Many Project Execution Plans are written to satisfy a funder or a board, filed, and never opened again. A useful PEP is different. It is the document a new team member reads to understand how the project works, and the one the client returns to when something goes wrong.
The core contents
- Project brief and objectives: what is being built, for whom, and what success looks like in time, cost and quality.
- Organisation and responsibilities: an organogram, a responsibility matrix and the approval routes for decisions, money and design.
- Procurement and contract strategy: how the contractor and key packages are procured, and under which forms of contract.
- Design management: design stages, responsibility for design, information requirements and how design is reviewed and signed off.
- Programme: the key milestones, the critical path and the regulatory hold points, including planning conditions and, for higher-risk buildings, the gateways.
- Cost management: the budget, change control, reporting and how contingency is held and released.
- Risk management: how risks are identified, owned, reviewed and reported, and the format of the risk register.
- Health, safety and building safety: CDM 2015 duties, and on higher-risk buildings the dutyholder roles, change control and golden thread under the Building Safety Act.
- Logistics strategy: site set-up, phasing, crane and hoist strategy, and how the site will be serviced.
- Communications and reporting: meetings, reports and who receives what, when.
- Handover: commissioning, completion, occupation strategy and the information to be handed over.
What makes one useful
It is specific. A PEP that could be applied to any project by changing the name on the front is not doing its job. It should deal with this site's real constraints: the neighbour who must be kept on side, the utility diversion that drives the programme, the master developer whose consent is needed for access.
It is honest about risk. The most valuable sections are often the ones that set out what could go wrong and who is dealing with it.
It is short enough to read. Detailed procedures can sit in appendices. The main document should be readable in an hour.
It is kept up to date. A PEP should be revised at key stages: after planning, after contractor appointment and before construction starts.
On complex sites, logistics belongs in the PEP
On the schemes our team has planned, the most important parts of the PEP were often about how the site would physically be built. Examples include how a basement would be built under tunnels, how plots would be serviced across a masterplan shared with other developers, or how a live car park would be kept open. Putting the logistics and execution strategy in the PEP makes sure the whole team signs up to it, not just the contractor.