Integrated Project Plan a must for Construction Projects

Life cycle of a Construction Project from its inception till completion involves many disciplines, phases and stages. Even if concurrent engineering principles are capable of bringing them all together, but in order to share information among project stakeholders in more efficient way, it needs a common and shared environment. The shared environment should be capable of supporting various needs of all involved stakeholders.

In a Construction Project multiple, sub-teams and cross-functional groups are working simultaneously, therefore there is always a risk of discrete project plans popping up within the same project. These are typically fractured, incomplete and create all sorts of problem for Project Managers. One key to project success is avoiding these fractured plans and having one Integrated Project Plan.

The use of one integrated plan is a far better approach. The integrated plan should start from project inception and must cover each and every activity till its handing over. It gives the entire team an ability to compile every activity and milestone under a single project management methodology, with one schedule to follow, track and update from beginning till completion of every task. Without a shared strategy to guide all stakeholder actions, projects become cumbersome and difficult to manage.

Adopting an integrated plan may be new concept for many project team, and Project Managers may wonder if the benefits are worth the effort to move away from our current approach of planning. That’s the time when they need to go back and think about where project have encountered problems in the past, and then consider what an integrated project plan can do for project.

An integrated plan provides all stakeholders a single strategy to follow. Difficulties occur when all these different stakeholders have their own version of the project’s schedule. An integrated plan eliminates all ambiguity, improperly scheduled activities, inefficient resource allocation, and ensures each and every stakeholder is on the same platform and are working toward achieving the same completion dates.

Use of one integrated plan also enables more efficient and accurate monitoring of project progress. A few small delays sometime seem less significant, but those isolated incidents when add up leads to missed deadlines and a huge cost implication when everything is said and done. If multiple plans are in use by the project’s stakeholders, it’s almost sure that an isolated delay will go unnoticed and will lead to difficulties across the other sub-groups. In order to align each and every sub-group with the project’s target completion date, it’s must that Project Managers/Planners have a way to track progress of every activity within the timeline. If a delay occurs in one single activity, they can reschedule the task flow within the integrated plan either by shifting work or compressing the schedule.