---
title: The Recipe for Project Planning
description: There is often a disconnect between the Estimating and Accounting Teams between Markup and Margin —we solve the mystery and improve your bottom line!
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# The Recipe for Project Planning
- Kevin Juliano
- Finance & Insurance , Project Financials , Industry News & Insights
- [No Comments](https://blog.ascentconsults.com/project-planning-recipe#comments-listing)
## In this article:
[Introduction](https://blog.ascentconsults.com/project-planning-recipe#Introduction)
- [1. Know what it takes to get it done](https://blog.ascentconsults.com/project-planning-recipe#One)
- [2. Work Ahead](https://blog.ascentconsults.com/project-planning-recipe#Two)
- [3. Understand where to spend your time](https://blog.ascentconsults.com/project-planning-recipe#Three)
In 1786, Robert Burns wrote the poem “To a Mouse” from which John Steinbeck drew the famous line 150 years later, summing up the whole of construction scheduling:
Anyone in construction can tell you an endless string of war stories about project execution plans that did anything and everything but go according to plan. Most of the stories are typical, like an unusually snowy March or massive delivery delays. Some have an ounce of originality, like uncovering artifacts or human remains. Some are tragic, like delays due to safety violations or installation failures. Some of the stories are comical, like the time I had a skunk make the worksite unapproachable for three days. Raise the topic in a room of construction professionals and stories will abound.
## If construction snafus are so commonplace, how can we, as construction managers, ever plan for anything if our plans will always be disrupted by the unexpected? Honestly, we cannot. It is, by definition, impossible to plan for the unexpected in life. Given this realization, I would like to offer the standpoint that great construction planning is actually the art of eliminating the unexpected. This approach becomes the basis for exceptional construction management. Here are three keys to building and executing an effective project plan.
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### 1. Know what it takes to get it done.
This seems like an obvious place to start, but let’s break it down. Imagine you are baking a cake. I looked at the back of a “Pillsbury Moist Supreme White Cake Mix” and there are three steps to bake a cake - “Set, Beat, Bake.” If you were to give me this plan for your birthday cake, you are going to have a sorry celebration! I know the result, and you gave me the plan, but you did not lay out what it actually takes to get it done correctly. Thankfully, the folks at Pillsbury know something about eliminating the unexpected. For example, they tell you different ways to prepare different types of pans. They give you a whole chart on bake times based on five different sizes of pans. No matter what dish I happen to find in my cabinet to get the project done, they have planned for it.
I see construction schedules and project execution plans that consist of “set, beat, bake” and very little else. The excuse I receive when I question it? “Well, my field guys know what they are doing - they don’t need me to spell it out for them.” And that is true until something unexpected happens on the job site. Good project teams can get the job done with a plan for what should happen. Exceptional project teams get the job done, no matter what happens, because there is just no room left for the unexpected - there’s a plan for any size pan.
### 2. Work ahead.
But often, project teams fail to work ahead. What do I mean by this? Let’s go back to my cake project. Step one, “Set” includes preheating the oven to 350 and greasing the pan. I tried it out and my oven takes 13 minutes to preheat. It took me about 30 seconds to spray the pan with some cooking oil. What did I do with the other 12 and a half minutes? Like any good project manager, I went to my budget meeting and reported that we were on schedule. At the end of 13 minutes, I went on to step two in my plan, cracking eggs, measuring out water, pulling out the KitchenAid mixer, and searching for that second mixing paddle that turned out to be in the wrong drawer.
One of the best field supervisors I ever worked with was truly a master of the non-critical path. He was also one of the most efficient, and most profitable, project leaders a PM could ever hope for. At any given time on a project, he had a list near him with all the things that *could* be done but didn’t *need* to be, done on the project. Any of his field staff could take a moment of downtime they had and go check something off the list. He would pre-punch his job every week, adding to this list of things that his crew members could do while they waited for the delivery truck that was stuck in traffic. He would task a junior laborer with prep and preassembly of parts that would be needed after lunch. Kudos to the ones that plan ahead. But to those who start mixing the ingredients while the oven is preheating, you are truly successful.
### 3. Understand where to spend your time.
Stats can be made to say lots of things, but anyone in construction knows that rework costs money.
That’s a quarter million dollars for every five million of contract work. Costs aside, I’ve never, ever seen a baseline construction schedule that had a line for “rework.” And yet, we as project teams, have some say in the matter. We can either plan to do the work right the first time, or we can start putting line items in our schedules for rework. I find it hard to imagine a world where planning to rework our work will be embraced with positivity!
Pillsbury tells us to allow our cake to cool before we frost it. They actually tell us, in the detail of their plan, how to spend our time. Why? Because they know that if we don’t, we will be doing some serious rework.
Maybe Pillsbury should tell us to work ahead, clean up, and decorate while the cake is cooling….
There will never be a cure for changing project schedules. We will, as in industry, always face substantial completion dates that seem to come faster than they should. However, a proactive approach to eliminating the unknown and replacing it with a plan for everything, even the non-critical path of work, can help project teams become more efficient and ultimately, more profitable. Is that like having your cake and eating it too?
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Posted by [Kevin Juliano](https://blog.ascentconsults.com/author/kevin-juliano)
Kevin Juliano entered the construction industry as a laborer. Capitalizing on a degree in Communications, he was asked to move to project management and estimating after eighteen months in the field. Since then, he has served as a senior PM, senior estimator, manager of preconstruction, regional operations manager, and executive, all primarily in heavy civil and electrical construction. Kevin has also worked for Procore Technologies as a Senior Strategic Product Consultant. Kevin has earned a BA from Wheaton College, an MA from Northwest Nazarene University, an MBA from Colorado State University, and is currently working on his Doctorate in Business from St. Leo University.
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Posted by [Kevin Juliano](https://blog.ascentconsults.com/author/kevin-juliano)
Kevin Juliano entered the construction industry as a laborer. Capitalizing on a degree in Communications, he was asked to move to project management and estimating after eighteen months in the field. Since then, he has served as a senior PM, senior estimator, manager of preconstruction, regional operations manager, and executive, all primarily in heavy civil and electrical construction. Kevin has also worked for Procore Technologies as a Senior Strategic Product Consultant. Kevin has earned a BA from Wheaton College, an MA from Northwest Nazarene University, an MBA from Colorado State University, and is currently working on his Doctorate in Business from St. Leo University.
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