Safety is Job One for Asset Managers. There is no reason to get too close to equipment such as this 60Hz to 25 Hz frequency converter in New Orleans.
Asset managers often go to the field to view their equipment, collect missing asset data, or support condition assessments. We recently went through a multi-page field safety checklist before starting a condition assessment program. I was asked what my Top 10 Safety Tips would be for asset managers if we were without a checklist.
I shared these on the whiteboard in the site’s training room.
#1. Always use the basic PPE (Personal Protective Equipment)
This includes a hard hat, long pants, a reflective vest, eye protection, hand protection, and a communication device.
Use some form of floor plan or geospatial map and mark known hazards where things like lockout tagout and confined space are required, plus where repairs or construction may be occurring.
It is not your facility so let someone else get close to the electrically charged equipment, rotating assets, and rolling stock. Observe at a safe distance.
Insist on a site escort being with you at all times. It is good for safety and gaining asset insights. Plus, that is the way you would want it if you were the plant manager.
Not About Experience or Capability
Many asset managers have plant operations or maintenance experience. Some asset managers have training and experience leading data collection teams or performing condition assessments. That is not the point.
Asset managers need to remember that they are usually on-site as visitors sent to observe or fill data gaps. The role is temporal and limited. Act according to how the full-time plant site views any visitor.
Safety is Job One
The ultimate goal is to return home from work each day alive and uninjured. That goes for everyone around you too. It takes structure and discipline to manage a successful asset management program. It starts with safety.
JD Solomon Inc provides solutions for facilitation, asset management, and program development at the nexus of facilities, infrastructure, and the environment. Contact us for more information about our asset management-related services, including criticality analysis, reliability & risk assessments, and our ASAP Asset Management program evaluation.
Founded by JD Solomon, Communicating with FINESSE is the community of technical professionals dedicated to being highly effective trusted advisors. Learn more about our publications, webinars, and workshops. Join the community for free.
Dashboard design and use tells us much about an organization's connectivity when facilitating a Strategic Plan.
The Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) business leader was frustrated. Three years ago, the organization moved to a new system and a big part of the implementation was to make the user dashboards more useable. The problem was not solved, so a year later, he hired a different consultant to tweak and improve the dashboard. The result was the same.
“I need you to bring your industry knowledge to my dashboards," stated the CMMS administrator. “The current dashboards have been developed without the practical knowledge to make them more useful to our staff."
I wish this type of exchange were more uncommon than it is. While my forte is not dashboard development, making management systems more useable to the operations side of organizations is.
“Why do you think you are not showing the most relevant information,” I asked, which was always my leadoff question in this type of discussion.
“Because we have worked for several years to improve the data quality. And we have the visualizations right,” replied the system champion. “The programmers are not tied as closely to the front lines as they should be. They do not understand what the users need to see."
“Let’s take a look and see,” I countered. “Your consultants may not be as close to your staff as they need to be, but that is probably not your biggest problem.”
Dashboards
Dashboards are common to information management and operations management. Senior management loves to have dashboards to keep their fingers on the pulse of the organization that they manage.
A dashboard is a type of graphical user interface which often provides at-a-glance views of key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to a particular objective or business process. In other usage, "dashboard" is another name for "progress report" or "report" and considered a form of data visualization. (Source: Wikipedia)
By this definition, focusing on big data to produce graphs, detailed mapping of business processes, and implementing a software system that produces a readable report are three keys to success. Or are they?
Unfortunately, the information management world has hijacked a common term. We gain much understanding of what is missing from our business dashboards by examining the old-school definition.
Dashboard: a panel extending across the interior of a vehicle (such as an automobile) below the windshield and usually containing instruments and controls. (Source: Merriam-Webster)
Actionable Items in Front
Look at the dashboard of a car, airplane, or boat. The information directly in front of the driver is current, real-time information used to navigate the vehicle. Historical and non-essential information (like the radio) are on the sides.
I use my own experiences racing sailboats through storms as my acid test. In those situations, I need to know my direction (compass), the wind speed and direction (anemometer), and usually how close I am to horizontal objects (GPS) and the bottom (depth finder). That’s it.
It’s nice to know the information from the last thirty days or the trends over the past four quarters, but I will also look at it when I have the chance. Managers need the information to help them drive the organization today.
One Big Issue
The biggest issue regarding dashboards is whether the managers are using them. After asking, "are you using the dashboard," the next essential question is, "how often are you using it."
Most front-line managers will tell you they are using the dashboard because no one wants to criticize someone else's work. You will find the truth when you get down into the second or even a third layer of questions. The truth in most cases is that they look at them from time to time, which means the dashboard provides them little help in driving their operation each day.
As a facilitator of Strategic Plans, Board Retreats, and management system improvements, I like to include dashboards in my pre-session exchanges. A dashboard, at least in theory, should be a risk management tool. I usually find that senior management is not using them at all, which tells me the executives are using something else to sail the ship through choppy waters. Something else may be their experience or their biases, but it is probably not the best evidence-based information that the organization has available.
To call senior management not using their dashboards as discouraging would be an overstatement. Not using dashboards to steer the organization is simply an opportunity lost. The unfortunate part is that it is far too common. But as a facilitator and a risk & reliability expert, it sheds light on every organization with which I interact.
Moving Forward
Dashboards contain the information and controls that we drive vehicles and organizations. We need viable dashboards to manage our organizations daily, especially when uncertainty is high and visibility is poor. If you want to make your dashboard more effective, then focus most on today’s information and less on historical data, business processes, and fancy visualizations.
Dashboards are good indicators of the integration of organizations from bottom to top. If the dashboards do not reflect what managers need to run their work divisions, then it is likely that the organizational data is disconnected from operational decision making. Even worse, if senior management is not using the organization’s dashboards in their strategic decision making, then the head of the organization is detached from its body.
The good news is that dashboards, good or bad, inform facilitators of the potential challenges of identifying and implementing actions of great importance to the integrated whole.
JD Solomon Inc provides solutions for facilitation, asset management, and program development at the nexus of facilities, infrastructure, and the environment. Founded by JD Solomon, Communicating with FINESSE is the community of technical professionals dedicated to being highly effective trusted advisors. Learn more about our publications, webinars, and workshops. Join the community for free.
Approach the milestone review with a positive attitude.
Seek an experienced facilitator.
Allow ample time.
Remember, we want to break the program into parts just like an autopsy, but the participants do not need to feel like they have been on the slab. And no one should call the funeral home when the milestone review is done.
An average autopsy case takes about four hours, including the paperwork. Milestone reviews are similar.
Communication is Important
A milestone review is a facilitated session. Unfortunately, we often approach milestone reviews as just another meeting.
The cause and effect relationships in the FINESSE fishbone diagram apply to effectively communicating at a milestone meeting. The seven bones are Framing, Illustrations, Noise reduction, Empathy, Structure, Synergy, and Ethics. The Five Reasons Being An Effective Communicator Helps Your Technical Career will also help your milestone reviews.
Less than Obvious Tips
1. The Project Charter Consistently Pays Dividends
The benefits of a formal project charter should be obvious to all project managers; however, in practice, this is not the case.
A project charter is a short document that outlines the entirety of the project. It includes the project mission, goals, deliverables, tasks, timelines, roles & responsibilities, performance measures, and stakeholders. The Project Management Institute’s PMBOK Guide (and other best practice standards) describe it as an essential deliverable t and one of the first deliverables in every project.
The primary benefit of a project charter is that it sets the working contract between team members rather than following the legal contract between all parties. Legal contracts should be modified if they are not in alignment with the collective direction of the project.
2. A Synthesis Document Prevents Backsliding
A synthesis document aims to combine a number of different pieces into a whole. The document includes all of the relevant decisions, work products approved by project participants, points of contention, project performance metrics, and supporting information that will facilitate everything into final form. It is more detailed than a decision log and much more concise than a SharePoint site.
In practice, a synthesis document progressively builds into a final form that lets the project team know they are finished.
The synthesis document identifies conflicts early and often. The document also prevents re-oping decisions or backsliding from previous agreement points.
3. Make It Interactive
The typical milestone review centers on a Gantt chart that describes the tasks, their dependencies, and timelines. The project controls function usually brings in reams of papers or crushing PowerPoint slides. Although the official tools to analyze and report on the schedule, budget, and quality are necessary, the entire meeting does not need to be aligned with these energy-sucking elements.
All of this information should be provided to participants in advance. The first ten to fifteen minutes of the milestone meeting should be devoted to quiet time for the participants to read the information. Getting the material in advance and allowing time to review it provides the opportunity for a more interactive review.
There is no need, and it is disrespectful, to read basic information to trained professionals. Use your valuable time together for a more beneficial purpose.
The primary benefit of group interaction is that critical thinking can be applied to issues like quality and risk.
4. Avoid a Beat-Down Session
By their nature, milestone reviews identify gaps. However, the event's primary purpose is to provide the team with project status and frame potential corrective action. Most corrective actions cannot be finalized in the meeting because the actions require some re-allocation of resources that, in turn, require senior management approval.
Remember that an autopsy should not make those participating in it think they were on the slab.
The benefit of avoiding a beat-down session is continued energy for the project, subsequent milestone reviews, and a successful end product.
5. The Follow-Up Is Critical
Most of us are happy when the milestone meeting is over. We wait for the project manager to send us the notes and the updated project control documentation. Then we more or less keep doing things the way we did before the milestone review.
One useful practice is to set multiple meetings related to key tasks over the next two weeks while in the milestone meeting. The big stuff is obvious, but here we are including some of the small stuff too. For the project manager, success can be described as being busier in the two weeks after the meeting than they were in the two weeks preparing for it.
The benefit is that creative thinking continues. Some things that seemed small in the milestone meeting were actually swamped by the larger issues. Better clarification and improved solutions will be gained in the aftermath.
Three End-of-Year Examples
A recent major infrastructure project had a milestone review that went below average. The session was cold, stale, and limited progress toward getting some milestone activities on track. I attribute it to a project manager and an executive sponsor who continued doing things they always had and did not spend much time making the review more productive. This one gets a ragged C.
Another recent example comes from a multi-year asset management project. The project manager was fully engaged, and the creative executive sponsor was present throughout the milestone review. The participants used the master schedule and project charter as the basis of the meeting but focused the meeting on interactive and avoided any beat-downs (although two were probably in order). The information was provided to participants in advance. The follow-up meetings are aggressive and in progress. This one gets a high B.
A third example is related to a multi-year planning project. The project manager and executive sponsor are fully engaged. Both rely on their team of subject matter experts and facilitators to be creative. A charter and a synthesis document guide the process. All information for the milestone review was provided the week before the session. The session was highly interactive and productive. This one gets a solid A.
Putting It into Practice
Improving milestone reviews involves doing the basics well while avoiding some less obvious aspects that undermine effectiveness. Project managers who seek to excel by practicing these tips will keep their projects on track. Moreover, they will keep their team members coming back and off the autopsy slab.
JD Solomon Inc provides solutions for program development, facilitation, and asset management at the nexus of facilities, infrastructure, and the environment. Contact us if you are looking for more effective approaches to program development and program management services.
Founded by JD Solomon, Communicating with FINESSE is a not-for-profit community of technical professionals dedicated to being better trusted advisors. Join the community for free.
