Project Management Services

We provide full or part time business, project or program leadership on a contract basis.  Johan Moelich brings sound, professional expertise, based on personal entrepreneurial experience as an independent business developer, leader and owner.  He is also an accomplished, hands-on project manager with a solid background in business and engineering.

We can lead or help you assemble the design team and find appropriate professionals to match the project requirements.  We believe that team selections should be based not only on proven skills and experience, but also on an ability to understand and respect project parameters and industry sector nuances.  Other important factors are the availability of key staff and production support to produce design documents on time and to the required quality standards.

We can also provide leadership during the design process to ensure that the project requirements, time lines and budget are all respected.

A new facility is only useful upon occupancy, when it is performing as intended to support your operations.  This includes commissioning the systems and training building operators.  For specialized facilities, it can also include validation.  If you are moving your operations from another facility, the move has to be organized and managed to minimize disruption to your business.  Furniture and communications have to be procured and installed.

We help our clients to plan and manage the occupancy of their facilities.

We emphasise the importance of planning and controlling project costs.  We start early with order of magnitude estimates as soon as requirements are known.  Subsequent estimates become more detailed as more information becomes available.  We normally use the estimate done at the end of the concept design stage as the point of reference against which all future work is measured. 

We recognize estimating uncertainty arising because the design may be incomplete, because the market may fluctuate before tenders are received, or because of site conditions.  We include appropriate allowances for these contingencies.  We may also suggest a management allowance to allow you and your executive some flexibility for minor changes.

Cost and Budgetary Control

Our cost control philosophy is based on the following principles:

• The integrity of the control budget is maintained at all times and a proper audit trail, including client approval, exists for any changes made.
• Commitments made are always compared to budgeted provisions.
• We produce a monthly cost report for you, showing the project broken down by contract (or by construction element if contracts have not been awarded).  For each contract or construction element, we show the budget, commitments to date, the forecast to complete, and the projected total cost.  Forecasts are completely reviewed every month so that the cost report is up-to-date with actual events every month.
• Committed and invoiced costs are recorded and processed to provide a full financial accounting audit trail.

Businesses carrying on multiple projects simultaneously benefit from developing the systems and procedures necessary to plan, implement, monitor, control and report on their projects in a consistent way.  The benefits of competent PPM systems and procedures include improved efficiency, systematic risk management, objective performance evaluation of individual and multiple projects and improved resource planning.  They also allow well informed strategic decisions to be made from an enterprise perspective.

We can review your project and program management systems and procedures, identify opportunities for improvement and, if necessary, help with the development, procurement and implementation of improvements.

Our approach is to put considerable thought into planning the sequence of the tasks, including all major off-site and on-site activities.  For example, activities such as owner decisions and approvals, municipal processes, and the design process are critical to being able to start construction and complete it on time.

We have experience with a number of software scheduling packages, including Microsoft Project and Primavera P3.  Most of the currently available scheduling packages have good planning and reporting capabilities.  The choice of software will depend on your preference and the level of complexity and communication requirements.

When developing a schedule, we obtain the commitment to it from all parties who have activities to complete.  Progress is monitored continually to allow us to identify potential problems as soon as possible and deal with them at the earliest warning sign.

Should you renovate, expand or relocate? Should you lease or buy? We can analyze the implications of each option and provide sound recommendations based on a complete assessment of each option. If the decision is to move, we can help you find and acquire a new site or lease a building. If not, we can negotiate planning and other approvals to expand your present facilities.

From time to time and for various reasons, projects go off track.  The most common indicators are ballooning cost and missed time lines.  The underlying causes can be diverse and include: scope creep, poor planning, unrealistic expectations, inadequate monitoring and control procedures, and inappropriate or insufficient project team resources.

We can review a faltering project in detail, identify and analyze the issues of concern and develop a turn-around plan.  We can implement and lead the turn-around plan or work with and supplement the project team to implement the turn-around plan.