Your Project Management User Guide

A project is one piece of client work with a start, an end and a contract value. Everything else in this guide happens inside one.

• Open Projects in NAVAC BMS and choose New Project. Give it the name the client would recognise, for example "Kilimani Office Fit-Out".
• Pick the client. If the work came through the CRM, the won deal already created the project for you, so look for it before making a second one.
• Enter the contract value and the start and end dates. Budget and health are worked out from these, so use the real figures, not round ones.
• Choose the project lead. That person owns the plan and is the one asked for a reason when the health colour changes.
• Add the team. Only people on the project can be given its tasks, and only their hours count towards its load.

Milestones are the four to eight moments the client cares about: design signed off, permits in, go-live. They are the spine of the plan.

• Add a milestone for each point where something is handed over or signed off. Give each one a due date.
• Keep the list short. If you have more than eight, some of them are tasks, not milestones.
• Put them in order. The Gantt and the status report both read milestones by date.
• You never type a milestone percentage. It is worked out from the tasks underneath it, so it moves when the work moves.

Tasks are the actual work. Each one belongs to a milestone, has one owner, a due date and an estimate of hours.

• Under a milestone, add the tasks needed to reach it. One owner per task. If two people share it, split it in two.
• Give every task estimated hours. This is what the People view uses to show who is overloaded, so a rough honest number beats a blank.
• Team members: open the task board, find your tasks, and move each one across as you work it: To do, In progress, Done. That is the whole job.
• When a task is marked Done, its milestone updates on its own and so does the project health. Nobody has to send a message.
• Add a dependency when one task cannot start until another finishes. The Gantt draws the link so the order is clear to everyone.

The Gantt is the same tasks as the board, drawn on a calendar. Use it to see what is late, what is waiting on what, and what is coming next.

• Each bar is a task. Its length is the time between start and due date. The filled part is how much is done.
• The vertical line is today. Anything to the left of it that is not finished is late.
• Arrows between bars are dependencies. The second task cannot start until the first is done.
• Diamonds are milestones. Filled means landed. Hollow means still ahead.
• Change a task’s dates and the board, the milestone and the health all follow. There is only one plan.

The People view adds up every person’s estimated hours across every project for the next four working weeks.

• Open People. Each person shows a percentage. 100% means their next four weeks are fully booked. Over 100% means they cannot do what has been planned.
• Click a person to see which projects and tasks make up their hours.
• To fix an overload, move a task to someone else, change its dates, or lower its estimate. The percentage updates as soon as you save.
• Leave approved in the Staff module is taken out automatically. Someone on leave next week shows the hours they can actually work, not a full week.

Every project shows its contract value, what has been spent against it, and the percentage. There is no separate budget spreadsheet.

• Finance: when you book an expense or a supplier bill in the Finance module, pick the project it belongs to. That is all. It posts against the project the moment it is saved.
• Project lead: open the project and read the Budget line. It is the same figure Finance sees, not a copy.
• A project past 90% spent with milestones still to land is one to look at today, not at month end.

Every project has a colour. It is worked out from real dates and real spend. Nobody picks it in a meeting.

• Green means milestones are on schedule and spend is in line with progress.
• Amber means something is slipping: a milestone is due soon and behind, or spend is running ahead of progress.
• Red means a milestone is late or the budget is close to gone. The client is likely to notice.
• When a project moves to amber or red, the project lead is asked to type the reason. The colour cannot be saved without it.
• The reason stays on the project. Anyone who opens it sees why it has its colour, and the status report prints it.

The status report is a PDF the client can read in two minutes. It is built from the project as it is right now.

• Open the project and choose Status Report. There is nothing to fill in.
• The PDF has the health colour and its reason, each milestone with its percentage, the open tasks, and budget against spend.
• Download it and send it to the client, or point them to the client portal where the same figures are live.
• Send one at the same time every week. A client who gets a report every Friday stops phoning on Monday.

The client portal shows the client their own projects, live, without them being able to change anything.

• Give the client contact access to the portal. They see only their own projects.
• They see progress as it stands, without waiting for a call or a report.
• If you would rather send than share, the one-click status report covers the same ground. Your Product Engineer can set up whichever suits the client.

The module only tells the truth if the tasks do. These are the small habits that keep it that way.

• Team: move your tasks as you work them, not on Friday afternoon. Thirty seconds at a time.
• Lead: open People on Monday. Fix any overload before the week starts, not after it slips.
• Finance: book costs to the project the day they happen. A bill left in a drawer makes a green project lie.
• Lead: send the status report on the same day each week. When a colour changes, write the reason the same day.
• Once a month, look at the whole portfolio on one screen. Two reds in a row is a pattern, not bad luck.