As generally understood, Electronic Data Management System (EDMS), is an automated system to store and retrieve documents digitally to avoid piles of manual documents and the complexity involved in manually managing them. The key benefits from the EDMS are;
- Providing the right document to the right person at the right time with ease
- Better document change management, version control
- Improving collaboration of different stakeholders operating from single or multiple locations through better document sharing
- Comments and change management
- Improved security through permissioned access
- Maintaining audit trails
If your work involve projects of any nature (big, small, internal, external, multi location, single location), by integrating the EDMS to a scheduling tool and a workflow engine, EDMS can be transformed into a very powerful Integrated Earned Value Management System (EVMS).
The key benefits from a well implemented integrated EVMS are;
- Progress reporting – Planned work Vs Earned work within a given time frame within minutes, with accuracy.
- Trends analysis – Schedule Performance Index (SPI), Cost Performance Index (CPI), within minutes, with accuracy.
- Ability forecast with ease (Moving from reactive management to proactive management)
- Estimate to Complete (ETC), “When we complete the project, how much it is going to cost?”
- Estimated date of completion, “When are we likely to complete the project?”
All these are possible, without any additional data entry, and can happen at the press of a button, because the progress of work can be assessed based on predefined rules of credit attached to the workflow.
For example let us consider the workflow of an engineering drawing;
| Stage | Trigger | Rule of credit for Earned Value | Planned date | Actual date |
| 1 | Completion of the engineering drawing | 50% | 20/05/2019 | 20/05/2019 |
| 2 | Engineering review completion | 20% | 22/05/2019 | 22/05/2019 |
| 3 | Review comments incorporation | 20% | 23/05/2019 | |
| 4 | Final review | 10% | 25/05/2019 |
On 26/05/2019;
Planned value of this engineering drawing = 100%
Earned value = 70%
Schedule variance = EV-PV = 70-100 = -30
As you can see, the progress reporting happens automatically as and when the work progresses. The additional step of manually entering percentage completion is eliminated. This enforces process compliance, eliminates wrong reporting and considerably reduces waiting time for project progress information. This concept can be scaled from a document level to work package, project, program, portfolio level. It can be within engineering or it can be extended to procurement and construction. It can be single location or multi-location.
Data from the field from a very large project which implemented EDMS based Integrated EVMS
Project details : USD 1.6 billion project, with 120+ vendors, engineering done in five locations, tight schedule (25 months) with incentives and penalties
Key Benefits reported
- 70% reduction in overall time taken to generate reports
- Improved accuracy of the real time reports
- Access to EPC contractors / vendors, automated approval processes, quick access to drawings and docs with latest revisions has increased productivity by 20-25%.
- Direct access to multiple EPC contractors and vendors has reduced data exchange time
- Ability to manage by exceptions than getting buried in information overload
- 90% on time completion of deliverables
- 80% deliverables completed within budget
- 80% reduction in errors and rework
To understand how these things really work in a technology platform, request for a demo / discussion.
About the blogger
Abrachan Pudussery is a Project management domain expert at Wrench Solutions. He is also the founder member of Project Management Research Institute, a non-profit organization committed to the promotion of professional project management best practices.
