The degree of proactiveness determines the quality of project management. If the project managers spend more time in preventing problems than correcting them, we know that they are practicing proactive project management.  Unfortunately, many project managers do not have real-time project progress information on time. Many of them have to wait for at least a week, if not weeks before they get current project progress information. When they finally get it, there is the question of accuracy and relevance. This limits their ability to perform proactive project management.

Proactive project management is very much essential in industries like Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) , which involves a large sum of money and a lengthy project life cycle.

How can an EPC project move from reactive to proactive project management?

Reactive progress monitoring	On time progress monitoring	Proactive progress monitoring
1) Long wait for status 2) Inaccurate progress information 3) Information overflow 4) Delay in corrective action 5) Slippages and overruns	1) Almost real-time status updates 2) Accurate progress information 3) Just in time corrective actions 4) Reduction in slippages and cost overruns	1) Forecasting of potential overruns 2) Preventing overruns, before they occur

What are the obstacles in achieving Pro-active project management in EPC industry?

Here are the key reasons;

1. Monitoring is done only at the milestone level in EPC projects. Since the time gap between milestones is large, one has to wait for a long time (weeks to months) in order to understand whether the milestone is met or will be met on time.
2. Deliverables are not linked to project milestones; hence actual status has to be updated manually.
3. Capture of deliverable progress even if done is subjective because of a lack of clarity about the basis for progress updates.
4. Manual updating of deliverable progress on a daily basis is tedious – Progress information is to be captured every day to provide enough time to take preventive action. This is tedious if progress is to be updated manually every day.

No proper definition of role up progress hence progress of package or project is not known

How can we switch to proactive project management in the engineering procurement construction industry?

1. Automatic update of milestone status from the deliverable status. The milestone status should be aggregated by the roll-up of the deliverable level progress. Steps 2&3 explain this further.
2. Roll-up weightage must be defined during the planning stage of the EPC project so that during execution time bottom-up progress rollup can be easily done. This can be achieved by defining the contribution percentage of the lower levels in the WBS to the immediately higher level in the WBS.  
3. Deliverable workflow process weightage definition and linking them to the corresponding key milestone. This will enable monitoring of the progress of deliverables and the associated milestones. The key steps are;
   • Define the workflow of the deliverables
   • Define the rules of credit for each stage within the work flow
   • Automate the work flow
4. Monitor the actual progress automatically as the activity completes the workflow.
5. Automatic display of progress delay and notify to concerned to take preventive and corrective action.
6. Continuous monitoring – Continuously monitoring the progress delay and taking steps like crashing, fast tracking, etc to correct the delays as soon as possible.
7. Forecasting – From the automated real-time progress information, the expected date of completion of the key deliverables, milestones, and also the project can be forecasted frequently. This will truly empower the shift from reactive project management to proactive project management in EPC projects.  

Key benefits of proactive project management reported from an Engineering Procurement Construction industry project

• 85% improvement in project management efficiency
• 75% less time in reporting
• 100% quality achievement
• 80% reduction in deliverable management time
• Reduction in review cycle time from 7days to 1 day