Construction Informer

So often, simply because of limited time, people and expertise, the project ends and about all that is calculated is the net profit. If the resources of time and people aren’t available to dig into the depths of the project to discover what really happened then that’s just the way it is. You move on with the solace that at least you know whether or not you came out ahead.

But if you don’t do a project autopsy simply because you have never figured out how to do it, then you owe it to yourself and your business to gain the necessary expertise.

In an ideal world the tracking of what is going right, and what is going wrong, would occur in real-time, as the project was still living and breathing. Then, adjustments would be made that keep the vital stats within a predetermined range as the project matured. By tracking and recording those vitals throughout the length of the project the autopsy at project’s end becomes a matter of pulling the data together and doing an analysis. So the first step in the project autopsy is to identify the vital statistics that will return the right information at project’s end.

All businesses, even businesses within the same industry, have different levels of goal achievement. Sure, the common denominator at the top of the list is usually to make a profit. But that is often where the commonality ends. Some construction companies may have made their mark through customer service. So, for them a measurement of customer service that is above the norm would be a vital they’d want to track. Another company may have at its core the value of being kind to the environment, so their vital related to that would be higher than a business that only values the environment as much as is required by its customers, regulators and employees.

So now it’s time to make the list. What are the kinds of things that you want to track throughout your projects that will give you a picture of how well you did when the project is complete? These things are the measurements that tell you whether or not you are achieving your goals beyond just making a profit.