Improving Schedule Quality through transparency of Information
XER Schedule Toolkit showcase is happening as part of #eva19 workshop on 22 May. Experts will demo how project schedules globally can be improved through the application of basic techniques and ideologies.
The XER Schedule Toolkit operates entirely within Microsoft Excel and can access data from XER files or by connecting directly with the Primavera P6 database. All features are designed to promote schedule visibility, awareness and ultimately help drive improvements in schedule quality. All outputs are produced in standard Excel workbooks that can be shared.
By providing the entire project community with tools that allow them to engage with the planning process, the toolkit can facilitate wider distribution and greater understanding of the project schedule. As a result, broader participation in the schedule’s development and maintenance life cycle is achieved and ultimately, this helps drive project delivery.
In addition to its Primavera schedule viewing capability, there are also a range of advanced schedule diagnostic ‘tools’ that can aid planners to efficiently build more technically robust schedules.
The XER Schedule Toolkit is our passion and through the commitment by Spencer to it’s support and development, we are excited by the future possibilities and opportunities yet to be realised.
EVA 19 – XER Toolkit Workshop Content
Background
- Project environment and the ‘hidden schedule’
- Planning engineers vs Software jockeys
- XER Schedule toolkit
Using the XER Toolkit
- Column schemes
- Viewing the schedule
- Grouping and filtering
- Schedule quality diagnostics
- Baseline analysis
- Resource assignments
Nick Halksworth – Founder of XER Toolkit
Nick has 20 years experience in the field of project control having initially served a mechanical engineering apprenticeship. During the final year of his apprenticeship, Nick specialised in planning and during the early part of his career gained experience working as a site based Planning Engineer on a variety of projects in different industries.
In 2009, Nick became Primavera System manager for Sellafield Limited, a UK Nuclear licensed site, operating 450+ Primavera licences, 950 projects and a yearly portfolio spend of £1.5bn. During this period the concept of the XER Toolkit began to take shape and an early prototype (the PC Toolbox) was developed and is still in use today.
Nick is now XER Toolkit director for the Spencer Group with responsibility for strategy and development.
Andrew Jones – Head of Planning at C Spencer Ltd
Andrew is a Chartered Civil Engineer, and a member of the ICE with over 14 years of experience in the construction industry working on a wide variety of projects.
Following his engineering and project management experiences Andrew focused his career in planning in 2009 and now works in a variety of sectors, transforming planning cultures and using his professional background to underpin the fundamentals of planning.
Andrew also provides specialist services for delay and disruption and contemporaneous review of entitlement.
Spencer Group
Based in the UK, the Spencer Group celebrates 25 years in business this year.
Organic growth has seen the company develop into one of the UK’s largest privately owned engineering and construction businesses. From innovative design and build projects through to successfully developing their own power plant, Spencer thrives on opportunities to solve complex engineering challenges. Throughout this time, the company’s ethos ‘to work with our partners and deliver world-class engineering solutions’ has remained steadfast.
The group operates internationally in a range of sectors including Transport Infrastructure, Energy and Industrial, to deliver innovative projects for a range of clients and partners.
Always looking to improve the customer experience, Spencer adopts a pioneering approach to problem solving. One example is the company’s SOS system which has been built from the ground up by an in-house team of developers. The Spencer Online System (SOS) is an innovative approach to collaborative working with clients.
Not only does it manage the entire company’s document control, email, time-booking and management processes, it also provides client access which drives open and transparent working practices that give customers real-time information about their projects.
For full workshop detail click here