1. Program Management at an Electric Utility
Patrick O’Connell
Project Control Coordinator
patrick.oconnell@gatrans.com

2. • Objective 1: Program Management
– Org chart
– Details for reporting
• Objective 2: Quality Control of Schedules
– Daily Digest
• Objective 3: Feedback from Team
Members
– Daily Digest
– Timesheets

3. Georgia Transmission Corporation
• GTC - owned by 39 Electric Membership
Cooperatives (EMCs) in Georgia
• Build, operate and maintain Transmission
Lines and Substations
– not only for the EMC’s but also for the ITS
– ITS – shared transmission system in Georgia
with 4 members: GTC, GPC, MEAG and
Dalton

4. Building Projects
• How we do it:
– We are a matrix organization
• PM Group
• Functional Departments
– Divided into Project Teams
• North, South and Bulk
• Some hard matrixed to a team
• Others assigned based on availability
– Project Reporting (PR) supports not only the Project Managers
but also Planning, Environmental, Land Acquisition, Design,
Construction and Maintenance
– PR also works with Accounting, Finance and IT and almost
everyone else including HR and others

5. Projects in Primavera
• All capital projects and some others for timesheet users
• Schedules created from standard templates
– Provide standard lead times for common projects
– Proper coding for time, contracting and invoices
• Resource loaded
– Timesheet users may be assigned in template or
• Assigned by their matrix assignment or
• Assigned by department
– Expense codes for payments
• Consistent across all projects
• Project schedule has all cost – BAC, AC, ETC, EAC
• One Stop Shop (almost)

6. Primavera Output from Program Perspective
• Prepared from Primavera
– Annual Budget for Capital Projects
• Major Expenditures
• Workforce planning
– Capital Projections
• Major Expenditures
• Variance Reporting
– Semi – monthly resource waterfalls
• FM and group leads have ability to provide feedback
• Construction
• Other – Quality Assurance, As-Built Tracking,
Performance reporting

7. Primavera Reports
• We generate from the client first then go to
other tools as needed (which is a lot)
– Estimates
– Current Cost / Manhour Status – Job Services
– Scope Changes
– Closeouts
• Publish
– Activity Layouts – somewhat of a savior
– Project Websites – very painful (for my co-op
student)
• If this could be automated…

9. Primavera Tools
• Client
– Power users
• Timesheets
– Time entry and status activities
– Time entry only
– Status activities only
• Web Access
– Power users
– Function Managers
– Project Managers

10. Project Control Specialists
• Assigned to a SS and TL Project Manager
• Estimate, Maintain and Closeout
– Approximately 400 - 450 active projects
– 100 mile Transmission lines to small substation
modifications
– Schedule updates semi-monthly
– Responding to schedule and cost variance reports
for EMC, ITS and BOD
– Responding to PM, timesheet users, functional
managers

11. Primavera Supplemental Tools
• MS Access
– Too many queries, so many so I stopped counting
– Standardized and ad-hoc
– Backbone for reporting
• Excel
– Daily Digest
– Waterfalls for FM and PM
• Business Objects
– Cost reporting from Lawson (accounting)
– Contract reporting
– Validation of cost load
• TPOP
– Legacy web tool, where projects start
– Tool used by Planning – authorizes projects

12. Nightly Interfaces
• Employee data from Lawson HR to Primavera resources
– Contact info, payroll codes, etc
– Including contractors using the Timesheet tool
• Primavera Project activity structure and resources to Lawson
Activities
– Activity one to one
– Resources become sub accounts (expense codes)
• Actual cost from Lawson GL to Primavera Activity / Resource
• TPOP to Primavera
– Project name, project manager, scope, etc
• Primavera to TPOP
– Schedule and cost summarized for high level TPOP fields
• Timesheet to Lawson Payroll (ON DEMAND)
– Summarized to fill appropriate Lawson fields

13. Daily Digest
• PCS
– Info not found in Primavera
– Lookaheads
• Coop
– Troubleshooting
– Tracking
• Coordinator / Mgr
– Busting chops or otherwise known as coaching

14. Daily Digest

15. Client
• Template schedules
• Project Reporting / Tracking / Problem Solving –
big part of how/what we communicate
– 25 Project Codes
– 16 Activity Codes
– 12 Resource Codes
– 112 UDF codes across
• 50 Project
• 21 Resource Assignment
• 14 Task
• Playing with 14 in Expenses

16. Timesheet
• Improvements here are a HOME RUN -170+ users
• Assignment based. Users:
– Enter time, status, Notes to PM
– People are assigned to 5-10-25-100 projects
– Steps – how we do Quality Assurance
• Easy to use but also has limitations
• Custom Trigger on TASK table
– We use this to communicate who updated what activities, when and
with what dates
• No Graphics and no sdk support

17. Quality Assurance
Update Status

19. Department Discipline Waterfall

20. The End
• If we made it this far and there is time for questions….