Project Planning and Control Training Course: Keeping Delivery On Time and On Budget
1Summary
Few things frustrate a project sponsor more than a schedule that keeps slipping and a budget that keeps growing — often for reasons nobody flagged early enough. The gap is rarely bad planning; it is usually the absence of a disciplined monitoring and control system that turns a plan into a living, trackable commitment.
This program from the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy closes that gap. It combines internationally recognised planning techniques — scope definition, work breakdown structures, scheduling logic — with the monitoring tools that keep a project honest along the way, from Earned Value Management to structured change control. Participants finish with a repeatable framework for planning projects that can actually be tracked, not just plans that look good on paper.
2Objectives and target group
Who Should Attend?
- Project managers and coordinators responsible for planning and execution.
- Planning engineers and project monitoring specialists.
- Team leaders and department heads working on cross-functional projects.
- Anyone preparing for a role in project management or a PMO.
Course Objectives
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Apply the principles of effective project planning from scope to schedule.
- Build organised schedules, budgets, and resource plans.
- Track performance and deviations using recognised monitoring techniques.
- Spot risks early and apply corrective and preventive actions.
- Use integrated planning and monitoring to deliver projects on time and within budget.
3Course Content
Module 1: From Idea to Baseline — Scope, Objectives, and Work Breakdown
- Setting a clear, agreed project scope and SMART objectives.
- Building a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and breaking it into manageable components.
- Aligning the WBS with time and cost estimates.
Module 2: Scheduling and Resourcing the Plan
- Activity sequencing, dependencies, and the Critical Path Method.
- Milestone planning and managing float.
- Identifying, allocating, and levelling project resources.
Module 3: Building the Budget Baseline
- Estimating labour, material, and equipment costs.
- Establishing baseline budgets for monitoring.
- Integrating schedule and cost into one unified baseline.
Module 4: Monitoring Systems and Progress Measurement
- The role of monitoring in project success and its main types.
- Setting up systems to track scope, schedule, cost, and quality.
- Tracking actual performance against the plan and defining KPIs.
Module 5: Earned Value Management in Practice
- Core EVM concepts: Earned Value, Planned Value, Actual Cost.
- Calculating schedule and cost variances.
- Using EVM indicators to assess overall project health.
Module 6: Forecasting and Controlling Schedule and Cost
- Analysing delays and forecasting completion dates.
- Controlling expenditure and predicting financial performance.
- Adjusting plans based on current performance.
Module 7: Managing Risk and Change Without Losing the Baseline
- Identifying planning-related risks and integrating responses.
- Understanding the change management framework.
- Assessing and implementing approved changes.
Module 8: Communication, Closure, and Lessons Learned
- Aligning planning and monitoring functions and coordinating stakeholders.
- Completing monitoring activities and closing work packages.
- Documenting lessons learned and archiving records for future projects.