Scheduling as Part of the Project Management Effort - Construction Project Scheduling and Control - page 286

mechanical and electrical finishing are completed. Such operations involve coordina-
tion among several entities.
In many situations, the master schedule is not the creation of one party (the gen-
eral contractor or the project management consultant, PMC). Contracting parties,
such as subcontractors, create their own schedules (using the same or compatible soft-
ware) and submit them to the general contractor (or PMC). The general contractor
(or PMC) then assembles these subschedules, along with his or her schedule, in one
master schedule, using one of the two approaches just mentioned.
MULTIPROJECT MANAGEMENT
In large corporations or government agencies, tens or hundreds of projects may have
to be managed simultaneously. Typically, there are two levels of project management:
1. Management at the individual project level (micromanagement) :ThePM
should be managing or monitoring all activities and all project details. The
project is the focus of the PM. Depending on the size and complexity of the
project, the management team can be composed of one part-time person or
several people.
For such a PM, the basic unit of control is the activity, with related infor-
mation, such as duration, logic (predecessors, successors, lags), constraints,
calendar, resources, budget, cost, notes, and so forth. The information may be
rolled over to a WBS (work breakdown structure) level or other codes within
the project (e.g. floor, area, phase, segment, mile marker). The highest level
of roll-up is the project itself, in which only one unit shows, with the total
duration, total budget, and so forth.
In some owner's organizations, such as governmental agencies (counties,
municipalities, etc.) and developers, every project has two managers: the
owner's PM and the contractor's PM. The owner's PM monitors the project
and makes sure that the contractor is performing according to the terms
of the contract. He or she also authorizes payments to the contractor. The
contractor's PM is the “real” construction manager. He or she is responsible
for the day-to-day construction operations for the project. It is also possible,
and likely, that a PMC is involved who represents the owner. In this case, the
PM will be micromanaging the project, representing the owner's interest.
2. Management at the corporate or enterprise level (macromanagement) :Thecor-
porate manager will look at all projects, with each project represented as one
basic integral unit (usually represented by a single bar in a bar chart). The
corporate manager (possibly a program or portfolio manager) may not get
involved in the details of individual projects (although he or she usually can,
and will do so in certain cases). The basic unit in this case is the project. Projects
can be grouped by organizational breakdown structure, such as department,
section, program, and so forth.