Project Planning and Control™ (PPC) Foundation and Practitioner

Project Plan and Control is a deep dive into the principles of effective project planning and control. Learn to plan at the right level of detail, establish simple but effective project tracking and reporting processes. This course is delivered in two modules a 3-day foundation followed by a 2-day practitioner course. Click on the session information to see details of the dates.

£1,500.00

Description

Based on the Association for Project Management (APM) guidance for Planning and Project Control Managers and Engineers this course builds a structured and formalised approach to planning and controlling projects.

The APM’s guide, ‘Planning, Scheduling, Monitoring and Control – The Practical Project Management of Time, Cost and Risk.’ sets out a comprehensive and practical guide to project control across a number of different industries. The guide set out in practical terms the recommended best practice for the implementation of project planning and control.

Adopting this guide will provide organisations and individuals with the following benefits:

Following this guide provides organisations with a common understanding of the approaches to project planning, reporting and control.
Being clear about the standards improves the quality of project planning, especially the level of detail required to give effective project control.
It improves the quality of transparency and accuracy of project reporting, so that project managers and senior stakeholders can have improved confidence in the data presented.
This is turn strengthens the project governance processes and leads to more effective decision making.

The combined effect is more clarity about the current state of the project and increased chances of project success.

Topics Covered

Both foundation and practitioners cover the same contents. The difference is in the format of the exam. The course contents are:

Planning techniques and approaches including:

Scope management,
Requirements management,
Works information and statement of works,
Stakeholder management,
Breakdown structures, levels, PBS, WBS, OBS, RAM, CBS and RBS,
Dependency management

Budgeting and cost control including:

Types of estimate,
Contents of an estimate,
Estimating methodologies,
Definition of budgeting,
Funding and budgeting,
Cost breakdown structures,
Cash flow,
Budget transfers

Scheduling practices including:

Steps in establishing a schedule and the different types of schedule including:
- tender,
- contract
- baseline,
- working,
- target,
- medium and short term
- and as build schedules.
Project trackers required to support the schedule including
- Procurement schedules,
- Design and other trackers,
Elements of a schedule, including:
- Critical path,
- links,
- leads and lags.
Estimating durations,
Resource management.
Horizontal and vertical integration of schedules from different perspectives including combining schedules from several organisations.
Schedule interfacing and coding,
Contingency and the use of buffers

Communicating the Schedule including:

Bar charts,
line of balance,
time chainage

The supporting components of a schedule including:

Schedule narrative including calendars,
activity codes,
calendars,
shutdowns,
possessions,
permits and licences.

Schedule review including the processes for approving and accepting schedules.

Building Information Management (BIM) including the integration of the schedule with the design process

Agile including planning for the use of sprints, timeboxes and other ag

Monitoring and Control including

baselines,
re-planning,
baseline
maintenance,
re-programming

Performance reporting including

drop line method,
activity weeks,
milestone monitoring,
cost value.

Cost Control including

cost control process,
performance management baseline,
performance measurement

Change management including

Change control process,
Adjusting the schedule to accommodate changes,
Communicating and reporting change

Risk Management including

Risk management process, risk drawdown, quantitative schedule risk analysis (QSRA), Quantitative cost risk analysis (QCRA)
Forensic analysis
- Purpose of forensic analysis, Methods including planned vs as built, Impact method
Record keeping
Document management
Handover and closeout
Lessons learned.

Learning outcomes

Foundation:

The approaches and products used to gain a clear definition of a project.
The approaches and techniques used to plan and close a project.
The selection and use of appropriate scheduling techniques.
The practices used for rigorous monitoring to enable proactive control of the project.
The basis for good record keeping, which also facilitates the virtuous feedback and learning cycle.

Practitioner

The approaches and key products used to gain a clear definition of a project
The approaches and techniques used to plan and close a project
The scheduling techniques and appropriate presentation of the outputs
The management of risk in the planning, execution and evaluation of a project
The practices and data used for rigorous monitoring to enable proactive control of the project.

What is included in this course?

Five days of virtual tutor input
APM Project Planning and Control manual
Both PPC foundation and practionoer exams.

They monitor you though a microphone, webcam and an app on a mobile phone. The APMG provide detailed guidance on the technology required but in summary, you need a personal computer with Google Chrome installed, webcam and microphone and mobile device (phone or tablet). The exam system will not load any software on your computer, they do ask you to add an extension to Google Chrome. This is why Google Chrome is the only supported browser. The APMG advise that the exam is unlikely to work on a corporate PC unless you have admin rights. Just like classroom exams, you will need a photo ID. For move information of the system requirements visit Equipment Requirements – ProctorU

Prerequisites

Payments

We offer multiple options for payment;

1. Credit / Debit Card

2. Payment via invoice. During checkout for your course, select 'Offline Payment'. You will then receive an invoice from which you can pay. If you wish to add a Purchase Order number to your order, please enter this when prompted at checkout.