The Project Controls Revolution
The rapid pace of technological innovation created a dramatic shift in the world of project controls. Until the mid-1980s, software engineers and programmers performed data manipulation and report generation on mainframe computers. Because these computers were shared systems that served every department within an organization, it often took a week or two to move a request through the queue and derive actionable insights. The resulting reports then went to administrative staff that would then develop visuals such as Gantt charts (by hand!) for analysis and interpretation.
The advent of the personal computer changed everything. In this landscape, new sophisticated software emerged and required the specialized skills of a project controls analyst for data generation and analysis to be successful. The shift to a digital-first environment had profound and far-reaching implications, paving the way for the project controls analyst role we know today.
Over the past 40 years, the project controls analyst has become one of the most valuable assets of a project. The project controls analyst wear many hats—wrangling insights from disparate sources; ensuring that all pieces of a project are working together in synchronicity; enabling real-time data monitoring; detecting anomalies in overall system health; quickly identifying risks; analyzing, measuring and preserving project effectiveness; and transforming data into meaningful formats to effectively communicate to the project team.
Project controls is no longer an administrative function. It requires an analytical mindset to manage systems of the future. Here are three reasons why the role is critical:
Project controls is about managing systems instead of people. You can never fully remove the human element from project work, nor should you. Yet one major difference between project management and project controls work is the focus on managing systems versus managing people. While project managers oversee people and their performance, project controls analysts oversee a project’s ecosystems and monitor their interactions and performance and for snags and indicators that a project may be headed off track.
Cost estimating and scheduling are the project controls analyst’s realm—and critical to a project’s success. Though you don’t have to be a math wizard to excel at project controls, you do need to be comfortable with diving into the numbers on a daily basis. Project managers keep projects on budget and on schedule, but project controls analysts enable this to happen. These specialists are dedicated to monitoring costs, resources and timelines, and serve as the expert in these areas.
Project controls analysts’ expertise inform and support project managers, whose time and focus are limited. Project managers can’t make good decisions without current information on the budget and schedule. Yet the time needed to accurately monitor and call out issues in these areas exceeds the average project manager’s capacity. These areas are so critical, especially to complex projects, that a unique specialist is required.
Project controls analysts play a vital role in a project’s success, and many projects can’t survive without them. With a blend of specialized expertise in software and systems engineering and data analysis, project controls analysts have the knowledge and experience to convert data into meaningful insights, fuel evidence-based strategic decision-making, and drive operational performance.
As industries continue to streamline operations for project efficiency and success, we hope to see more organizations continue to embrace and elevate the role of project controls analysts.