4 Reasons You Should Schedule Your Project Equipment in Advance

Here are four excellent reasons to consider adding equipment rental to the top of your project schedule

Planning and scheduling help control costs, streamline communications and help avoid schedule conflicts. For example, when something goes awry, a specialized piece of project equipment is not available when you need it. This can also adversely impact the profit margin.

A project manager’s worst nightmare is for things to fall behind schedule. Defining activities, sequencing activities, estimating resources, and duration of equipment needs are vital to a project’s schedule. That is where planning and scheduling equipment well in advance will benefit you in managing your project.

1. Resource Planning and Availability

Resources are equipment, people, etc. needed to complete the activities of a project. Every activity obviously needs resources. You will need to know the project equipment’s availability before you can schedule or assign the resources to your project.

Resource availability for project equipment includes such information as what equipment is available when it’s available, and what, if any, conditions regarding its availability exist. Keep in mind that some specialized project equipment needs to be scheduled well in advance and may only be available for a limited time. This information is crucial to scheduling and managing your project.

2. Resource Estimating and Alternative Analysis

Estimating your resources is another critical aspect of managing your project and scheduling your equipment. Unless you are well-versed with this process, best practice would be to engage expert judgment of your project team members –they are the ones familiar with the work, have done this type of work. Getting their expert opinions on what resources are needed could be very beneficial.

By performing an alternative analysis, you can consider several scenarios for scheduling your equipment for the best outcome; this would include having several resources for the equipment you will need, which you would do for any other materials. Often, there may be more than one way to achieve your goal, and alternative analysis helps you visualize them and consider the possibilities.

3. Resource Scheduling

Resource scheduling helps you in numerous ways. Properly managing resources is key to successful project management. It allows you to complete jobs on schedule, efficiently, and on budget. But resource scheduling can be an intricate task.

Resource scheduling and allocation are typically based on project scope, effort, availability, and resource capacity. Under-allocating or over-allocating resources can impact third-party vendor relationships with client satisfaction, profitability, as well as employee trust.

Scheduling your equipment in advance helps resolve issues associated with resources. Some key benefits of utilizing resource scheduling within your operations:

• Provides a foundation for monitoring/regulating project activities
• You can determine how to allocate resources and tasks to achieve your project goal
• You can more readily assess time delays, identify their impact on the project and develop alternatives

4. Estimating Project Equipment Durations

Determining the duration of the need for project equipment is achieved through activity duration estimating. Here is where you consider the project’s scope, your resources, their availability, and assess how long you will require the equipment.

You start with a rough estimate and then fine-tune it as you progress. Again, you may additionally want to engage the expert judgment of your project team members who have performed this type of work.

Performing a reserve analysis, often referred to as a buffer or contingency reserve, means adding extra time to the schedule to account for the additional risk; this allows you to adjust your schedule and reschedule your project equipment if necessary.

If your company is a glass, drywall, window, roof, frame, concrete, or earthmoving contractor, Vandalia Rentals has a vast inventory of equipment for your project. We have 5 locations throughout Ohio for your convenience. Contact us today to schedule your project equipment — it’s never too early!