ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF A PLANNING ENGINEER

A planning engineer has one of the most important roles in construction projects. Planning Engineers are responsible for ensuring that the project will be completed as per project management plan deadlines. He should raise any potential risks before it happens and guide the whole team through the project different stages. 

1. FIELD KNOWLEDGE 

Strong construction background required to understanding the scope of the project and identify the activities and activities dependency. This experience could be gained by working as a Site Engineer for a period of time or by monitoring and observing the work progress.

2. SOFTWARE SKILLS 

He should be familiar with project management terms and techniques such as EVM (Earned Value Management), CPM (Critical Path Method) etc, as PMP (Project Management Professional Certificate) will cover this point.  He should know how to process the planning techniques via software and produce visual aids to help explain the schedule of work. Primavera, MS Project, MS Excel are essential, which are used in the market now.

3. ATTENTION TO DETAILS 

Accuracy is the main core of Planning Engineers works. The main difference between successful planning engineer and another engineer is to pay attention to details, engineering common sense , data analysis and filtration. Planning engineers are dealing with the big amount of data every day. However, they should figure out what this data try to say and not just pass them to others.

4. COMMUNICATION AND INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

Planning Engineers are a key player in a construction project. They communicate almost with the whole project team, attend variance meetings with different parties and prepare a lot of reports. Therefore Good communication and interpersonal skills are required.

5. RESPONSIBILITIES

Simply the planning engineer should prepare a plan to complete the works on time and within budget. This plan cannot be done by planning engineer only. However, the planning engineer responsibility is to coordinate with all project team and collect pieces of information from different parties and put them all together on one workable project management plan.

Ø  Understanding the scope of the project

Ø  Identifying the best series of events in the correct order for the project to finish on time and on a budget.

Ø  Presenting the schedule of work to others in the company and the client organization involved with the project.

Ø  Developing detailed yet simple to understand schedule and graphs

Ø  Providing visual aids to help explain the schedule of work, including bar charts and network diagrams.

Ø  Using specialized computer software to help keep the project on course.

Ø  Monitoring the progress of the project at different stages of its development.

Ø  Making sure the achieved progress on the project fits the progress anticipated in the schedule.

Ø  Keeping in contact with the project manager.

Ø  Making adjustment to schedules if necessary.

Ø  Liaising with individuals on the project .

Ø  Ensuring that all the separate elements of the project fit together and working towards a correct direction.