“Tell me, what is your longest Time Span goal?” I asked.
Taylor sat across the conference table. He was in charge of project scheduling. At any given time, his company has 30-35 projects in play. Some of the projects only last 4-5 weeks. Others last 12-15 months. Yet, every project is important. No details can be dropped, no matter how small.
“What do you mean?” Taylor asked. “I mean, I work with a Project Management software. I spend time meeting with all the Project Managers, looking at their contracts, their change orders, the deadlines in their project segments.”
“What is your longest project?”
“The longest one, is the Phoenix project. We got the contract last week. I have already been looking at it for a couple of months though, ever since it came through our estimating department. It’s a big project and we had to see if we could even mobilize to do it. Twenty two months it will take.”
“And what is the Goal, what is your Goal?” I asked.
“At the end of the project, all of the materials showed at the job site, all the crews showed up to do the production. The equipment required, whether we own it, or rented it, was on-site. All the trades that we had to coordinate with, everything happened according to my schedule. That’s my goal.”
He is just giving the end result. In a project that long I would think there would be several time lines and even some delegation that would requires follow up!
Project scheduling is a very difficult job and coordinating everything sometimes can become nightmares. If Taylor’s goal is to have the project completed on time, he needs to form a schedule and plan everything with preside details. There will be things out of his control that will delay the project but he needs to compensate those delays with the things that he does have control of to meet the dead line of the project.
Goal setting skills are crucial when you are scheduling a project with the magnitude of the Phoenix project. He needs to clearly define the goals that can be measure and break them down into the different levels. Once he has defined the goals he needs to break them down to smaller targets and generate a plan to start working on achieving these goals. If Taylor follows the following Goal Setting Tips he can get the job done on time.
• Always set your goal positively, by avoiding making mistakes
• Be precise in setting your goals by putting date, times, and amounts when things need to be completed.
• Set priorities for different goals by identifying what needs to happen first to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
• Write your goals down to clearly see what needs to be done and when they need to be completed.
• Keep goals small to avoid the disappointment of not accomplishing things as scheduled.
• Set performance goals, not outcome goals. You should take care of the goals that you have control over to avoid the disappointment of not achieving a dead line for reasons beyond your control.
• Set realistic goals that you can achieve. When you achieve a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of getting a job well done and on time.
Simply put it sounds like Taylor is one of the parts of the project with his time lines, ordering, ect. Not uncommon to time lines and follow thru people handle those issues. However there will also be a supervisor or more above Taylor responsible for the whole project. Every wheel must have spokes working together