Project Management in the Oil and Gas Industry

3.3 Expected Activity Time Period
To define the required time to finish any task, you must know the resources 
available to perform the work according to the required quality and to do 
that you must know the following:
• Know the task volume and if it can be measured. It will be 
better, for example, to calculate the time required to prepare 
the wood form to pour 100 m
3
of concrete into the founda-
tion. From that we can figure the task volume.
• Define the work required by hours, days, or weeks to fin-
ish this activity, noting that the number of workers should 
be identified, and consider the capability for each worker to 
perform the task alone.
Measuring the working capacity for each worker will usually take days. 
Take care from traps, such as the idea that you should decrease the capacity 
of work per day by about 50 percent, as all the hours per day do not focus 
on the project’s activities as there is a lot of time wasted in meetings, special 
discussions, restroom breaks, eating, and others. Moreover, there is some 
delay in the work itself.

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Project Management in the Oil and Gas Industry
Now define the time period for each task, but take care from other traps 
when putting the schedule in the calendar because the total time period 
will be different due to the following factors:
• Weekends
• Official vacations and holidays
• Annual leave for employees
• Some days the project will stop.
It is worth mentioning that defining the performance rate of each activ-
ity depends on a normal rate, which is found in textbooks or standard 
guidelines for some contractor companies. But it is essential to take any 
information from others who have extensive experience, work in the same 
country or the same location, or have experience working on similar, pre-
vious projects.
If the same activity in similar projects, such as pouring concrete foun-
dations, was repeated before, but we must choose a foundation of the 
same kind, it is preferred to be from the same type and the same location 
because, for example, remote desert areas are different than cities where 
there is labor available and the efficiency of employment is usually higher 
than the remote area. For industrial projects, most of the projects are out-
side of the big cities, in the desert, or in remote areas and all the contractors 
and engineers main offices are from the city where housing and normal 
building are famous activities. The planner should take care from the dif-
ference of the project location.
When you need information from individuals or experts, remember 
that not everyone has accurate information, as by the human nature. When 
someone says that the expected time for the activity was eighteen days, but 
he finished it in ten days, only trust this happened because he considered it 
one of his success stories, so it will keep in his mind for a long time.
As a rule of thumb, no one can work 100 percent of his or her time 
because about 20 to 50 percent of time is wasted in the following 
activities:
• Attending meetings that we don’t really need to attend
• Spontaneous office visits
• Opening and reading mail and email
• Searching for specific information
• Providing assistance or advice to others
• Equipment failure such as a computer, printers, and others
• Daily regular activity

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Pitfalls in Time Schedule Planning 93
• Misunderstanding between team members
• A lack of clear specification or scope of work
• New specification to quality
• Attending a training course or seminar