Proactive project management is often the most influential factor in having a successful project. It is necessary to complete a project under budget, creating a sustainable team culture, and maintaining long term customer.

Your unsuccessful projects in the past may have been due to lack of experience, wrong/missing equipment, contractor mistakes, difficult customers, or a variety of other issues. In each of these scenarios, there is something that could have been done ahead of time to address the issue. This ability to proactively identify future issues will define the eventual success for your project.

3 Benefits of Proactive Planning:

1. Less Fire Fighting

Every person has days that feel like you didn’t get any work done because spent all your time putting out fires. Being proactive will greatly reduce the quantity of fires you have to manage. With planning, you will find that you receive fewer questions to research and respond to. You will have shorter meetings, miss fewer deadlines, and respond faster to the questions you do receive. If you are reactive, you will find that it is increasingly difficult to catch up, and sometimes impossible to recover from on your own.

2. Build Reputation

A proactive project manager will be viewed as an expert who can address risks and deal with problems. Customers will have peace of mind that you have the project under control, and that they are receiving the best treatment in the industry. Being proactive improves your company’s brand and reputation and supports positive word of mouth and repeat business.

3. Learn Your Trade at a Rapid Rate

Reactivity makes it difficult to reflect and learn lessons because you will be constantly putting out one fire after another without identifying and learning what started them in the first place. Being proactive allows you to learn lessons, reflect on them, and implement that learning on other projects. As you put these into practice on your other projects, it will enact a cumulative effect of proactiveness which allows you additional time to research alternative products, coordination items, and industry knowledge on projects that you would otherwise not have time for.

3 Risks of Managing Reactively:

1. Material Costs Over Budget

The more reactive you are, the more orders you place without knowing why they are needed — whether it is technicians/programmers requesting items to be ordered that are not needed, parts getting misplaced and re-ordered, or covering scope creep. Every order not associated with a change order will result in unexpected costs that will likely send you over budget. This could also result in costly freight charges for expedited shipping.

2. Hours Over Budget

When there are details of the project missing or issues not identified it will cause designers/engineers, technicians, and programmers additional time. They may have to change direction, perform work out of order, or be pulled off the project. Each time a person comes back to the project after going somewhere else, they need time to re-orient themselves, communicate with stake holders, and update documentation. If you are reactive, you may find yourself rescheduling which requires moving to another project that may not be fully prepared. This will take more time and continue to spiral until you can reset the schedule.

3. A Culture of Expected Disappointment

Reactive project management is one of the fastest ways to dissolve a teamwork mentality and will promote individualism with your team. If you are consistently reactive, they will soon begin to identify smaller issues as a setup for failure, place blame earlier, be less motivated, and more resentful to put in extra effort. If this continues, they will put in less than standard effort and you will be unable to control the hours on your project.

3 Ways to Manage Proactively:

1. Aggressive Task Management

Set yourself up for success by aggressively planning your task list. Whatever tool you use, whether it is advanced software or a spreadsheet, you need a system to track each step of the project and the tasks you are responsible for. Set dates and timelines for these tasks, and rigorously hold yourself accountable to completing them. Each tasks that is kicked down the road will add up at a later date and eventually something will be missed.

2. Set up Project Reviews With Your Team’s Experts

Having a project preparation meeting with your team is one of the best ways to find issues ahead of time. An engineer/designer may be able to recognize information that is missing for complete technical drawings/details. A foreman/technician may be able to identify equipment that will be difficult to install, devices that are not compatible, and cabling or accessories you may not be aware are needed. A programmer can help identify networking challenges, missing information for integrations, and other customer information needed to complete the project.

3. Communicate With the Customer Early & Update Them Often

Give the customer confidence and reassurance they made the right decision in partnering with your company by communicating consistently and efficiently. Consistent communication will provide a sense of transparency with your customer which leads to trust. Clearly communicate timelines and potential delays so impacts on both sides can be ironed out in advance. For large projects, schedule regular meetings with the customer to give status updates, review the schedule, and identify their high priority items that need to be resolved.

Proactive project management is critical for achieving project success by effectively managing risks, optimizing resources, satisfying stakeholders, ensuring quality, adapting to change, driving continuous improvement and ultimately driving future business.

It is critical to proactively manage a project to set it up for success. Thinking long-term, addressing needs and problems before they arise, and being able to anticipate client needs are not always easy tasks, but in to effectively execute projects from start to finish, these skills can make a near-impossible task feel simple. This translates not only to organizational efficiency but also to organizational success.