Instructor: Dr. Awad Hanna

High performing contractors are set apart by their ability to make more money than their peers while simultaneously satisfying their customers. There are seven distinct habits that characterize high performing contractors. What are the habits that make this success possible? These habits will be examined along with a detailed action plan for each. These habits will extend over project delivery, estimating, pre-construction, project execution and management, post mortem and organization vertical integration. Habits related to field supervision, including superintendents and foreman, will also be discussed.

Instructor: Dr. Awad Hanna

Change orders significantly alter the nature of the work or the materials to be installed, are highly disruptive, and require reworking of installations which already have been completed in order to accommodate the new design. As well, change orders are generally more expensive to perform than in equivalent amount of work in the basic contract. This course will include topics such as recoverable costs, methods to quantify the cumulative impact of change orders, the Factor Approach to overtime, over manning, and second shift, as well as tips for prompt recovery of change order costs.

Instructor: Dr. Awad Hanna

To successfully manage a project; Mechanical contractors need to know when and where the job man-hours are deviating. Earned Value Analysis (EVA) is one of the most powerful tools in the mechanical contractor’s toolkit. This seminar presents the fundamentals of EVA and how it can be used to develop manpower loading charts, how to track and measure percent complete, how to predict the job outcomes when the job is just 20% complete and how to compare your performance to industry benchmarks. The seminar will also present a comprehensive job tracking system based on tracking project man-hours. A simplified and yet accurate job tracking system for small and medium size mechanical contractors will be also shown in this seminar.

Instructor: Dr. Awad Hanna

This seminar discusses the causes of poor labour productivity, measuring productivity for controlling items of work, performance factor, forecasting project outcomes, productivity measurement, daily productivity measurements, performance evaluation reports, factors affecting labour productivity, what to do to reduce the impact of schedule compression and acceleration, manpower loading and s-curve, preplanning, site logistics, site layout, deliveries, storage, and material handling.

Instructor: Dr. Awad Hanna

This seminar will provide a practical knowledge of cost estimating, cost management and conceptual estimating principals. Learn how to develop project costs and how to organize construction cost information. Understand how contractors, engineers, architects and owners work though project costs to prepare meaningful estimates.

Instructor: Dr. Awad Hanna

Everyone would love to avoid claims, but who wants to lose profit on the job? This one day program focuses on avoiding claims, and increasing profits through better Change Order procedures. In the morning, participants learn to “Read between the Lines” before the deal is done, and how to protect their interests in a cooperative manner. The afternoon is spent learning how to improve your ability to price Changes on the job by recognizing the “often missed” components of the actual cost of the change. By recognizing these components, and explaining them to the client professionally, you greatly increase your chances of having your project be a success!

Instructor: Dr. Awad Hanna

This program will examine the cumulative affect that change orders have on labour productivity for contractors. With three separate studies undertaken this review of the cumulative affect of change orders will look at types of change, recoverable change order costs, methods of quantifying the impact of change orders on labour efficiency, the Cause and Effect Method, characteristics of projects impacted by change orders, and much more. A must see seminar. Bring your calculator, you will need it!

Instructor:  Dr. Awad Hanna

In this course you will learn about the many effective tools and techniques for analyzing project schedule and time related claims. Topics covered include; delays, schedule compression and acceleration, delay impact excusable/ compensable, concurrent and pacing delays, bar chart analysis, as planned versus built, scheduled or collapsed CMP schedule, overhead, loss of labour productivity, labour and material escalation and the impact of schedule compression.

Instructor: Dr. Awad Hanna

A recent study led by Dr. Awad Hanna showed increased profit margins and projects success by following a comprehensive formal pre-construction planning process. The study presented a successful model for pre-construction planning. Those projects that used a planning process similar to the “model” planning process tended to perform more successfully – they achieved an average profit margin of 23% as compared to projects that were poorly planned and achieved an average profit margin of only -3%. The goal of this seminar is to assist mechanical contractors in developing a formal pre-construction planning process that extends through the three project stages: bidding, pre-construction and project execution. The seminar will also include major principles for successful implementation of pre-construction planning.

Instructor: Dr. Awad Hanna

Modern construction projects both large and small are complex endeavors, involving many products, systems and often-disparate players. The coordination and assembly of all the necessary elements at a site is almost impossible to achieve without extensive up-front planning and scheduling. The primary objective of this course is to provide an introduction to principles of network scheduling and its potential impact on project success and delay. The second objective of this seminar is to provide a hands-on workshop environment where attendees will have an opportunity to work in pairs to create a simple CPM schedule based upon predetermined criteria and to discuss the issues involved. Ample time is given for discussion of problems encountered in using or preparing a CPM schedule.         Although computer applications will be discussed, the workshop program involves a basic hand-drawn logic diagram and schedule activities. Additional topics covered in this seminar include resource leveling (labor), achieving optimum level of workers, building a manpower loading from the CPM schedule, determine optimum project duration and build S- curve.