Liemar's Work in Progress knowledge session: key findings

Work in progress - work performed for which no invoice has yet been sent to the customer - is a subject that virtually everyone struggles with. That is perhaps the most important conclusion of our knowledge session on Oct. 23. No matter how big or small you make it, it's all about structure within your projects. And no matter how good your tools are, if the structure is not in place, work in progress remains a problem.

Exactly how far along are we in the project? What do we still need to do to finish the project? What costs are still to come? "The woes" of work in progress are often seen as a job for the finance department, but it touches all facets of your operations. For a realistic estimate of your project status, you like to direct your questions to the project manager or a project team. But you won't find current insight there, you'll find wishful thinking there. Estimates based on experience. A gut feeling.

Where gut feeling rules, there is (too) little grip on projects. How can you steer by numbers if those numbers are unknown? Those who recognize that importance can take steps.

To offer an independent view on the subject, we asked Pieter Dekkers as speaker. Based on his managerial and operational business experience in project-oriented companies, he shared his view on work in progress with the 30 participants. Using propositions, he explored how the participants viewed the topic and with what expectations they went into the session. He also showed that work in progress is seen differently by different stakeholders.

As it turns out, the subject is not black and white (if only it were that easy!). A high work-in-progress position, where you are pre-financing for your client, doesn't have to be a bad thing. As long as you know and accept the consequences. And as long as your process is set up for it. In other words: it has to be a conscious choice.

And then you see that work in progress is not just about reporting, but rather about organizing your process. All the tools you have in and around your organization come together in this.

After dinner, Barry, our technical director, took over to show how we approach the subject of work in progress in and with Liemar. This of course covered the five statistics - which are the starting point of our way of working. General costs, cost coverage, project results, project and production planning and liquidity planning: recorded information on which to steer.

So many companies, so many processes, so many levels of automation. Not surprisingly, Barry can name five ways to determine your work in progress. That's tooling. And what you choose is less important than that you choose. Far more important is deciding how you're going to value work in progress in your organization: this is how we work. If you do that in a good way, you can start managing for a good end result.

The hardest part of determining work in progress is determining the level of detail. To what level do you want insight? What are you willing and able to capture? What is relevant information and what is false security? Finding the answer is a process you have to go through as an organization. And which we are of course happy to support you in.

We often say it: steel builders help steel builders. This was also evident from the knowledge session. The subject of work in progress is alive to varying degrees and at all levels of maturity among all participants. The willingness to share both problems and knowledge with each other was great. That alone is reason enough to consider the knowledge session a success. We therefore thank all participants for their enthusiasm, commitment and contributions.

We will be sharing more information and insights from the knowledge session in the near future. We cordially invite you to keep an eye on our website, our LinkedIn channel and our newsletters. Would you like to exchange views directly? Please contact us at +31 (0) 40 24 84 041. We are happy to talk further with you.