Features of using Microsoft Project in design institutes. Features of using Microsoft Project in design institutes Working with design institutes

Planning of project work is a clear plan of action for the whole company and each individual employee for a certain period, which sets the development and expansion of the business as a goal. Design is a series of activities and accompanying documentation that gives clear definitions of each industry segment under consideration: time reserves, material costs, efficiency and liquidity of the entire business area.

Objectives, essence and definition

Implementation of the project at literally all stages will require clear actions, a coordinated and consistent plan. The project management planning system at the first stages is developed (in a conceptual sense) by the head, the owner of the company / business. At the stage of developing a development concept by a project manager (or a development plan department), the main concepts and goals of the direction are taken into account:

the duration of the entire project implementation plan;
the length of each element;
the amount of resources required to achieve the goals: financial capabilities, labor reserves, time reserve;
the volume of involved construction or design organizations;
delivery time for materials, components, equipment;
liquidity of the activities being carried out.

The main task and fundamental goal of planning the design of processes in management is to draw up a model for the implementation of a business idea in the desired concept.

Each procedure in the activities carried out has its own responsible person who is responsible for the implementation of the assigned tasks in the required time frame. In most cases, it is the time standards and their observance that play a fundamental role in the implementation of all the most profitable ideas in a given period of time. Therefore, the main role is assigned to the study of time frames for implementation and forecast of the industry's liquidity in the future.

The main stages of the implementation of planning of project activities

Any project activity is designed to be implemented in a certain time period. So, the most important factor for the implementation of the plan is taking into account the liquidity of the direction in the future, its profitability and even unprofitableness.

Goals and objectives of planning in mandatory must be clear, since only in this case it is possible to proceed with the implementation of the next stage - the formation of the characteristics of the project.

However, the entire process of implementing the plan can, for convenience, be divided into several stages:

building a concept, its goals;
the sequence of works is determined;
the resources that will need to be used are determined;
description of the project, its composition;
determination of the sequence of works;
the basis of the project budget (estimate) is drawn up;
compilation of all results into one document (business / plan);
implementation, implementation of the plan;
miscalculation of profitability based on the results of the plan being implemented.

The planning results are presented in the form of graphs, comparative analyzes that carry a pyramidal structure with clear actions at every stage of its implementation.

7 principles of planning project activities

For the result to be effective, it is important in the development and preparation of planning project activities take into account 7 basic principles.

Principle # 1: Purposefulness

The planning of a specific plan should be based on the main goal: why it is necessary to implement each of the planning stages, what is its task, essence and need.

Principle # 2: Consistency

Systemic codependency of each segment of the implemented stage. Since planning is a set of separate stages, it is important to determine not only the tasks for each of them, but also to ensure the consistency of the effective interaction of each element. It is important to understand that failure to do so in one element will create “glitches” throughout the planning organization.

Principle # 3: Comprehensiveness

Application different methods in the design should not affect the connection of each of the elements. Considering this principle, it is important to consider individual characteristics each direction, introducing it at the required time interval.

Principle # 4: Security

Of course, the fundamental principle for the implementation of any ideas is the availability of the necessary resources of the material plan. Without funding, it will not be possible to implement any, even the most modest project. Therefore, before deciding on the implementation of certain plans, it is worth initially calculating material support, if necessary, attracting an investor.

Principle # 5: Priority

As a rule, such a principle is considered when there is a possibility of implementing several directions, different in their specificity. So, the priority goals determine the most important points that correspond to the principles of the concept of development of the industry or the entire business.

Principle # 6: Safety

First of all, this principle is based on material security, that is, on the miscalculation of risks that will not make it possible to bring all ideas to life. Not only financial analytical studies are taken into account, but also market forecast, analysis of the effectiveness of the expert department.

Principle # 7: Time

Implementation of specific ideas is most beneficial if there is a demand for supply. To implement the plan, it is worth considering the approximate time that may be required to implement the planning principles.

Planning management processes: structure

The structure of the implementation of planning ideas is a hierarchical chain of interchangeable disciplines that allow you to solve a variety of organizational issues. The purpose of structuring project planning processes:

the formation of the phasing of the work being carried out (schedule);
show the results of the implemented stages (effective, ineffective);
establishment of control points for the development and implementation of the project;
providing all employees and project management with an objective understanding of what needs to be done right now;
distribution of areas of responsibility;
compilation of an understanding of all the resources used: labor, material, financial.

The design structure is largely determined by the purpose. For example, there may be completely different requirements for goals: one company sets a goal to build 10 houses of 15 floors each, while another company sets a goal to build 10 houses of 10 floors in 5 years. The goals of both companies are different, and therefore the structure will be different and significantly different from each other.

Another scheme

A short vocabulary of concepts that characterize the project planning process:
SSO - structural scheme organizations;
СРР - structure of division (distribution) of works;
SDR - structural decomposition of works.

Structure in the standard format of the project of the planned works:

goal setting;
planning;
creation;
control and possible correction of action at different stages;
presentation;
reflection.

The planned result of project activities can be of a personal, regulatory, cognitive, communicative, material nature.

Types of planning of project activities

Project activity, planning technology and its structuring are also determined by the type of this kind of activity. So, in terms of scale, they distinguish:

microprojects (a narrow form of implementation of an individual initiative project, the scope of which may vary);
small projects (implementation tools with small labor and financial resources, do not need large funding);
megaprojects ( targeted programs, which are basically interconnected with several small or medium projects).

Types of project activities by implementation time:

short-term;
medium-term;
long-term.

The duration of a short-term project can be from six months to two years, while long-term plans are implemented up to 15 years. A project that has achieved its goal is considered to be implemented, until this moment the project plan can be adjusted, the concept of implementation can be revised.

Types of project planning by type of financing (budgetary basis):

sponsorship;
credit or invested;
budget;
charitable.

conclusions

Planning and control of project management in any of these types is carried out by responsible officials. In its general understanding, planning of project activities is an indispensable part of both a developing company and a business from scratch. Without this package documentation to carry out the implementation of the business at the proper level is not possible.

Alexey, hello.

So what does working with design organizations look like? At first glance, everything is simple. We are looking for design institutes, departments of design institutes that are interested in your products. We call, get acquainted, make an appointment, transfer information. It should be noted right away that there is never enough information for designers. Often, more than one person is working on a project. Therefore, the task is to convey the most complete information to all people about your product. It is advisable to transmit information about the product in the form of paper catalogs. In general, the guys are working, the estimators are counting, the customer turns to you :). I told this about a spherical horse in a vacuum.

In practice, the situation is different. Here you can often come across a multitude that come directly from employees of institutions. There may be a certain commitment, and reluctance to change the current supplier due to the fact that it will be necessary to involve human resources (designers, technologists; and the benefit may seem mythical), and so on.

In any case, if your information is in a variety of design institutes, then it clearly will not be worse.

About finding clients, I think that this is not a problem, and you know where to look for them. Also, IMHO, you should pay attention to those companies that have their own design bureaus. I don't know how relevant this is for your product, but it works for me. In particular, this is how I got to know the Moscow RVS (or rather its structural subdivision RM-Energos ... s).

If the company takes part in specialized exhibitions, then inviting employees of the institutes is obligatory... Also, it is necessary to intensify work with institutes before the new year.

Among other things, design institutes (provided that you are on good terms with the performers) can understand what trends are on the market, learn about some new clients.

And now some of my practical work experience (with the amendment that I am in another country :)). As I wrote above, you often come across the interest of the designers. Many people want to work under a marketing contract.

Also, if your product is unknown to a wide range of end consumers then problems can also arise. Typical words of designers: our clients want to see equipment from SchE, ABB, Moeller, Siemens, etc. We do not know what you offer, and neither do our clients. And we are not even talking about the cost of my decision.

Obstacles created by the owner in sending catalogs physically. It's just a toad strangling him. For example, sending 2 catalogs (~ 250 pages each) to Almaty - about $ 35. In general, the type counts money, and wants exports to grow by leaps and bounds (lol). In general, it is easier for a designer to work with local companies than with us (there is only an electronic version from us, and there is no personal contact, and a product with poor marketing in a specific area of the country).

So that's it, briefly. If you have any questions, we can discuss more specifically / in detail.

We always have a large number of fresh, relevant vacancies on our website. Use filters to quickly search for parameters.

For successful employment, it is desirable to have a specialized education, as well as to have the necessary qualities and work skills. First of all, you need to carefully study the requirements of employers in the chosen specialty, then start writing a resume.

You should not send your resume to all companies at the same time. Choose suitable vacancies based on your qualifications and work experience. Let's list the most significant skills for employers that you need to successfully work as a specialist in working with design organizations in Moscow:

Top 7 Key Skills You Need to Have a Job

Also quite often in vacancies there are the following requirements: contracting, B2B sales and sales development.

When preparing for your interview, use this information as a checklist. This will help you not only to please the recruiter, but also to get the desired job!

Analysis of vacancies in Moscow

Based on the analysis of the vacancies published on our website, the indicated starting salary, on average, is 63,511. The average maximum income level (indicated "salary before") is 93 186. It should be borne in mind that the figures given are statistics. The real salary for employment can vary greatly depending on many factors:

Your previous work experience, education
Employment type, work schedule
The size of the company, its industry, brand, etc.

Salary level depending on the work experience of the applicant

Competitiveness and efficiency of the design organization - this super-task is subordinated to the ideas of many articles published in this journal and related publications. In this sense, this article is no exception. Let's make just one introductory remark: everyone understands that the organization in which the management system works effectively achieves success.

This time, the experience of using technologies is considered on the example of an industry design institute, the main products of which are complex projects of industrial technological installations and related infrastructure. The subject of consideration is project management tools.

Among information systems for various purposes, without which it is impossible to imagine the work of a modern design institute, the project management system plays the main role. We believe that only the design organization that provides maximum opportunities to the customer works effectively. And the customer, as is well known, evaluates the work of the designer in the context of his investment projects.

Investment project and its implementation

By an investment project, we mean an undertaken action initiated by a customer-investor and aimed at achieving a certain economic effect through the modernization, expansion or new construction of production facilities. The investment project is being implemented in conditions of time and budget constraints arising from the feasibility study underlying it. Each investment project is a complex of coordinated activities carried out both by contractors and by the customer himself in several areas of activity, namely:

administrative and legal support of the project;
preparation of project technical and economic documentation;
organization of supplies of equipment and components;
construction, installation and commissioning works;
acceptance measures, commissioning, putting on fixed assets.

It is possible to implement an investment project within a given (usually rather tight) time frame only if the listed processes are executed in parallel. For a design institute, this situation means the following:

initial data will be provided by the customer not immediately and not in full, but in parts, already against the background of design work;
the customer, without waiting for the complete completion of the design work, will demand the issuance of certain parts project documentation.

An even more difficult situation arises when several institutes are involved in design work and, accordingly, an organization of information exchange is required not only with the customer, but also with subcontractors. The investment project is being implemented within the specified time frames, subject to clear coordination of the actions of all participants, based on the general schedule for the execution of work and private schedules of each of the partners.

Interested in the successful implementation of their projects, the customer sooner or later comes to an understanding that he needs the initial information for his own information systems financial planning and budgeting, logistics. As a result, the customer makes specific requirements for project documentation: estimates and specifications of equipment should be issued by the designer not just in electronic, but in a relational format, that is, immediately as a database.

Design as part of an investment project

It is clear that information Technology- DBMS, CAD, EDMS (electronic document management) - increase the efficiency of individual operations, however, the progress of project development as a whole depends on the availability of automation tools much less than on interaction with the customer and related organizations.

The branch design institute, whose products are technical documentation for new industrial facilities, always works under the conditions of an external investment project. Therefore, the designer must prepare his own internal plan of coordinated measures aimed at satisfying the requests of the external investment project in the conditions of the given financing and the established deadlines for the issuance of parts of the project documentation.

From the point of view of the project organization, the following tasks of project management are relevant:

scheduling events of external information exchange;
planning of events of internal information exchange;
planning of design work;
planning the workload of engineering personnel;
planning the physical development of design documentation;
periodic accounting of the actual progress of design work, both in terms of documentation and information exchange, followed by replanning of the remaining part until completion.

Scheduling of design work and events

Here and below, practical solutions applied by the authors at the Lengiproneftekhim Institute for work on a deep oil refining complex for the Kirishinefteorgsintez Production Association. Project management system - Open Plan.

Let's consider the planning procedure. Work decomposition (simplified diagram):

1. External events of the project.

1.1. Incoming information from the customer and subcontractors.

1.1.1. Sections of the project.

1.2. Outgoing information.

1.2.1. Sections of the project.

2. Subdivisions of the Institute.

2.1. Sections of the project.

2.1.1. Incoming events of internal information exchange.

2.1.2. Design work.

2.1.3. Outgoing events of the internal information exchange.

External events of the project are included in the calendar plan according to the data of bilateral documents and official correspondence, where the dates of these events are assigned. This section should include all events involving both the receipt by the institute of initial data and the issuance of intermediate and final results of work.

Internal information exchange is initially planned on the basis of the current regulations for design work, and then it is specified in accordance with the characteristics of each designed facility.

All events of information exchange (both external and internal) are treated as project milestones, have no duration, and resources are not tied to them.

The scope of design work is determined individually for each section of the project in such a way as to meet the following requirements:

the number of works should be minimal, but at the same time reflect different technological stages, if any (calculations, modeling, selection of equipment, development of schemes, etc.);
titles of works should, if possible, reflect the content of project documents, which will subsequently be tied to them;
works should have predecessors among incoming events, followers among outgoing ones.

It is advisable to avoid specifying direct links between activities in a section, adhering to the following scheme: incoming section event and design work and outgoing section event.

If two project works in the schedule have a connection of the “end - start” type and there are no outgoing events between them, then the structure in this node is unreasonably complicated and such a pair of works should be combined.

The duration of individual design work is determined by two independent approaches:

resource - by the number and qualifications of performers;
calendar - when a period of time determined by previous and subsequent events can be assigned to work.

Project resources

There are two types of resources, the movement of which can be taken into account by the schedule: engineering staff"; "Resource generated - cost". We say "can be taken into account" for the reason that working with resources complicates tasks by an order of magnitude work planning and a reflection of actual progress. For a project organization embarking on the implementation of project management tools, it makes sense to initially debug work with the actual schedule.

Before assigning performers to design work, a resource structure should be prepared that reflects organizational structure the institute itself, namely: the composition of departments and specialized groups, the number of specialists by skill levels (chief, leading, senior, privates). The qualifying composition of performers for each work is determined simultaneously with the composition of the works. As a result, information should be generated about the project's need for specialists distributed over time, about the distributed and total labor intensity of the project. If the design institute approves the practice scheduling of all design work, taking into account the need for resources, then such an organization will receive powerful tool management based on resource planning.

Even more difficult task represents the reflection in the schedule of the dynamics of the development of project documentation. The assignment for design work of a cost resource or production reflects the fact that the customer expects from the designer, first of all, design documentation. The cost of the project can be expressed in abstract units (for example, in the mastered labor intensity), if the investor and the management of the institute are only interested in relative indicators, but it is possible to plan and develop the real cost of the project, which gives the project organization the opportunity to perform an economic analysis of its activities.

In practice, there may also be such a state of affairs when, in the terms of the contract, the customer, as a means of monitoring the progress of the project development, provides for monthly reporting by the institute on the actual development of project documentation in comparison with the planned one (as well as the provision of data on the actual labor costs for the project in comparison with planned).

the structure of the institute;
the structure of the design sections issued by the institute;
a list of documents included in each section, indicating the share of the cost of each document in the cost of the section;
a list of stages of document readiness (ready conceptually, ready for viewing, issued by the contractor, issued by the department, approved by the GUI, ready to be sent to the customer);
comparison of the percentage of readiness of each type of document to the specified stages;
the composition of the documentation specific project, distribution of cost by documents;
a table of links between documents and activities of the schedule.

Documents are linked to schedule activities in a many-to-many relationship, indicating the degree of maturity that any document achieves upon completion of the project work. Thus, we determine the increase in the cost of the project for each job and, assigning this value to the job as a cost resource, we obtain the dynamics of the increase in the cost of the generated documentation.

This approach is based on the ability provided by the Open Plan system to store all project data in tables of a user-selected DBMS with an open and well-documented data structure.

Accounting for the actual development of design documentation is a special case of the problem in which it is required to obtain the planned and actual distribution in time of indicators that do not have their own reference to the time axis. This problem occurs in any subject area at the junction technological planning and the economy. We also use a similar approach to determine the planned development indicators and costs in capital construction when planning the same investment projects.

Accounting for the actual progress of design work

Project management is just beginning with the development of calendar and resource plans. Throughout the entire period of the design work at the institute, the procedure for collecting and processing data on the actual progress of design work should be carried out monthly. Its value is determined by the progress of related documents, which, in turn, is revealed by filling out special survey forms by the heads of design departments. Data on the progress of documents is devoid of subjectivity, since the assessment is possible only for a few fixed stages.

Experience shows that the communication events foreseen in the schedule are progressing (or not progressing) quite independently of the design work and that the actual status of the planned events should be updated. When performing the listed actions, the picture of the state of the project will be formed quite objectively both in terms of actual production and in terms of the remaining time of work.

Integration of project management tools into the information infrastructure of a design institute

The project management system must also interact with other information systems operating in the design organization, primarily with the document management system.

From an electronic document management (EDM) perspective (sometimes referred to as project data management), a project document is characterized by a route and life cycle. The route reflects the movement of the document through the departments of the institute, and life cycle- change of document status. Now it becomes clear how much in common in the tasks of document flow and project management and how significantly these systems enrich each other:

a route is the movement of a document for works and events in the schedule;
life cycle - a reflection of the stages of the document's readiness.

The project management system provides the workflow system with data on the planned timing of the movement of a document or change its status, and the workflow, in turn, reports actual data, which is reflected in the calculation of progress indicators. If such interaction is based on a common DBMS, then the work of the institute on the project can be analyzed according to the ratio of the planned and actual state of affairs.

Preparation of the institute for participation in the tender for the development of the next project

Especially responsible for a design organization is the moment when it makes a decision to participate in a project or receives an order for the development of a new project.

If the institute has introduced the practice of calendar and resource planning of work, then it becomes possible to analyze a new project from the point of view of its feasibility in terms of timing and performers. In order for this analysis to be carried out quickly and without distraction from the work of specialists in departments, it is advisable to have pre-developed templates. calendar plans design of typical objects. Of course, the design work of such a template should contain data on the need for engineering and technical resources - then combining the new project with the ongoing ones will show what type of resources and in what calendar period an overload is possible.

Conclusion

Summing up, let us note the advantages that a design institute receives by implementing the methodology and project management tools:

mutual understanding with the customer, the ability to provide him with quality new service- not just technical documentation, but an information basis for managing an investment project;
approach to participation in the tender for the implementation of the project, based on reliable estimates of their own capabilities;
readiness to provide engineering services for any customer, even if the availability of project management technologies for the designer is an essential condition.

"CAD and Graphics" 11 "2002