Project management relies on executing a series of steps well. It requires that certain standards be upheld at all times. Projects also require that milestones and timeframes are maintained throughout a series of complex, coordinated steps. All things considered, few industries operate like this on such a consistent basis as the airline industry. While flight was thought impossible about a century ago, it’s now become so routine that you can go online, buy a ticket and be anywhere in the world tomorrow, all in relative comfort as well! Perhaps project managers can learn a few things from this process. Let’s explore some project management steps in action by observing the commercial airline industry!
We Appreciate Saving Time. Jump Ahead By Clicking The Links Below:
- Project Management Step 1: Idea Phase
- Project Management Step 2: Planning Phase
- Project Management Step 3: Execution Phase
- Project Management Step 4: Monitoring Phase
- Project Management Step 5: Reviewing Phase
We sit in traffic, praying we make it to the airport on time. We’ll get dropped at the curb among the sea of swirling travelers, trying to wrestle our bags out of the street. Reluctantly, we’ll hand over our suitcase curbside for it to be checked in the cargo area, praying it makes it on the plane. It disappears through those tiny doors and out of sight. We join the line with hundreds of others to get through security. “Alright. If I make it through by 10:15am, I’m good.” “All laptops out of the bag!” “Make sure your pockets are empty!”. Thankfully, all runs smoothly and we make it into the actual airport. Vegas, baby! The duty-free shops tempt us even though we haven’t yet left, and the jacked up price of the food is ignored for today. After waiting patiently at our designated gate, boarding is finally called for our flight. Not our section yet, but we’ll be boarding soon enough. Our section is called. We’re psyched about our window or aisle seat…c’mon, no one wants the middle. Just pray no one has mistakenly sat there. Will there be room in the bin over my seat? Nope, but a flight attendant sees this and helps us put our bag somewhere else. We settle in.
The pilot’s microphone crackles over the intercom. “Goooood morning, everyone, uhhhh this is your captain speaking. We’ll be underway to your destination shortly. We should be getting out about five minutes later than planned, got some traffic on the runway ahead of us. We’ll be cruising at an altitude of around 36,000 ft. The good news is the skies are clear, no weather concerns, and with the help of a tailwind, we’ll be touching down about 15 minutes ahead of schedule. The flight crew will come around, yada yada….Welcome aboard.” We then get briefed on safety measures (‘this time I’m going to really pay attention’) and are instructed on what to do in the event of an emergency. A kid somewhere starts crying, probably within a row or two of our seat. The ground crew is working beneath the plane. “We’ll be getting underway in a moment. Flight crew, please prepare for takeoff”.
The Magic Happens
Finally, our turn. The plane speeds up, we suddenly realize what the hell is actually happening for a moment – we’re in a metal bird propelled by ignited fuel, about to be 7 miles over the earth for the next few hours. Amazingly, this happens so routinely that over 100,000 flights take off per day, almost all without a hitch. We speed up and suddenly, lift off! Climbing quickly now, making a huge banked turn and twenty minutes later, we’re soaring through the sky. Can’t wait for that drink and a trip to the bathroom.
More Than A Mildly Stressful Day Of Travel And Logistics
I’m going to say it – most of us take flying for granted. We think about the comfort of the seat, the screaming kids, waiting, etc. What a pain, right?!
In reality, there’s a huge number of things happening in order to make that flight happen on time. With over 100,000 commercial flights daily, BILLIONS of dollars are being spent EVERY DAY. Millions of people are traveling. Millions of people are employed. Thousands of airports are bustling; distributing people all over. We all get wherever we’re going in the world safely and pretty damn close to the time we were told we’d get there. And this is done 365 days per year, every year.
I think there’s a few things we can learn about project management steps by studying air travel! Let’s get into this.
5 Phases Of A Project…
Before we examine the project management steps used in the commercial airline industry, let’s consider the phases every project goes through.
- Idea – What Do We Want To Do? By When, And For What Cost?
- Planning – How Will We Bring Our Idea To Life, By The Time We Want It, And For The Cost We Want To Spend?
- Performance – Putting The Plan Into Action.
- Monitoring – Making Sure The Plan Is, Well…Going As Planned.
- Completion – Dot The “i”s, Cross The “t”s & See How We Did.
We will break down each of these five phases of a project into subcategories, and examine the key components of each phase. Scroll to explore!
Project Management Step 1: The Idea Comes First
Every project starts as an idea. An Owner wants to renovate a building. A State wants to build a bridge. A Bank wants to purchase software to monitor certain processes. It all starts with an idea.
So does taking a trip. Say we want to go to Las Vegas (again). We want to go this April, for four-five days including the weekend. We know we can’t spend $50,000 on a flight, it’ll need to be around a few hundred bucks each way. Does it make sense to go then? How will the weather be? What’s there to do?
Whatever project type we’re talking about, the Owner (private, state, whatever) needs to first consider the following before even getting into the specifics:
- What are we trying to do? Is this specific building worth renovating? Do we definitely need to build this bridge? Is there a general demand that we will satisfy, or a problem we will solve?
- If yes, how quickly do we want or need this to be done? For a building, this may be renovating through the fall/winter to be ready to lease apartments in the spring. For a bridge, a traffic study might predict a 10% jump in volume over the next few years. If this three-lane bridge isn’t turned into a four-lane bridge by then, it might mean traffic hell.
- Do we have the money? According to industry reports, construction costs are expected to climb over the next few years. Is it time to take out a loan? Get investors to help pay for this?
Commercial airline companies are faced with similar questions. Sticking with our Vegas trip, see below:
- Is there a need for flights to Las Vegas?
- If yes, when do people want to go the most? The least? Which months, which days, and from where?
- What do travel reports forecast based on previous years?
- In the time periods when demand is high, what will our costs be?
- Can we meet the high demand? Is there too much competition from certain origin cities?
- In times of low demand, is there no competition? Could be get business if we’re able to offer flights during this time?
Before anything ever happens, both airline companies and other Owners need to think about what they really want to do, if it makes sense, and over what timeline the idea needs to come to life.
Project Management Step 2: Planning Time!
Life’s short – we’re taking the trip to Vegas. The weekend of Saturday, April 13th looks great – there’s multiple concerts to check out, a UFC event and David Copperfield has something extra crazy planned. The weather will likely be perfect that month. Vegas will be booming with people. We even managed to get Friday and Monday off from work.
It’s still only January, but it’s time to figure out the specifics:
- Exact Dates & Times: We can either fly out Thursday night, or Friday morning. We need to be back Monday afternoon.
- Price: We can spend up to $_____, and only for direct flights.
- Demand: How many tickets are still available that weekend?
Similarly, we need to ask the same questions for a project during the planning stages:
- Scope Of Work: What exactly will be done? The building requires both an interior and exterior renovation. The bridge needs a fourth lane added, some structural improvements and updated safety features.
- Budget: We only have $_______ to spend on this project based on funding/savings/taxes/government grants/etc. Costs of similar projects are in this range, based on our research.
- All Of The Steps Involved: The exterior of the building needs the brick removed, the backup structure repaired, waterproofing, insulation and a shiny new metal facade. The interior needs a new lobby, better elevators, fresh paint in the halls, new appliances, and updated apartment finishes.
- Milestones: The bridge must be renovated by the end of the year. If this is going to happen, fresh pavement and guard rails need to be finished by then so the road can open. When can those tasks start, then? A certain amount of time after the concrete is poured, depending on the engineer’s specifications. How long will it take to get the concrete poured, and what will it take to do so? If all these things need to happen, when does this need to start?
- Risks: We’ll look at this below in step 3, but planning for risks happens during this stage too.
Commercial airline companies need to go through a similar planning exercise at the same time you’re planning your trip, or before:
- People travel to Las Vegas from these ___ major cities during the month of April, mostly on Fridays during the morning. Direct flights have sold out in similar conditions from the past. We’ll need to schedule larger planes for this time period.
- Based on industry rates and competition, we know we can only charge $______ for a ticket. To make the required profit margin, we’ll need to keep the costs under $_______. We need to sell at least ___ tickets to be profitable. The Union has a 3% labor wage increase before then. Fuel is forecasted to cost $ ____ per unit.
- To meet the demand and pull off this many flights, we need to start listing tickets for sale three or more months ahead. We’ll need to schedule the official crew eight weeks in advance. What size crew? We’ll need to strategize to see which planes make the most sense. We need at least four 747s departing from these ___ cities every weekend in April, do we have any others scheduled to land in those cities? Which pilots are scheduled so far? We need to schedule this with the airport’s command center ______ weeks before the flight.
Airlines need to coordinate the number of flights, size of planes, flight crew, cost of fuel, price of tickets, and many other logistical factors well before the plane ever leaves the runway. The same goes for projects!
Project Management Step 3: Time To Execute.
Those three months go by in a blur. How the hell is it already April?? Time to get ready for Vegas.
I need to be at the airport by 9:30am. Time to schedule a cab to bring me. I’ll be checking one bag and carrying on another. I need _____ clothes and shoes, plus my laptop and some other supplies. I’m in row 10, window seat “A”. Let’s check the status of this flight – the flight has been moved back one hour, and the gate has moved. I wonder why? Good thing I looked!
To us travelers, all we want to know is when to show up, where to show up, and that’s pretty much it. Everything else is not on our mind – nobody has time for that! Except the airlines, the airport, and everyone in between. They are actively executing their plan. They know that flight to Vegas is happening, they know how many passengers will be showing up, how much fuel they need, which staff members will be on board, etc.
The airline is keeping track of their flight statuses, seeing how everything is going, adjusting as required and keeping everyone informed of the latest information. Let’s see how this is done in project management:
- Contractors have been hired to replace the exterior of the building and renovate the interior of the building. This is based on a set of plans the Owner developed with an Architect they hired, and contractors agree to perform their scope of work for $_________ in their contracts. The Owner has set aside this amount, plus 10% extra as a contingency fund.
- A schedule has been put together based on the Owner’s timeline and input from the contractors. Within this schedule, contractors have agreed to reach certain milestones by a specific date. The exterior contractor, for example, has agreed to be ‘water and air-tight’ by a certain date. They’ll remove a exterior at the rate of two floors/week, repair the backup wall / waterproof at the rate of one floor/week. At those rates of performance, they should be 50% done by ______, and 100% air-water tight by _______. The rate at which this happens is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) – monitoring this rate/KPI will let the Owner know if the exterior contractor is on schedule.
- The work will need to be done safely, and several permits must be filed before anything can start. How long will those take to get? What pre-emptive measures need to be taken to make sure the site is safe? Do workers need special certifications to do any of the work?
- Some of the building materials take a long time to get (i.e. they have a long lead time). The exterior metal panels take four months. Have they been ordered? What if something needs to change – what impact will this have on the schedule and the end date?
- The exterior of the building can only be worked on in certain weather. If the weather is way worse than usual, can we switch to an Accelerated Schedule? If the Contractor is asked to work longer days to make up for lost time, how much will that cost the Owner? Do we have enough money in that case, or will it need to be borrowed? If it does need to be borrowed, from where and at what interest rate?
While this might seem like a lot, successful projects will account for all of these type of factors ahead of time! Airlines are no different, and they’re perhaps BETTER at these things. Let’s consider how:
- The airlines know exactly how many tickets they sell, the likelihood of refunds/cancelling, their expected revenue, their expected costs, how many passengers will be on board, whether any of them require special attention, etc. ahead of time. They even know which seats still might be empty.
- Airlines know which flights are going to Vegas that weekend. They know where the planes will be coming in from (prior trip), how much time it will take to off-board the passengers, typical maintenance required, how much fuel they need and the time it’ll take to fill up, etc. Since they have accounted for this amount of time, they’ll know whether or not they’re behind on any of these steps as they happen.
- To make sure planes are safe, they undergo vigorous routine inspection, maintenance and checks. This quality control plan does not change, and no steps are skipped. There’s a reason airlines have such a safe track record. It’s also assumed that qualified personnel i.e. real pilots will be on board!
- They know that if landing is delayed, everything will be delayed. Maybe plans coming in from another state hit bad weather and are all delayed. Our flight may need to get sent to another gate to stay on time, or get pushed back by an hour to accommodate the other demands on the airport at that time.
- Expect the unexpected. If we need to change gates, how much time will that take? If any repairs are needed, can they be done in place, or will the plane need to be grounded for a while? What will we do in the event of an emergency, depending on the situation? If bad weather strikes, what will be done? Can we take on less than a full tank to save a few minutes? What if we run out of coffee??
Commercial airlines need to make a lot of things happen in a precise sequence in order to maintain schedule, costs and quality. These three factors must be monitored and accounted for regularly on any successful flight, as well as every successful project. How do they monitor these things? Glad you asked….
Project Management Step 4: Monitoring Progress
While we’re messing with our luggage, going through security, and considering whether or not it’s worth going to the airport bar, many gears are cranking away behind the scenes.
For example, you received an update on the gate change and departure time. How did the airline know that? You saw a notice in your email that there are still seats available if you want to upgrade yours. Your pilot knows the elevation you’ll be traveling, what the windspeed is, and when you’ll arrive.
Are these people using magic, or do they in fact have monitoring systems in place and performance standards they’re trying to hit?
Here are a few common monitoring and performance tracking methods used in project management:
- In our bridge example, the new four-lane roadway must be open by the end of the year. We know when the paving is scheduled, when the safety rails are scheduled, when the concrete will be poured, etc. Contractors must discuss how their work is going, what information/approvals are still not figured out, and if they’re generally on track. Schedulers will take this information and report it to the decision makers of the project, who monitor the rate of progress, who can make decisions on accelerating the schedule, who will work on securing the proper approvals, etc.
- Contractors have a certain budget. To hit that budget, they must spend no more than a certain amount on labor, materials, equipment, etc. To keep their labor budget on track, they’ll need to hit certain production rates; in concrete work, this could be installing ____ square feet of rebar per worker, per day, or pouring ___ cubic yards of concrete per week. There are both paper methods and softwares who can monitor this for contractors to make sure they’re producing at the rate they should.
- The engineer on the project has specified a that a certain type of concrete be used, that rebar is configured/installed in a specific size and design type, etc. The Owner has hired a third-party consultant to serve as a quality control inspector. They’ll be onsite to make sure the rebar is installed as specified; to get concrete samples and make sure the concrete breaks above a certain strength level after 28 days, etc.
Airline companies have very similar practices, as broken down below:
- They know what time they need to leave the gate to be on time. By calculating backwards, they know what time they need to arrive at the gate for refueling, on-boarding, etc. They’ll coordinate all of this with the airport command center and update passengers in real time.
- They’ve mapped out the optimum flight path based on weather forecasting systems, and they know which path will be fastest and cheapest (most efficient) for the airplane to follow.
- The airline has data. They know what needs to be maintained, how often routine repairs/maintenance needs to be done for different parts, how long these things will take, where they will be done, etc. They have a quality control checklist that the crews and pilots all need to follow, and a standard operating procedure in place with the staff.
- If the plane is still partially empty, do they need four flight attendants, or will three be enough? If not enough tickets are sold, will the flight be canceled?
A great plan still needs to be executed properly for it to be a good project. The execution must be monitored and tracked along the way so key information is known, and the future can be forecasted. Airlines know this very well and absolutely have means to do this in place.
Project Management Step 5: How Did We Do?
We’re long since landed in Vegas and are truly stumped at how David Copperfield pulls off some of this stuff. Seriously, I could write a separate article on performance entertainment and may do so some day. Meanwhile, the plane we flew on has flown off to Florida and then Oregon since we were on it. The airline just keeps on trucking 24/7/365!
Projects are no different in this regard, and we have the luxury of the project actually being DONE at some point. Airlines are non-stop. There are several things that must be done on any project when coming to the end:
- The nitty gritty. Making sure all permit requirements are satisfied, the proper forms have been signed, the work has been signed off by the appropriate people, the small details like installing a shiny new steel building number out front are quantified on a punch list, etc. In short, getting a list together of everything that’s left to do.
- How much was spent in total? How much of the contingency fund do we still have? Which parts of the project went over budget?
- How long did the project actually take to finish? Which parts got delayed?
- For contractors, how much profit did we make? How long did the project take vs what we thought it would? What time saving techniques did we discover while doing the work that we can use in the future?
This is referred to as a Post Mortem Report. It’s essentially a report card for the project, based on the objectives and milestones that were established during step no. 2 above.
Airlines have an entire backend staff of people just looking at the numbers:
- How much did we spend on fuel last week/month/quarter/year?
- How many “miles per gallon” did we get out of that fuel?
- What’s the optimum ratio of flight crew staff to passengers?
- How much did we spend on repairs per plane, and how long did it take on average to have them done?
- Which flights sold out vs. which had extra seats?
- Which days of the year were the busiest and most profitable?
Take note – this is the most under-utilized and overlooked step!
Airlines know what to do in the FUTURE because they effective review and use the data from their PAST. What better way to know how to improve than to know which things are being done well vs being done poorly? A project is no different.
Whether you’re a building owner, the state/federal agency, or a private company, knowing how things are actually going is like using a GPS in the middle of the ocean. And if you’re like me, you don’t want to fly over the ocean for one extra minute if you don’t have to! As they say…
“Those Who Don’t Learn From The Past Are Doomed To Repeat It”
-Someone Very Wise
In Conclusion
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this article comparing project management steps to the inner workings of the commercial airline industry. I do believe that learning across topics, i.e. examining one thing and applying principals to another, is one of the most effective ways to learn quickly. I plan on writing more articles like this one in the future.
One more thing: Be patient the next time you experience flight issues! They’re expected to perform like a Swiss watch with the reputation of a city bus. 🙂
