Planning engineers require both information and direction

Planning engineers require both information and direction

Depending on a company’s procedures, a planner’s role can play out in two very different ways

Planning plays a vital role in every project, but a difficulty that arises for many planning engineers once a project goes live is that they get side-lined and become passive observers of the progress.

Mohammed Moutaz Khayyat, CEO of Khayyat Contracting & Trading (KCT), notes: “The planning engineer can be the strongest person on-site if he knows all the data of the project and the project manager goes to him, but he can also be the weakest of he is just doing carrying out uninvolved reporting.”

Samir Sakka, senior planning manager at KCT, explains: “Sometimes project directors don’t want to hear the bad news, so we must ensure the planning engineer stick to their procedures, and if they are told to change some of their inputs on any of our projects that it does not happen.”

It is important that the planning engineer remains at the heart of the project’s team in order to accurately document the project’s adherence to its budget, and so that, if it is over-budget, issues such as material shortage of inadequate supervision are quickly identified and remedied.

Sakka adds: If a project is under-budget this is not necessarily a problem – it means that we are being efficient, but we need to make doubly sure that we are maintaining the quality and safety, so perhaps we can hire more people to make everybody more relaxed and loyal to the company.”

Khayyat comments: “Planning is also about human resources – nobody wants to work seven days a week and more than ten hours a day and under pressure, so enhancing the work environment is also very important - it’s not just budget.”

Planning is ultimately not just the responsibility of the planning engineers – who are there to co-ordinate elements of the plan from across departments to ensure their consistency – but of everybody. In turn, planning engineers are able to use this pivotal role to engender best practice.