Successful projects don’t just happen. Successful projects are the result of careful planning; hard work; integrated, insightful and informed decision making. Once the project plan is established it is meticulously executed and controlled, taking advantage of every opportunity that arises during the project. Project controls comprise the functions or activities, which are necessary to successfully perform the various project management processes. ProjectAide can supply personnel that possess specific expertise in the various disciplines of project controls. These disciplines include the following: Project Planning: Planning is critical to the successful project. It culminates in the integration of all of the phases of a project into a comprehensive project plan, one that accomplishes the project objectives. ProjectAide can mentor your organization in creating a consistent, coherent project plan or we can develop this document for you. Project Scheduling: Scheduling or time management involves defining activities that must be accomplished for the project to be successful. The durations and sequence of these activities are then defined, analyzed and re-sequenced until an optimum project schedule is derived. ProjectAide can mentor your organization in creating an optimum schedule for your project or we can develop this document for you. Project Scope Control: Scope control involves the process of controlling the inevitable changes to the project. No matter how good the project plan it never seems to happen exactly the way you planned it and someone or something will happen to require a change to the project. ProjectAide can mentor your organization in developing a control process that deals with this inevitability of change for your project or we can perform this task for you. Management of Project Resources: Resources can be defined as people, equipment or material. A plan must be developed that makes the most effective use of these resources to accomplish the project objectives. Optimizing resources, determining what quantities of each should be used to perform the various project activities, will have a significant impact on the projects’ ultimate cost. ProjectAide can mentor your organization in how to manage resources or we can do it for you. Project Cost Control: Cost control involves developing estimates for the cost of the various project resources, allocating and refining that cost over the project schedule to arrive at a project budget. Using EVMS (earned value management system) techniques to manage these and other project costs is another function of this area. ProjectAide can mentor your organization in these cost control concepts or we can perform this task for you. Project Performance Monitoring: Projects are never static, they are living entities, which must be monitored and analyzed. This is defined as performance monitoring - establishing processes and methods to monitor the projects performance over time. ProjectAide can mentor your organization in these performance monitoring processes and practices or we can supply the personnel to perform this task for you. Claims Prevention & Mitigation: Projects are complex and in many cases disputes arise over why something changed and subsequently why the project schedule slipped or why the project cost has increased. Often these issues cannot be resolved between the parties and are escalated to the courts for remedy. Specific actions can be taken to minimize the impacts of these types of disputes or to eliminate them entirely. ProjectAide has been involved in a number of litigation efforts, from both sides, and can mentor your organization in methods we have learned to minimize your organizations exposure to these issues or we can assist your organization in the development of claims issues. Project analysis and Recovery: Analyzing project data and performance monitoring is only the initial step in ensuring a healthy project. Once the analysis is complete trends and opportunities can be identified, then recovery actions and plans must be developed, which will result in changes to the project. ProjectAide can mentor your organization in analysis methods and recovery planning or we can supply the experienced personnel that can perform this task for you. Project Closeout: Finally the project must be properly closed out. Again this is not something that just happens, it must be thought out and controlled. Done properly it will provide invaluable data for the next similar project. Once again ProjectAide can mentor your organization in these activities or we can perform this task for you. These project control functions or activities all are aimed at one objective - To ensure the project is successful, completing on time and within budget!