Capital Projects

Challenge

Government agencies, construction firms and other organizations responsible for selecting and managing large construction, infrastructure and other types of capital projects are under increased pressure and scrutiny to deliver capital projects on time, within budget and without incident.  At the same time, up-to-date and precise project cost and status reporting is required to assess and complete the project. 

Often capital projects are managed using Earned Value Management (EVM). EVM relates resource planning to schedules and to technical cost and schedule requirements, requiring all work to be planned, budgeted, and scheduled in time-phased increments. Earned Value Management metrics are often mandated as the reporting methodology by project managers.  However, managing capital project schedules and costs and providing detailed EVM reports without powerful tools is labor intensive, time consuming and prone to error.

Now, more than ever, the capital project governance team must effectively manage the portfolio selection and stage gate processes. In addition, senior managers must also monitor project risk by utilizing portfolio dashboards to analyze a large portfolio of high value projects. 

Project teams implementing capital projects need to manage financial resources as well as human resources.  The project team members must collaborate effectively and must manage time spent on the project by submitting accurate labor hours.  Time submittal and management processes in many organizations are manual, ad hoc and inefficient, making it difficult and labor intensive to share information with subcontractors and report project status to the sponsors.

The lack of powerful software solutions severely limits the number of construction and public works capital projects that can be managed by an organization.  Project managers must often make heroic efforts to stay on schedule, within budget, and deliver within project scope. 

Solution

Microsoft’s Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution helps organizations capture capital project requests in a central repository, standardize the development of business cases, and select and deliver portfolios that align with the organizations strategic priorities.

Realize Project Value

Earned Value Management (EVM) metrics can be used to provide industry standard reporting across the project portfolio.  A wide range of near-real-time reporting and analysis capabilities are provided to help ensure executives gain visibility and control across the all project portfolios. Collaborative risk management helps mitigate incidents, and issue management capabilities aid in the resolution of incidents and minimize their cost.  By having an appropriate amount of near real-time summary and detailed project information available on the web, capital projects become transparent to the stakeholders. 

Understand the Capital Project Portfolio

The Microsoft EPM Solution helps organizations align capital project investment decisions with organizational priorities.  Using Microsoft® Office Project Portfolio Server 2007, all potential capital projects can be compared with standardized business cases including estimated costs, estimated benefits, estimated risks and valuation metrics.  These proposed capital projects can then be selected to optimize the value to the stakeholders while working within the organization’s budget and resource constraints. Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 also empowers management to control the governance phases while easily viewing capital project portfolio dashboards thereby managing the portfolio efficiently and effectively.

In addition, by using Microsoft® Office Project Server 2007, selected capital projects can be effectively planned, executed and managed to best realize the potential value and abide by budgetary limits.  Complex capital project schedules can be efficiently planned and updated using powerful project scheduling tools thereby saving time and costs.  The Microsoft EPM solution enables project team members to easily report hours worked and task status, thereby aiding the project manager in keeping the project on time and within budget and scope.

Manage Capital Project Performance

Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007, in conjunction with Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition, can be utilized to provide advanced analytic reporting and analysis of the capital project portfolio.  Also, Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 provides an overall capital project portal environment for information sharing and collaboration among all project stakeholders, subcontractors and other constituents. These capabilities greatly aid the organization in keeping projects on track. Overall, the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Solution enables organizations to provide the best value to their constituents by selecting the optimal capital project portfolio, managing the project portfolio effectively and reporting transparently.