure to complete projects faster and cheaper will always be there. However, using software such as Acumen 360 has helped us to make the task of producing what-ifs and accelerating a schedule to meet contractually-driven requirements less difficult and time-consuming.

Conclusion

The above features helped our team to develop more realistic risk adjusted schedules and cost estimates that are customisable to an individual project.  Acumen Risk provides our clients with highly visual and simple to understand outputs, helping project teams to make more informed decisions and increase efficiency. Due to Acumen, we no longer feel like clients have to be risk specialists to understand the data, and any member of the project team can use the results - whether that be across schedule or cost.

What started off as a genuine appreciation for the excellence of their product has now flourished into a partnership that is beneficial to both organisations. Deltek clearly shares many of the same values as us so the partnership felt like the right thing to do, not just for our team, but also to help us provide our clients with expertise and delivery where they need it most.

For more information on how we can help you protect your project, get in touch today.