[speaker001:] So, if we could come up. I'll sit at the back probably, in the back corner there. Basically if you could come up er, one group at a time explain er the of your programme and the reasons behind your programme, the assumptions that you've made. Even the difficulties you've had if you want to go about it, where the central problems are if you think there are any particular ones. Er, if people have any questions on individual presentations then I think we ought to take those questions while the group is up here. So, if you could er, however you present it, just wait behind in case there are any questions where people need clarification.... And when we've finished er I'll come and hopefully pull everything together and take this onto the next stage which is the evaluation of the plan. You've got as long as it, it takes but it won't take, I should think, more than a few minutes for each group er to do their presentation. So, Group One, if I could ask you to... come to your...
[speaker002:] Do you want us to go through, everybody knows about
[speaker001:] Well I don't think they do because we've got here some people who have done the er some people have done an hotel and I think it would be best to explain the whole thing to them
[speaker002:] We haven't got an...
[speaker001:] Oh they've all got But we have got...
[speaker002:] Okay then, erm six tanks erm... reinforced concrete er two metres square by about two metres high with er on the top. Er basically we call this area... and the area here we've got er and for the actual set up. Er the problem with the job is it's very tight inside there so we've had to use cranes and basically poured concrete er ours is being done by a separate sub-contractor. Er few problems with the job before we started or during the job er, come back to us for a six so far so we have to What we will do is drop them down and Er another problem with the job is we're about three week's behind er arranged for them to come in on Monday.... we had to pull forward... it's not due so we've got er... so we've given them... three days to You see when we worked out the numbers for the... we were given all the, the allowances, the rates et cetera, et cetera, we worked the forecast through and seen huge amounts of time given for... which the assumption is that it's all done by hand, the job these cranes so the resources how much money had been spent.... Here, the concrete... Yeah that but we haven't got the resources to do it yet... We've just got a couple of assumptions...... At, together at the beginning The tractor and trailer is generally helping moving between cranes loading back and forth, so many areas... So,... unless you want us to go through this literally point by point, it's question time.
[speaker001:] Anybody got any questions?...
[speaker003:] One problem very small area that's why working at the same time. Er... another problem we had as well is we had all going at the same time in a very close area as well.... Er, when it comes to the wall shutters seven metres high er top and bottom That's right.
[speaker001:] That's right. erm do you identify
[speaker003:] Erm, basically what's in the programme but
[speaker001:] Erm, in your plan you, you seem to have like two objectives One was
[speaker003:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] and the other was, which I don't think you said Did you find that a particular problem?
[speaker003:] Yes we had to get them all into the tanks otherwise
[speaker001:] Okay. Right, thanks very much indeed
[speaker002:] Sir, when I do present to each training do you think that's
[speaker001:] I, I think it would give erm I, what you would probably do would be to put those three things
[speaker002:] Yeah. Oh, but that's all right with you
[speaker001:] here's your work, get on with it but I, I do understand what has happened here.... Okay, thank you very much, I, I like that.... Two, please?...
[Alan:] Erm, good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is Alan and this is Terry and we're Group Two. We're going to talk to you about er Farm project and its basic problems which we had to put a programme together and er make the job
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[Alan:] Erm you've seen this before so
[Terry:] our construction... but the only to get there we had to squeeze through a gap this way and come round...
[Alan:] Now... we just have a couple of... minor problems to start with. Here we go... [clears throat] and that is that, up to now, erm we've only made six beams, we've got to reach, for these tanks, we want to make sixty and the problem is we're on stop now redesign the whole thing and... going on the present rate of production we're going to go up to about week twenty-eight. Twelve weeks over the time that is allotted in the programme and to do that we're gonna have to produce the twice the rate that we're doing now. So, that's just a little summary and Terry will fill you in more.
[Terry:] [clears throat]... Er, what we can do...... [clears throat]... If the figures are worth... eleven and a half days... erm seventeen, seventeen days. That's for the... We actually calculated them by using the unit quantity...
[Alan:] Now, ow! We decided one of our first things we had to do was decide on a sequence of construction for these tanks. [clears throat] We tried to keep it as logical as possible and er, there you have it. unless you have a base to work off of started to do, once we started doing the er, the walls take the scaffold down out of the way and to release some area off our stock pile we decided to back build so that by the time that we'd done [clears throat] six tanks we'd got half our area taken up by all that material excavated and just flip back to the drawing here... what's going to happen is that stockpile here. While we're down this area and we've got the cranes sited in here to do these tanks this way and the pipes coming in this way and the tanks construction going on, we need to release this sort of area to be able to get everything so there's more work to do. [clears throat]... Now, what we've decided to do on the... formwork for the tanks is to construct er a square frame into formwork er into one [clears throat] hold everything in place while we pour the concrete... Onto the programme... oh there it is.... Erm... just er presentation of the programme of the way and the, the way we tried to get into everything. You know at the beginning of er week six? I mean, sorry, week er thirteen that er base six had been poured and therefore so the first thing we did was to get base six as soon as possible. Erm we also know that base five formwork is up so we started on base five as soon as we can, put as many resources into it as we can we mentioned earlier that er... having five hundred people in there made life quite congested but we decided the more people that helped in there the better and er our objective was to get the er wall steelwork up. It was gonna take quite a while so erm we got the base five as quickly as possible so that we had as many hands on the job at once and er... we had some formwork getting spare so we decided to make them useful and [clears throat] it's a case of... we'd got six tanks to do and if we had a breakage we can't afford to stop the programme so as a er, a standby, just in case, we may never use these we might three or four uses out of but if we do have a breakage we want to be able to replace that straight away so have a spare set and you've got nothing more to do and er... get the walls, get the er, the back build operation right at the very end, ongoing, till you've got the waterproofers in er get the waterproofing up to the five meter level and er get the back build in as quickly as possible. We tried to keep the scaffolders er... occupied, doing their scaffolding bit accurate but safe everybody's gonna be climbing down on that. We've allowed a day for safety checks somewhat excessive but er there's always something that you find on scaffolding that's not quite right. You're not allowed to work on it and er that's about it really, our programme, we've decided to er start the pipe at the first position away from the... tank construction and we've, we've set out, we employed a concrete layer and to lay out the pipes while we're doing nothing and continue on with the so that while this gang is actually laying there's only er six people in total. Two actually doing the pipe-laying, quite heavy pipes er that's it really....
[speaker001:] Thank you very much indeed. Any questions from anybody?
[Alan:] Well, what we've decided to do is er... know what to do and er this, this is the gang this is maybe exaggerated if you don't have three people on the bottom... if you get... Any thing else? Erm the, the frame that we've, that we will have on site
[speaker001:] You'll have one frame?
[Alan:] We'll have, have one frame on site to start with, with the er steel er around about... What we've er planned to do is site the crane and then we can do all the formwork and shut the in these a bit nearer. Erm delivery for the steel will come in and we need a crane to offload and a crane when we're offloading onto the tractor trailer Erm, well it is a mobile crane so er One crane will be pretty much fully employed and er if it's busy down here we can always bring the, the mobile crane
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[Alan:] Still mobile though Yes. Yes, yes it'll probably take quite a while actually. Erm... here we go.
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[Alan:] It takes er one and a half days to do the base and er eight, eight days and eight Mondays to er... to do the walls but two hundred and four, four days in total can't stop the concrete....
[speaker001:] Very good. Thank you very much.
[Alan:] Yes, okay....
[Terry:] Don't cheer at once. [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] ... Do you want the main programme? Chris, do you want the main
[Chris:] Yes I do.
[speaker001:] programme? That one?
[Chris:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Okay. Do you want anything else for that er
[Chris:] Just a layout that's all.
[speaker001:] A layout. This one?
[Chris:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Okay.... They've gone off!...
[Chris:] Right, morning everyone. We're Group five.... We're, working on an hotel project... I think... and we're up to week thirteen on the programme... and I think you might be able to see on week thirteen and given the information we've got at the moment as well, it means we're gonna be working on three floors at once so it was the first thing to identify.... Working on three floors at once we decided to we needed to continue work on the seventh floor before moving up to the eighth and so on to the ninth by the information given us in the... er... we calculated that the men that were to get onto the programme by the end of the week calculated the production rate for various gangs to see how fast... so... that's how it was looking. Starting work on the seventh floor and allocating gangs accordingly.... But you can see, you can see already that the production rate is no where near good enough to meet the programme... and if it's only on the first part of the seventh floor, bearing in mind we've got to be working on three floors at the same time, we're only on the first part of the seventh floor and already we've got overlaps on day... Granted, it's a major problem. If you carry on I'll show you... the situation worsens as we've attempted... Carrying on on the seventh floor, all the, all the other gangs are still employed working in the previous area. We haven't got enough... Nice to get some work started on the eighth floor because of the different activities... But then again with the activities that are carrying on on the seventh floor we can't... By the time we get round to the ninth... pretty desperate. We've only really got work for the... the labourers in the form, even labourers aren't employed up to the ninth floor cos that work's already been completed. meant to be moving onto the tenth and eleventh floor it only takes them a short time to save time on that or, or cut down on your labour as usual. There's no need for them to be but there again it's a desperate situation... That's it.
[speaker001:] Okay. Thanks very much.
[Chris:] Yeah. What sort of gap? Yeah... we put the... got it tiled... got these, sorry?
[Aveline:] Have you got it all tiled up there?
[Chris:] Wall tiles there now.
[Aveline:] Is it? How do we know whether you
[Chris:] We've assumed, we haven't got any information given to us to tell us where so I've made an assumption... we've made an assumption that
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[Chris:] and we're, and then, and then I'll start in, in room one... on the seventh floor.
[Aveline:] Where are they going?
[Chris:] Where are they going after that?
[Aveline:] Yeah. Are they just
[Chris:] So, on the seventh floor the floor tiles are next and the next job they're doing is on the eighth which is more floor tiling.... What they're doing before or what they're doing afterwards?
[speaker001:] Both.
[Chris:] Wouldn't be able to read it. The wouldn't be able to read it.
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[Chris:] Well I'm not going to. I'm not going to. But I can show you, I can show you the eighth floor and show you where the gang... where is the eighth floor?...
[speaker001:] three, four, seven,
[Chris:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] and go on to four, eight, three.
[Chris:] Yeah. Yeah. Ah, but they can't start, we can't start But we don't know, we haven't that information. We've got to make, we've got make some assumption. Yeah... we don't know which numbers. Yeah.
[speaker001:] I, I don't know
[Chris:] No it's erm, on, on Monday, on Monday morning they could've been working
[speaker001:] Another room?
[Chris:] Yes.
[speaker001:] Yep....
[Chris:] But it couldn't be working in the room if we had control of the numbers though. Couldn't be working in the room if we had control of the numbers....
[speaker009:] It would've been best with a bigger piece, bigger programme because then we could've it was easy to see where we were slipping
[Chris:] If we had started on week one, where if we'd had complete programme information up to week thirteen when, that'd be more complete wouldn't it? Well that's it, yeah. Yeah. No, they're, they are... complete up to programme by Wednesday dinner time. They don't do anything more than the, than necessitation to, to Well they can do. [LAUGHTER] They can do if they want or they can progress onto other rooms to get time back that way, but... anyway, can't you? we have er a target to meet on the programme of X percentage time and they will meet that far Wednesday afternoon so we haven't continued and shown I take your point. In reality they would be, they'd be moving onto another area. But then we don't know which other areas are ready, do we?
[speaker009:] ...
[speaker001:] Right. I like, I like that... Any other questions?... No?... Thank you very much indeed. Good.... Group four next?
[speaker009:] This was Ian by the way.
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]...
[Tom:] Yeah, morning, everyone. We're Group four looking at the er, the hotel complex which has been explained before hand.... Erm... we approached the first project we were looking at the information we had available... er, looking at the... strength of the work... a lot of information [cough]... As you can see the er... and, and looking at the... er... a definite lack of.........
[speaker001:] comments?
[Tom:] Yeah, sure.... No, we've had the main update they should know what
[speaker001:] Fine. Fine, okay laid anybody else off?
[Tom:] No, we've managed to keep everybody else in er, in work.... Yeah, yeah.
[speaker001:] My eyesight is not what it used to be. Er where do they go?
[Tom:] They go up to floor eight
[speaker001:] Why can't they... Good.... Any, anything else?... Everything else
[Tom:] Yeah we got, we got all four hours a night.
[speaker001:] Sorry?
[speaker005:] Where did you get from?...
[Tom:] Er, from the information we was given. Erm... the
[speaker005:] It depends how narrowed it down a bit So you just Yeah
[Tom:] Yeah from other jobs we've done....
[speaker001:] Yep, that's good. Pardon? ... thank you very much indeed.... Group Three......
[Aveline:] Hello, Everybody...
[Tom:] Well, what we did was we... what we did was we erm found the alarm system to try and calculate some reasonable output rates erm but what we found was the output rates seemed incredibly low using based on the completion that they have got So what we was we erm took the nine week's work that they'd done and... erm plus they'd obviously based our output rates on that erm just for a little example, using the allowances we haven't got whereas actually we'd been calculating it on what they hadn't worked so, that was basically what we... So... moving on to the actual short-term programme...
[Aveline:] Okay. Rather than looking at the proposal we decided that it was so that's what we did really and that's why, if you have a look down there right, so all we're doing then we're working through the resources and allocating them room numbers erm and then when that's done so that's what we did for each of the little rooms.
[Tom:] Yeah, but basically from, from that programme all, all the er, you can see all the resources were really being used all week and, but I had a problem when we came to do the bedrooms... that er, you can there, we ran out of work for the decorators to do... er... removing this thing, once you've removed and then I managed to squeeze in, but where the second decorator's erm up to room twenty-three but rather than erm have just one gang than, and not, not using as many as the resources as we possibly could I let them gave the second gang a few rooms that they could actually squeeze in without interrupting I've let them do up to room twenty-three and then and then basically the carpenting and they have to come in after everybody else has done what they Monday morning basically we just decided that we really needed more resources the... earlier sequence of events to, to get so we were getting to so... whether we've been given...
[Aveline:] I did the erm it's a bit tricky to describe where with the active areas because you haven't got room
[Tom:] decorators.
[Aveline:] Yeah, we hadn't got time
[Tom:] And we didn't do this
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER] Too tricky!... Is that it?
[Aveline:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Thanks very much. I thought about that
[Tom:] On the basis of our calculation
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] Erm, could I, could I on, on the er diagram concerned
[Aveline:] Well, you can have a look. Right, we've got erm...
[Tom:] Wednesdays Sorry, Tuesday afternoon.
[speaker005:] from three to er twenty-eight. Have you got your purse?
[Aveline:] Well the erm, oh.
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER] Saved by the bell! [LAUGHTER]... [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] I think, I think in fact you're, you're not having the problems that we're having where it's very difficult so you've got er a really nice representation but haven't quite gone far enough.
[Aveline:] Cos we did actually, we went to before we went, putting the things together making sure that we weren't starting the next activity until the, the rooms would be finished. However, when we decided this morning to change the whole way of presentation, yeah, I was [LAUGHTER] just getting along to that. [] Erm, is it probably that the numbers
[speaker001:] All right, I, I accept that, but basically
[Aveline:] Yeah, well if we had, if we had of had more time we could've, like, written each individual room but really I just put the numbers down quickly just to, to demonstrate There was one
[speaker001:] Is it the same sort of thing?
[Aveline:] I wanted to
[speaker001:] Okay
[Tom:] The resources were broken down also into groups er, a gang per room. Whereas really, then if you have bathroom, they might as well be working in that same bedroom at the same time, whereas we had two separate gangs.
[speaker001:] Where do you think
[Tom:] I mean bearing in mind that all the resources were broken down presumably the were separate gangs we couldn't really make Erm.
[Aveline:] They were definitely coming, weren't they, for the electricals?
[speaker005:] Electricals Yeah....
[speaker001:] ... Good. Thank you very much indeed. Thank, thank you everybody, very well done. Erm, do you want to get a coffee before we start again? Yes.... We've switched the recorder on so we're gonna start.... Thank you for those presentations, I thought they were very good. I thought that the thought of, er, the thoughts gone into your erm... plans and your presentation was much greater than we've had on previous courses. I think you've been a lot more conscientious and got a lot er, potentially a lot more out of it. I'd like to spend a few minutes now trying to pull that together and then go onto how we evaluate these plans, because you've all produced these and wouldn't you like to know how good they are and how bad they are? Can you tell how good they are and how bad they are? Er, quite often on real projects people produce these plans and they get out and work to that and never had to pause to think, this is a good one, this is a bad one. Can we improve it? Does it need improving?... [LAUGHTER] Electronics was never my strong point. They hadn't invented electronics when I was [LAUGHTER] Still had one?
[speaker005:] Wireless.
[speaker001:] Wireless? Yeah, still had wireless.... Could I... take er, a minute and, and just try and look at the steps that you've gone through and I, I tried to write down as you were... doing it, giving your presentation, the steps which I think everybody eventually went through either formally or informally and I think if we look at these steps you'll agree yes, I needed that and I did that or, we didn't do it formally. Er, step one, I think, is assess the current state.... Where were we? And some of you had difficulty doing this erm, I think one of the hotel er groups said to me, I didn't know which rooms had been done. Well, we needed to know which rooms had been done. Another group just said, they were rooms one through ten, and er one of the tank farm group said, we didn't know exactly where we were but this was... I think the assumptions that Group two told me were er, were about that. Is that right? I can't remember. So we have to assess the current state and if we didn't know then in our particular example, cos if we hadn't made the room numbers had been done. Er... and thi this lead us to a list of things to do.... Is that right? No, you may have said, ah, I've got room this to do, I've got this base to do, this base formwork base, erm,thi this wall er reinforcement to do. So in, in both projects I think we had to do that first step. Er, we had to get the number of resources.... If only I could spell resources, number of resources. Now, everybody had to do that. Er, there you said I'd got three formwork gangs or four formwork gangs six a gang er and here you said I'd got so many so we had to do that. They weren't any good by themselves er, these things because I... the other thing which you had to get from somewhere was output rates.... How good were people at erecting er wall formwork or fixing base steel? How long did it take er, a plumbing gang to do first-fix plumbing? The questions are identical I think.... They were just slightly different types of work which were being done. In, in this one it might've been slightly easier because everything was spelled out... you had to do you had to do carpenting, you had to do electrical. In this one it wasn't quite so er, straightforward in that we, we hadn't given you the actual activities to do. We'd given you the activities to do there so you could find the output of them. In this one we hadn't told you that you had to strip formwork, that you had to er, make the formwork, that you had to fix the steel, you had to know this from your own knowledge. Yeah? So you had to know that in order to, to pour concrete you had to have something to pour it into and you had to put the erm... you had to have er reinforcements as well. Bu but basically the output rates were, you had to do. You had to think of a method... and... the method was particularly difficult, I think, on the tank farm one where this is the sort of method that I am thinking here of how, how on earth am I going to build it on, on the hotel? It wa wa was very prescribed. You didn't have much choice in, in what you did. Yeah? You had a, you had a choice in sequence of doing things... but you didn't have a choice in method, whereas in the tank farm I think you had a choice of method. You, you could say, I'm going to do all four walls together or I'm going to do one wall at a time. Yeah? Erm and it, it was quite interesting but I, I think that the two groups that presented actually did, had chosen different methods. Is that correct? Yeah? So you had to choose that... er, you have to do that and the fifth thing that I wrote down here which I had to do, a sequence... er, of work. Now there are two sequences here I, I think... erm in, in all these things. You have to do the detail sequence er so for the tank farm this is, here I've got to do the formwork before the reinforcement before the concrete or the other way round, I've got to the reinforcement before the formwork before the concrete. And that's an on-going thing wherever you do it this is the... detail sequence. On the hotel the sequence was I've got to do the first-fix plumbing before I do the second-fix plumbing. I've gotta do it in this order. Yeah? And so for each one of them you might've started by, having got all this, what you could do then is write for each individual element, a tank base, a tank wall... a bedroom or a bathroom, you can produce, I would suggest, a little bar chart... which might look like that, for one unit. And this is a chart where this was activity... down here... and time... along there. So this would be a little bar chart for one bedroom, one bathroom, base, wall, whatever it is. And that brings together all of these things here. The number of resources, output rates, the method, the sequence. Okay? So that, we've got, there you've got to do lots of different concrete and excavation, slightly different thing, here you've got to do lots and lots of these. You've gotta do thirty-six on one floor, thirty-six on another floor, and the next thing that you got is all the information together where all you've got to do is put that, lots of those together and it's er, it's er a shuffling around procedure, isn't it? Yeah? And you know they can't go, this one can't go earlier than that one because we've got the sequence and so if we got through these steps, I think that those steps are the same steps that we go through on any project. And indeed when Bill, yesterday, asked you what do you need to do short-term planning? If you go back and look at your list I wouldn't mind betting that your list includes, we need to know the sequence, we need to know the number of resources, we need to know the output rates, we need to know the method. Yeah? I wouldn't mind betting that Bill's lists that you gave him actually contained all these things and only then can we actually put them down in order. It's a great shame that when we are presented with er a problem, when we're out on site, we actually forget all these things and, and I think that probably it took you an hour or so yesterday to actually recognise, oh yes, I need this and I need this and I need this. Once you've got them... yeah? The problem actually... becomes much more manageable. Would, would you agree?... Yeah? And I certainly think the results that you've produced show that the, the problem is quite manageable because I think in the end you've actually produced a very good programme for work. All of them! Because you've had to make different assumptions and you've er decided different ways are different. But I think your, your thinking has gone along these lines which is fundamental to any planning programme. Now... when you're out on site some of these things you have to do each week.... Some of them you don't have to do each week because they're there from previous work on, on the site. So you would know the output rate, or you think you'd know the output rates but you only know those output rates if somebody bothered to collect them!... Somebody might not have collected them, so you might have to And as work changes it would er, then the method. We would hope that that has been defined er by somebody of the hierarchy but, if we're moving onto new work areas, it might not The sequence maybe self-evident but it may not be and it would be nice to have it written down. I think especially in the, in the hotel project it's useful to have a little bar chart saying this is what goes on in a bathroom. Yeah? Even... even, okay, even if we... the the reason that we need the output rate was to find the length of this bar. Yeah? If you wish that to send things out to subbies first of all you've got to have it reasonable, but you still need the length of that bar.
[Chris:] That's what I'm saying
[speaker001:] And so you're assuming the output rate in order to get the length of that bar. Erm... you, you might do, Chris. I, I'm not arguing with you. I think that... it is sensible, even when you send stuff out to subbies, to make sure that you've got a reasonable plan, especially when you send out to subbies, because they're very hard to control anyway and you've got to make sure that you've not sent unrealistic targets, either too high or too low. And I think there's a lot of... goes on here. Er, in, in, in the real world where people say, you do it, it's yours. Whereas in reality I think people have got to take responsibility and say, this is a reasonable time for you to do it in and we will control that reasonable time. Yeah? But I do take your point, of course. Ah, right, right. We've got to get the things to do but quite often if you are, we've got to have those things to do you've got finish by a particular time. If I told you now that we needed another five gangs of... floor tilers or whatever it was which you hadn't got enough of, it won't be floor tilers something you haven't got enough of, everything, could you get them by Monday?... As short-term you can't, at medium- and long-term you can and that's where we've got to recognise in order to muster the resources onto site. But really at short-term I still believe that we are doing this and this is what we're, we're, we're aiming at this. Use the available resources but maybe the wrong ones because somebody... in the position of authority hasn't recognised or he hasn't got enough to finish the project by the client required date. Yes, to attempt to achieve it. using available resources to attempt to achieve it
[Chris:] ...
[speaker001:] But you see, what we've got is a set of fairly standard steps here which you got through no matter what the project and I hope that er, you've all had a bit of practice at that. What I'd like to do now... is reach for another... er set of notes... and er, talk about, change, change direction a bit and talk about... checking... erm short-term programmes.... sorry... If we get... one of the main problems that I find is that, I've already said, is that people produce short-term programmes and they get issued. Nobody actually knows whether they're right, whether they're wrong or if there are any problems with them. I think that whenever there's a programme it ought to be agreed above and below er a hierarchy. So, what do you think of this? Is that alright? Is there a problem with that? Is it doing what we want?... What sort of things do you think should be checked in a, in a programme?...
[Chris:] Feasibility.
[speaker001:] Feasibility?... By that you mean the order of things we ought to think about so
[Chris:] Well I mean, I'm really saying can you actually
[speaker001:] Oh, we've got lots of things to do. Er... can I, can I take a few of those er an and try and separate them. Yeah.
[Tom:] you've gotta break it down.
[speaker001:] I, I want to break it down, yes. I really want to break it down. Erm... one thing that you said there having all these people in there, in, in, in the room. What, what, erm what do we call that? I think, I think there're, there're a few things... erm, I think you asked the question er, Peter, about having eighteen people on one base all got to work together. I thought, the not that I made there was safety.
[speaker005:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Yeah? And er this clash might be, give rise to a safety aspect. It may not be the first thing at the top of our minds when we're, when we're checking the thing but I think it ought to be checked for that. Erm... okay, then I, I think that er what we'd got er, what you were talking about there was clashes. Yeah? Erm... and if I may er use that geographic clashes, you know, we've got all the people in one room or we've all the people in one base. It may not be of safety but it maybe er not the sort of thing that we want. Erm... so, geographic.... What other things are we going to check?... Sequence. Yeah, we, we really ought to check the sequence.... Have we, what do you mean? Er, have we really drawn our programme, we've got a very complex programme for the, the, tank farm which we did, have we shown ourselves putting the reinforcements in after we've poured the concrete? Because in fact It certainly should be.... Yeah? It Somebody some I'm, where are you handing it over to? Well I, I thi well if, if your boss checks it, what should he be checking for? Aveline, I'm not even checking for figures there I'm just looking through, just scanning through, erm I'm I'm, I haven't said how we're gonna check these. Yeah? I think that it ought to be self-evident, erm if we've done our programme in a way which er, is clear or if we've presented it in a clear fashion, then I think sequence and clashes er and safety, to a large extent, become self-evident. As they indeed they did from, I think it was your er programme Group er two, where you'd actually drawn out quite boldly bearing tank five, tank five, tank five or whatever tank it was. Yeah? There was, you know, your judgment was, this was okay. But somebody else's judgment might have been that this was a geographic clash. Yeah? Er and they may have thought it was not acceptable from that point of view but you felt that it was okay. Er the sequence, I think, has also got to be done. I think that the sort of sequence that erm... I can't remember which group it was... You need a sequence indeed, yeah, erm, just a minute, I, I've made a not somewhere.... Erm... on, on yours in fact I couldn't check sequence erm on the programme that you'd given me because I didn't, I, I had know way of telling whether we did get a clash. I think we discussed room twenty-eight or something, didn't we? So I, I couldn't actually check that but somebody's got to check it. It's got be feasible! Now you said that you'd actually presented it in another way and were just, and, and had just changed it. Yeah? Yes, yeah, yeah, well indeed you yeah, yeah.
[Aveline:] which
[speaker001:] Indeed, you had, you had thought about it and so it would just have been a case of saying, yes, this is obvious. Yeah? And so that's all, all that's necessary. But I think it is necessary. Yeah? What other, what other ones? Go on, tell me some other ones.... Continuity? Yeah.... Once again that's another one which is just a glance at the, at the programme if it's presented one way and very difficult if it's presented another way. Yeah? As, as, as somebody pointed out, I mean that the floor by floor was great for one, from one point of view, wasn't it? In that you could see what was happening on the floor but it didn't show continuity of work which easily I'm not, I not arguing with it, yeah. I'm not arguing with it. Yeah? I'm, I'm just saying that one way we can see things easily and another way we can't, and we do want to check it, we do want to be sure that there is continuity. It might be... it might be, it, it might be. We, we have some interesting pictures of what's on site... and... er, so yes, I agree it might be. I'm not saying it is.
[Chris:] Yes.
[speaker001:] Because... there are, I don't know how many sites Tarmac run, but there must be at least the number of sites that they've ever run divided by two standard ways of planning, Tarmac.... That's a hell, a hell of a lot of standard ways of planning.
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] Okay, what else? Yeah, like that! Erm... shall I put finance?... Now that's, that's a bit more difficult to check from these, from these diagrams, but I think it's very important, don't you? You know you want to know and I would've thought that the higher the management the more they want to know the implications, the financial of it of any plan which you're going into. Yeah? So
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER] I look at the short-term programme and er see, yeah. No, we couldn't because what happened was the
[speaker001:] But we do know that some people have done within Tarmac. Sorry? Well I don't know where. We'll have to look in John's thing, yeah?
[speaker005:] There isn't, you know, there isn't one thing is that we need to, with the short-term programmes we didn't do it work out the financial we need to go one stage further identify where the labour is
[speaker001:] I'm gonna look a financial implication because it's something which, I reckon, having had practice of this, you can do in... if we, we'll give you an example. We'll let you do it on your example.... You could, you've gotta talk, exactly, it will ta It's one it's very, very simple and you can
[Tom:] and usually
[speaker001:] It's usually, it is it isn't there but it's terribly important so we're gonna have a look a that. Okay. But before we go to that
[Tom:] Check resources
[speaker001:] Check, in what, in what way, Tom? Somebody's got, somebody's gotta make sure that they're there next time, yeah. So, yeah, resource considerations. I, I, I think so. Now it may well be that that is actually looking into a slightly longer term. You're now beginning to use the short- term plan to muster resources and that's very dangerous because er, you've only got a very small snapshot of what's going on. Er, but it can certainly indicate that er, more things are required. Yeah? Yeah. Yes, indeed. Yeah... yeah. So, so, could I er, the sort of realism of the outputs... yeah? Is a, is a, a thing which you're commenting on as well. Yeah, yeah. I, I think realism of the outputs I, I think what you're saying is, look, these might be okay but this one isn't. Yeah? The others you might not have argued but, you know, you might say my experience is that it, I could do it in eighty percent of that time. But your experience on, on one thing, I think, was, I can do it five times better than that. Yeah? Okay. Yeah.
[Chris:] The only thing you could do to this programme is
[speaker001:] Okay. Yeah. Well we've got the resource. I, I've put, I've put both. I, I agree. Yeah? Er, what else?
[Chris:] We need to check for the
[speaker001:] Yeah. So we've got to check the objectives, haven't we? Yeah? Yeah. Er... yeah, I, I think very much so. Yeah, very important.... So somebody's got to say, is this you've got a problem. Yeah?... Which he may not be able to do anything for that week but it will ring a bell loud and clear the following weeks. Yeah? Okay, I agree there and, and objectives, so we might say er, future work which might bring in the, your point er, Tom. That okay? I, I agree, yeah. All these things have gotta be checked. Anything else that's gotta be checked.... Er, yes, I think we're looking at objectives there as, as, as being programme, yeah.... ... In what way? [LAUGHTER]
[speaker005:] Quality
[speaker001:] Quality? Ah, right. Now quality. Well indeed,qual quality, quality is a very different, I haven't written quality down. I, I think quality is a very difficult one. But you can guarantee if you're trying to force people to do things in er, unacceptable ma methods then you're gonna have a problem meeting quality. So the acceptability of the work pattern will affect the, the quality and so if you want a general thing there, I'd rather put down yeah, I'd rather put down for acceptability of work pattern. Yeah? But er, all these things should go towards that. Yeah?... There, there's still something else I, I, I think that ought to be there. Perhaps two things. And I know that you've considered it er, in, in, drawing up some of your, your, programmes and Well, yeah, well try to expand a little more on that, Chris, when you, when you say coordination.
[Chris:] ...
[speaker001:] Yes. Okay, now, now I think, I think you've said, getting all the materials down to one end... er, so you've got two things there, I think. You've materials and you've got access. Yeah? Have we considered materials at all? Are the materials available? Are we gonna be able to get them into the right place? Are we gonna be able to get the people into the right place? Yeah? And, and those are really the two last things that I had on mine, on my list. Now... these, these tend to go fairly well together.... I think access was a particular problem on the hotel.... Yeah? We had one lift to get everything up and down.... Yeah. So so somehow they've got to move there, haven't they? They've got to be moved and I... it's, it's, it's a tremendous time You only had lift three, yeah. Yeah.... No. So you've a got a real problem and this, this will very much affect the work method. Now you had a very similar access problem, didn't you, which, was it Group two that referred to particularly? Did you, did you talk about it? Some of you, one of you Yeah.... Once again, you know, you'd have thought in a green field construction site that you wouldn't get access problems and in er, a restricted area like a city centre building or er, a you would get access problems. But I actually think that you've got access problems in both of them and they have to be considered because the do really affect severely or they could severely affect er the success or failure of the programme, and it's these list of things which you think, now I've thought about that or I haven't thought about that. Quite often in, in reality they don't get thought about and it's quite often these sort of things which cause programmes not to work, because on site people work round them. Oh, I've gotta do that, I've gotta do that. You're continuously working round and taking people off doing what they ought to do simply to move things around and you, you've talked of that. There's a tremen oh yes, yeah, there is a limit, so maybe what you're doing is just assessing... is this going to give er problems or have we got put a gang on specifically moving things around. Yeah? Right. Right. Yeah.
[Aveline:] But at the time
[speaker001:] Yeah. You've definitely got to think about it at er... long-term er, very much so, Chris. But I do think you've got to realise that it's going to affect your production rates. Simply having er an access problem is quite severely going to affect your production rates, whether you like it or not! You know, if, if somebody's got to move a twenty-two R B even three hundred yards, they don't do that any more, do they, they move it metres. Yeah? It's gonna take quite a long time. Yeah? If you're in a restricted area and you want somebody to do something you can't get to cranes in there, you've actually got to say I'll do that one and then I'll do that one. So this thing of having the crane doing this and the crane doing that, I was actually a bit concerned about that. In the hotel, once again we've gotta get all these, we've gotta things into a room which is obvious, but you've gotta get things up through the lift and you've got this bottleneck. Yeah? Just like the crane, in fact you've gotta transport in a bottle, an access bottle.... Erm, could I go on and look at er, the finance which I've starred here. Somebody, somebody said finances, I think it's very important and I'd like to look at financial implication and see if we can do something about it.... And I've got er, I've got a printed overhead here which is nice... so I'll use my printed overhead.... Er, and I want to talk a little bit about er finance and I, I've got to recognise to start with that not all money is controllable at the site level.... Sorry?... You will get... you will get some notes on this. Cos, cos, cos it's printed it's in my notes somewhere. It's, it's the things that I've written down quickly.... Not all money is controllable at site level. Would you agree with that? At different sites different things are controllable. So, on some sites you might say, no, I, well I can control the labour costs and I can control the er, plant usage, but I don't buy the materials myself the only way I can affect them is by altering the wastage. Yeah? Er, but basically somebody else in head office somewhere orders these materials. On another site you say, no, I order all my own materials.... It, it will vary very much from contract to contract but not all money is, is controllable and how much you all contribute to erm Brian B M W from your projects, I, I don't think you have any control over do you?
[Chris:] Precious little over them.
[speaker001:] Precious little? Well somebody contributes it, don't they, cos he's got a B M W. And he hasn't bought me a Renault er, I, I think, I, I'd like to make the, the comment that in general the money which can be controlled at site level is that related to labour and plant. So if you might say, no, I can control materials erm... but labour and plant, would you agree? Right, but er if, do you have er, er, a choice over what price is paid? Some, some sites do, yeah, some sites do, but some sites will, will use the central buyers.
[Aveline:] Yeah, that's right
[speaker001:] The, the central buyers will do it, yeah? And so, and so whatever, whatever the buyers have agreed they, you will pay that price! So you can't con you can control when it comes but you ain't gonna ch you're not gonna control how much you pay for, for, for almost anything, I'm afraid. Some sites do. Some sites can actually go and order everything. Some sites can go and order everything up to a thousand pounds. Some sites can go and order er things up to fifty pounds. Yeah, sometimes, it, it depends very much on
[Tom:] You can do
[speaker001:] Well you can, but not everybody can. Yeah? Erm and it's different from site to site, but I can, the things that you can normally control are the labour and how they're used and the plant and how it's used. You may not be able to I, I, I haven't, I haven't put sub-contractors down there. Well they might be, they might be er labour-only sub contractors. They might be erm proper sub-contractor. They might be all sorts of sub-contractor. Yeah? I'm, I'm just saying there at the minute and, and if you'd like to argue no, we can control the sub-contractor sometimes, then fine. Yeah? And you can do sometimes because some of the sub-contractors you'll come on, they'll come on and they'll act more or less like your own labour on some sites. Yeah? Yeah, yeah... yeah. So, I, I, I agree there but subbies really could come on I think you've got a very, very narrow view here, here. You've got a very narrow view of life. Yeah? An exceedingly narrow view of life. Yeah [LAUGHTER] Yeah. Erm... how about this one? The actual income and expenditure for the project will probably not be known by the person carrying out the short-term programming.... Yeah? Because you've, absolutely, it's all under wraps. Really a pain, innit? Isn't it a pain. Yeah? All too late! Because it, as you say, you hit the nail on the head there you've spent too much, they're on your back for spending too much.
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] Isn't this the best thing to do with a lock them in their office? Great! Let them do that. Let them do that. No, let them do that. Let them do that is what I'm saying. I, I, I don't give a hoot what do. Yeah?
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] I couldn't, I, I would, if, if, if the company weren't so refined I would say other things about them but I don't give a hoot. [LAUGHTER] Not on tape. Oh yes, I'd forgotten that! [LAUGHTER] Erm... I... the actual income and expenditure of a project of the project will probably not be known by the person carrying out the short-term programme. What, what I would like to say, I don't care. In order to control things properly we don't need to know.... What we do need is the equivalent of what we've got in the documents which I've given to you which is some sort of allowance... for every bit of control of the thing. Now that allowance would be nice if it bore some relationship to what was allowed in the estimated er, figures. Yeah? But it's actually, surprisingly enough, isn't essential as long as we can agree on an allowance. Let's, let's say we're gonna be allowed so much... and then let's measure off those against that allowance. Somebody else can measure that allowance against the actual price that we've been paid, but from our point of view let's accept an allowance. I'd like that allowance to be related very much to how much everybody thinks the work's going to be er, going to cost which is... initially worked out by the estimator. And you've spent some time doing this, don't you, Adam? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. You know, this is what, this is what your life's about. You, you actually, the estimators do think about these things, believe it or not. Yeah? Or they have a little book where they can look it up. Yeah. But you, [LAUGHTER] but, but I do think [LAUGHTER]... er, right, what I... er, what I think we've got is an allowance.... So, if I pass my... er printed overheads for this one... an allowance er, is, and you were talking about it really, you were using this as though it were going to be er, your money that you'd got to spend for doing each one of those activities or each bit of work within the, the project.... And, but what you were actually spending was the money on the resources.... Whether you appreciated it or not, what you were actually doing when you were assigning resources and things was you were actually working out an expenditure... er on resources.... And... these two should be comparable, shouldn't they? And that's the sort of thing that we want to compare. So, this one is sort of comparable to... income, cos we're always comparing income and expenditure. Somebody said, did it mean we were making a big profit?... Tom was it? Are we making a big profit? Well we, we don't whether we're making a profit because we don't know where, how our allowance related to the actual money which we were going to... earn from doing the work. Because only the locked in their little room by Phil,
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] Lucky you're on opposite sides of the room. [LAUGHTER] But only the or the project manager would know what we were actually going to be made. Yeah? It might, it might've been, you, but you didn't care where it was from, did you? You just thought it was an allowance. There's nothing wrong with that. Now I assumed it was, it had come from somewhere else.... So... [LAUGHTER] erm.... where did I, I'm not sure whether I ought to be getting into this but I will. I, I, I think we've got a bill... of quantities. Yeah?... Which is actually broken down into several headings erm... now people break these bills down into many different er forms er, for example, in major projects, I, I know that for any bill be able to tell me er how many were involved in pouring er, concrete er, on any base. Did you know this?... How many er... they, they know,
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] they, they actually assign... there's er, there's er a computer system which er allows you to build up the rates for doing work. Holiday stamp? Yeah we need some holiday, we'll have a bit of that in there. We'll have a bit of this type of We'll have, have a bit of that tying wire. So how much tying wire is involved in the base of the tank? No trouble. It's all there.... Er, I don't know what do. I know major projects do, are able to do this. It's
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] the estimating package. No, the estimating package, I don't know what it's called. Yeah?... Yeah, it's, it's the standard one which er lot use. Chief Estimator for Estimator Director for major projects. Erm... now, I'm not really into that sort of breakdown. I, I'm not really interested how many ounces of tying wire are used in the base of er, a thing, but I, they, they do have another one which groups some of these together and er will give me labour... plant... materials, and it's surprising how many contractors have this same breakdown er, from er, contractors might have materials and temporary materials er... er, sub-contract... erm what else are we likely to have? Overheads and profits. Yeah?... And risk.... Yeah? These sort of things five or six breakdowns.... Now, and, and all these go together to provide a bill rate... which is what we actually get paid, isn't it? Now, the relationship between how much labour there is, how much it's actually going to cost with labour and plant to do something, and what the bill rate is... can be anything. People might've messed around with it by putting this overhead profit to risk, they might've put a negative er element in there, er they might've put a high-cost element in there, they might put nought in there, so it's very difficult to recognise... that, that bill rates er from the labour, or the labour from the bill rate, there isn't a standard relationship, nowhere near. We don't what this. Yeah? It's irrelevant to us. This is how much we're paying towards Brian B M W. Sorry, Brian.... Yeah?... What, what we're interested in, sorry?
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] If you've heard my comments about the knows who it is.
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] Er, what we are interested in is what the estimators have thought we're going to... do for labour and what the estimators thought we were going to, it was going to cost us for plant. So we're interested in two elements here of this multi-element We're not interest in the materials we're only interested in controllable money which I've decided that at the minute will be labour and plant. I take, I think it was your point, Alan, that we could something with sub- contractors as well. But let me just deal with labour and plant at the minute and we'll see, we can do a similar thing. So I'm only interested in that.... If I can get these, that's great. If I can't, then I will have to make up my own in order to control the, the programme to work. But er those things are available on most, not all Tarmac contracts unfortunately, but most of them.... Where am I going? What I'd like to do now is how do we compare the allowance and the expenditure. There's one thing we can do is take one from t'other. Yeah? Because we should be able to get... our planned... allowance... and our do... so many cubic metres of concrete this was the allowance for it. The figures that you were actually calculating, weren't you?... Yeah? Some of you actually calculated those. We're doing so many er bathroom first-fix er plumbing, this was the allowance for it.... A planned expenditure, I'm using these Yeah?... Er, and these resources, I think, are going to cost me er, X pound for a day. So... I ought to be able to work out... the difference between them. Say look, I'm gonna make a profit or I'm gonna make a lost. This profit and lost is not real profit and lost... it isn't real profit and lost. Well I, I, think they should be, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It might well of been. Well, no I, well, I, I'm not sure whether we have. Let, let me just continue for a minute and then, then ask a question later. Yeah? What I, what I'd like to do is, we can say that we're... we can make er a profit or a loss and we can give the figure, so this might have come out at seven thousand two hundred... whatever. Let's call them pounds because we're working in England. Yeah? And er, my expenditure might've been erm... oh I don't know, something that I can do the sums on, five thousand three hundred. Yeah? Er and so er, look I'm gonna make a profit of nineteen hundred. My allowance is higher than my expenses therefore that's jolly good, isn't it.... Yeah? If the allowance had come from somebody who'd put in a lot of thought to this... our estimator here. It's nice to have an estimator represented on the course because I think that you'll admit that people do put some thought into this and the, the rates that you use for labour and plant, you try to make realistic. Yeah. Cos you're actually trying to estimate the true cost of doing the work. Somebody else can fiddle around with the figures when they tender for it, but you're trying to get a true cost of doing the work. Yeah? You may not believe this [LAUGHTER] and then so it's nice to have Adam here to say yes, that's right. Yeah?... Yeah. And, and, and you deal very strongly with that, so if... he's saying, having, given quite a lot of considered thought to this Well, a fair amount. [LAUGHTER] Fair amount. Seven thousand two hundred, you'll come out saying five thousand three hundred.... You're saying I can do it a lot better than that. Mm... okay,... because I'm doing it so much better am I sure that I've got this right?... Yeah? Or am I being optimistic? Well, indeed, we might be saying, hang on a minute,... is there something with the plan? Am I being too optimistic? So all of a sudden you're beginning to question it. This financial analysis has lead you to question whether your plan is optimistic or not. Yeah? Or whether it... as you said, highly unlikely. Yeah? And... you can do it by taking one from t'other but more useful er, I would suggest, is to work out a planned performance... or what I've called a planned performance, er, this' ll be in your, in your notes as well, er which equals planned expenditure... over planned... er, income or allowance.... Yeah?... And what should that be?... We would expect it to head towards one, wouldn't we?... Yeah?... In this situation it isn't. In this situation it's below one.... Yeah? But if, if we er... so, so we could actually produ you know, plot this over time because we've, I hope we'd have more than one... er weekly programme. So each week we can plot our, our value where this is one, somewhere down here is nought... and we would hope to er, eventually get to a situation where our planned performance was somewhere near one so we would be... pardon?... Sorry?... Well, I, I'm, I'm not sure, I'm not sure whether it is and it's certainly what we're, what we're targeting though, isn't it, because we believe that either we've, we've narrowed down our allowances er, nicely and we've got sensible allowances, or we've er, improved our planning. I actually would hope that we would keep our allowances standard, because it allows us to do other things.... And so, just by analyzing this financially, and it's not true financing because this allowance er, is not related to the er, to how much the company gets paid. We should be able to see whether our plan is optimistic or pessimistic and it should then get us back to, it'll ring bells.... And they'll say is it our, are our output rates sensible.... We can other things however though, because we can do the same things for actual. After the week's gone, we can work out our actual allowance. So if we look at what work we've really done, say what we, what w what we allowed to do that. Yeah?... And we can work out our actual... expenditure that will, some of these resources... won't turn up. Yeah? You know, they'll have had a night out on the tiles. I was not looking that way!
[speaker005:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] but er, we would get er, an actual allowance and our actual expenditure and we'll be able to calculate an actual performance.... Which is actual expenditure... divided by actual allowance.... Yeah?... And so we'll say, well that's what we... planned to achieve, this is what we actually achieved. I wonder how well we were doing against our own plan? And wouldn't you rather be judged against your own plan, which everybody's agreed, than against anything else? And so I think we can work out our, what I've called here, efficiency... and er, my efficiency is actual performance... over planned performance.... So I'm going to use three things to, to see how I'm doing both in planning and actual. I'm gonna used a planned performance. Gonna use an actual performance. I'm going to use an efficiency. And these are all based on the allowances... and it doesn't matter if those are allowances are correct... as long as we use the same incorrect allowances all the way through.... Yeah? So, if it's really going to cost me... fifty pound the cubic metre to pour concrete and happen to have forty pound the cubic metre, then it'll show up in the plan that mm, I'm not doing to well here, because there wasn't a big enough allowance. But the same thing will be taken into account in the actual... okay? So I might be showing myself doing worst than I should be but, look, my actual come out about the same and so when I compare my actual with my planned, I get er, an answer which should approach one. Yeah? So I should be getting one.... No matter what, no matter how accurate my allowances were, this is why I said I don't really think it matters. Wasn't it somebody saying everything was locked away? I mean as long as we've got something which is in the of where we want to be, we can actually measure how well we're performing against our own plan, which I think is what you'd like to be able to do. Because if you measure how well you're doing against your own plan, you stand some chance of improving your planning. And if you said, well I can only... I can only achieve seventy-five percent of what was in my plan one week, then you say well, what was I doing wrong? The people couldn't have been working well enough or my plan was too optimistic.... Yeah? What options do you have? You could either go and try and control the people to get more work out of them, which you would do, but the other option is to say, well, I recognise that my plan was optimistic, let's change the assumptions in the plan and you're going to improve, therefore, your planning. I never want your plan... to be achieved completely. Because if you achieve a hundred percent of what's in your plan, there's always a danger that they could've achieved a hundred and ten percent of what was in your plan and haven't been working hard. Yeah?... So I really, my, my, my advice is not to aim for a hundred percent efficiency... but always to programme five percent optimistically. Five percent, you know, you're giving the people the feeling that they can get there.... Yeah?... But never quite achieving it. But the only way to measure whether you're planning optimistic, pessimistically, realistically, is to do something like this. You can't do anything else. You've got to check all these other things. Check the sequence. Check the order. Check the er, but you've got to have some way, I believe, of measuring what's going on. What? No. I, I agree erm but you can work out these same things for the master plan. Yeah? And you can compare, which is quite interesting. A, a, nice one that you've brought up, Jane. You can, you can actually compare your actual performance... on your short-term with your planned performance from your long-term. Yeah? And so you can get all these things going together. You can compare your performance on your long-term o on your short-term with your long-term, which is something that somebody brought up yesterday. How do we compare what we're doing on our short-term with what we said we would do on the long-term. We're not doing it in detail on individual activities, but we're getting the overall productivity correct. Yeah. Yeah.... Yeah. I, I, I believe that this has got to be reported. Would you like to know how people are performing against your figures? There's a plea there. Just send them into him. Yeah. Send them into him. It'll be quite fascinating, wouldn't it. It's carried out for claims purposes. Correct.... Correct. Yeah. How, how, how much use, how much, how use to, to controlling the project is information produced for claims. Bit late. [LAUGHTER] It's quite often too late for the next project. Erm what, what contracts do I know that are still being er there's a major project erm when does that finish?... When does, when... when will its claim be finished?... Shouldn't ask, should I? M forty? The M forty? Yeah. What I'd like to do... [LAUGHTER] sorry Very simple.... I don't know, is the answer. I don't know. I, I don't know why this isn't set up, you will receive these things. If, if people sent them to you I suspect you would receive them quite happily.
[speaker005:] Yeah. But why, do you know why
[speaker001:] Now, could I, could I go through, cos I'd like, I'd like to at some stage ask you to do an exercise on this just to see first of all how complicated it is and then, at the end, how simple it is. Yeah? And I actually believe that for your programme because you've done most of the work, believe it or not, the problem is you haven't written everything down. I'm now going to say what you should've done is write a bit more down on your short-term programmes.... Erm could we give out the, the handout cos I think I'd like them to refer to this on the... All you've got to do is write these things down, cos you've, cos you've got most of this on the way through. Yeah? Would you, do you think you've got most of this on the way through? Sorry? Th this is not, well this, yeah. Well this, this, this I think is, is quite important. I think people are becoming more and more and it's not true financial implications here. We've prefaced that and the, the heading, I should have a copy, what? The, the, the, the heading on, on your thing which is financial considerations, I don't have my copy but never mind, I don't need it. The heading is not quite right, financial considerations, because they're not true finances they're only plays of measuring whether your programme is optimistic or pessimistic. They're, they're not really related to true finances. However, people could relate true finances and they certainly could be fed back directly if, if we, if we were using estimators. They, they could be used to feed back and complete a control loop within the company not just within the site. They can be used also to compare long-, medium- and short-term programmes, which fundamentally very simple calculation. In your handout, somewhere, I'm afraid I haven't got the pages er, cos I don't have my handout immediately to hand, er I've got here a short-term er programme.... Yeah? This is very similar to one you've drawn up. It's not actually the same project it's for er a simple project. And the sort of things which we need in order to calculate this... are the quantities of things that have been done, because you've got the allowances all you need is the quantities that have been done. Now on your hotel project it's terribly easy for most more difficult for... er the bit that Sarah tackled which was the er public access area, because she didn't have one room, one room, one room. You can just count up the number of rooms that you're planning to do, can't you? It's very, very quick. Oh yes. You've got a planned percentage. So it's only the percentage that you've got here. On, on here where I've got a concrete type work more like