Advertisement: From chaos to clarity: The project management edge

The EOSYS Group provides custom industrial automation and digital transformation solutions to Fortune 500 companies and major industrials across the United States. In addition to technical capabilities, EOSYS provides consistent project management to ensure all projects follow our proven methodology.

How does EOSYS move projects from chaos to clarity?

Early in my career, one of my coworkers observed that there are two types of engineering personalities: those who amplify problems and those who simplify them. System integrators with good project management ensure that work is efficiently organized, issues are quickly identified and resolved, and project status is clear to customers and team members. Those without are just rolling the dice by hoping things go well, while inadvertently putting their customers at unnecessary risk. We strive to always be one who simplifies.

Tell us about “the project management edge?” How does good project management provide an advantage?

Most customers already assign a project manager or lead to their internal project team, but often that individual is new to the role or lacks awareness of the unique needs of the automation or digital trans- formation scope. The system integrator’s project manager acts as an extension of the customer’s project management staff by filling the gaps in knowledge, mitigating risks, and ensuring efficient communication. Ultimately, our job is to guide our customers to the most efficient project execution that will give them an edge over their competition.

Before working with customers on an automation, controls or system integration project, what do you want them to know about project management?

Customers who consider project management to be an unnecessary cost have probably not worked with a good project manager. When executed properly, a PM’s cost should easily be offset by the efficiency he or she enables for the engineers or developers. This reduces risk and keeps everyone on the team doing what they love and are absolutely best at.

Please provide examples and quantify, if possible, why these topics are important for customers?

While it may be tempting to skip steps, sticking to a proven project methodology ensures project success. I once had a customer request that we forego a factory acceptance test because the schedule was too tight and he didn’t see the value. After some convincing, he reluctantly agreed to squeeze it in. In that FAT, the customer’s production team identified some critical requirements that had never been communicated to us. Because we pushed to follow our proven process, we had time to cut in these new features and the startup schedule was unaffected. GSIR

Original content can be found at Control Engineering.

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