Tips for Project Managers

The daily routine of a successful Project Manager is listed below. The Project Manager had taken a cue from his senior, in the early years of his career, and followed the routine religiously since then, which helped him in completing the projects in time .

FIRST:
· Used to visit the site about 15-30 minutes in the morning before the workers arrive to assess the progress vis-à-vis the planned progress. Thus, he used to have complete and firsthand information about the project.
· Used to insist his Site Engineers to arrive at the site (at least 10 minutes) before the workers arrive. This helped the Site Engineers in managing the workers better and in maintaining the discipline.
· Site Engineers were insisted to dress well and bathe every day, even if they had worked very late the previous night. Insisted on personal hygiene and to treat the place-of-work like a place-of-worship.

SECOND: (About 2 hours)
· Returns to office from Site.
· Browses through all the correspondence. That used to take about 30 minutes.
· Then, he completes the correspondence for the day.

THIRD: (About one hour)
· Takes his lunch.
· Takes about 30 minutes nap in his cabin.

FOURTH:
· Spends about an hour on administration and HR aspects and issues at Project office.

FIVE:
· Visits the site.
· Meets the client, if required.
· Similarly, meets the consultants, sub-contractors, … if required.
· Returns to office before 6 PM.

SIX: (About one hour)
· Completes pending correspondence, pending calls, pending e-mails, …
· Leaves office by 7 PM.

SEVEN: (For about 30 minutes)
· After dinner, he used to attend to QA/QC aspects. Used to go through the drawings, contract documents, MIS reports, programme-of-work review, …
· Used to plan his next day. Attend to any crisis which needs attention.
By adhering to this routine, the Project Manager was able to successfully complete various projects ahead of schedule, many a time in his career.

Got this information recently from a friend. As usual, thought of sharing this ‘routine checklist’ with our colleagues under the ‘HRD-KISS’ series. (KISS = Knowledge and Information Sharing System).

Good day,

Jaikishan
HR Dept.
22nd Nov 2009

Source: From my colleague, Dr. K.S.Chandra Sekhar (CGM-Projects).

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