Poll on Project Controls e-learning & Certification Courses

Please let me submitt my idea if you do not mind. if your course includes base of the CPM/PERT method and forward/backward calculation, it would be very useful for learners, except that, online learning may be helpful for users who already have detailed knowledge of that and just want to improve their skills in using specific software. In this case, online help for MS project, and P6 could answer all questions about such software. Training technicians who would be able to integrate schedule, resource and cost data would be a great effort, and if you can teach people to link estimate software and schedule as well that would be perfect. However plugin to contract management and other modues of Primavera is not hard, few schedulers are aware of that and that material could also be interesting for whom are looking for integrating data at the same place.I wish success for you in improving knowledge of planners/schedulers in different areas of project controls services.

I’m very interested in your training and certification programs for project controller. Here below you will find my answers and consideration to your questions. Hopping it will useful for your project. Cordially, RS A) I guess “classroom based” will be more appropriate. Then, if requested, it can be followed by mentoring support. I’m wondering a sort of Project Control University, which will try to give to the participants a holistic view of the Project Control process. In my opinion, should be done an effort to make to progress Project controllers from a passive role (planning, estimating and monitoring decisions taken from others) to an active role where the project controllers should be involved in the Company Strategic planning. C) These courses should be covering all the arguments without any discrimination. Scope, planning, cost, estimating, risk and communication, all of these are interrelated and necessary for a successful project execution. D) “How much are you willing to pay?” It is very hard to say. If the courses will be well structured with a high level quality in terms of programs and teachers; then, not only the single person, but also the enterprises will keen to spend the hell of money to get high level professional; but, if you are willing to reach this kind of target, than the training program should be long enough, months maybe. E) If we are talking about Project Control University, then it cannot be for beginners. Thus, you should consider different level of training for different level of experience. F) I don’t think that it will be necessary foreseen different training program for different industry. I totally agree the approach and fundamentals are almost the same for any kind of project.

In my opinion there are only three major requirements that must be met by individuals who want to do Planning/Scheduling as a profession: 1- Excellent mathematical understanding of CPM/PERT method 2- Good knowledge of databases, and knowing how data are stored in and extracted from databases, and 3- Being advanced in using related software. If a planner/scheduler knows applicable methodology/ies of certain discipline/industry, that knowledge must be considered as an additional advantage. We should believe that Planning/Scheduling is a technique and schedulers are not required to know all about different disciplines and diversity of industries. Method statement has to be written by methodologists/technicians, and schedulers has to be able to integrate data into the baseline so appropriately that system requirements are met and base-line would also address conditions that could happen in reality. If we expect that schedulers in addition to scheduling knowledge and software skills to have knowledge of certain discipline/s, only project managers would be right persons to learn this technique as the essential tool required for planning, managing, scheduling and controlling projects. However this could be a great idea, finding such project managers at least in this era may be idealistic. Hopefully in the future, students of different engineering disciplines are encouraged to take planning/scheduling leasons such as other courses of their curriculum, and could apply this technique by themself directly.