Emerald Elephant Solutions BV
Project Control
Your project has the subject-matter knowledge. What is missing is control.
What we promise
Within ten working days there is a validated project plan with a WBS, a schedule and a risk log. From that moment you know, every period, where the project stands, what it will cost and when it will be done, in a single report of at most two pages.
And in between, you can look for yourself
A personal link shows how things stand at that moment: the milestones, the open risks and issues, the change requests and decisions, and your own reports to read back. Here too you need not log in anywhere.
What we do
- Draw up the project plan, WBS, schedule and budget
- Measure progress and produce a forecast
- Track risks and issues
- Flag scope creep, with advice
- Report to the board, the team, the steering group and the end client
- Keep the communication consistent
What we do not do
- Make subject-matter or technical decisions
- Direct your delivery staff
- Hire resources or enter into contracts
- Take decisions that are yours to take
That separation is not reticence, it is the design. Its clearest consequence: our project manager may not approve a change request. Only your project lead or your budget holder can.
The project manager you get has run projects of this size themselves. That is not incidental: a system can measure, but weighing what a figure means, and seeing what is not in it, takes someone who knows the work.
The window you look in on is emphatically not a report. It changes along with the project and carries no judgement; a report is fixed to its reference date and carries your project manager's reading. The report is what we commit to. The window is where you can look without having to ask us.
What we ask of you
Two points of contact with decision-making authority, who may be the same person: someone who decides on content and someone who holds the budget. Without both, a project cannot be delivered.
Along the way, this is all we ask further, and each time at the moment it arises:
- Submit a change request, with the consequences you already see yourself
- Approve or reject that request, because that stays with you
- Confirm a decision as we have written it down
- Report the hours spent
Not another new system
No account, no password, no system to learn. Everything you or your people need to do arrives as a personal link by e-mail. You click it, you fill it in, and you are done.
That is not a simplification but a choice. Your people are there for the work, not to maintain a project system, and a tool they do not use produces figures nobody can rely on. If someone on your side does want to work in the project environment themselves, for instance to log their hours by the day, we set that up. Then it is a choice and not a condition.
The link you receive is in your name and travels over an encrypted connection. It opens exactly one thing, it expires on its own, and we can revoke it at any moment. We do not keep it either: our records hold an unreadable imprint and not the link, so not even we can repeat it back. Losing one means a new one, and that is exactly the intent.
Packages
These prices are not based on hours. You buy a cadence and an outcome, not an effort. Setting the project up is part of the price; the minimum term is twelve months, because control over a single period tells you nothing.
If your project runs shorter than a year, just say so. Then we work out together what fits. What matters is having enough periods to see a trend, and what that comes to differs per project.
Monitor
monthly
from
€ 1,250
per month
Report lines: 1
- A dedicated project manager
- Onboarding for your points of contact
- An alert the moment something deviates
- Interpretation and advice from your project manager
- Risk management
- Scope and change management
Control
every two weeks
from
€ 2,500
per month
Report lines: 2
- A dedicated project manager
- Onboarding for your points of contact
- An alert the moment something deviates
- Interpretation and advice from your project manager
- Risk management
- Scope and change management
Assurance
variable
from
€ 4,950
per month
Report lines: several
- A dedicated project manager
- Onboarding for your points of contact
- An alert the moment something deviates
- Interpretation and advice from your project manager
- Risk management
- Scope and change management
Why not every project costs the same
The price follows how much of your project manager the project asks for, and that turns on two things. The first is the number of work packages: the more there is to track, the more comes past. The second is how many parties that work sits with. Thirty work packages spread over four subcontractors and two client organisations ask more than eighty inside a single team: there are more people to talk to, more sources to check, and more interests moving around the figures.
The table below is the starting point: what size alone already tells us. The factor applies to the monthly amount above.
| Work packages | Factor | |
|---|---|---|
| Compact | up to 40 | × 1 |
| Standard | 41–120 | × 1.5 |
| Large | 121–300 | × 2 |
| Above that | more than 300 | by arrangement |
At intake your project manager sets the band, in consultation with you and with the reason recorded. The number of work packages is where it starts; the complexity around them can move a project up a band. Think of many parties booking hours, several client organisations, a team split across locations or contracts, or a chain in which your supplier subcontracts again. It works the other way too: a large but straightforward project that sits inside one team moves down a band.
That judgement is made against the work structure your project needs, not the one that happens to exist. If a coarse breakdown saved you money, you would be rewarded for exactly the breakdown that makes your project impossible to measure. We weigh it again at every revision of the baseline: if the project grows the band follows, and if it shrinks it follows too.
How it begins
Reporting needs a yardstick. If your project has yet to start, we build one; if it is already running, we first record where it actually stands. A scan is not the lighter of the two: if there is no usable structure, we build one anyway and reconstruct what has already happened on top of that. The duration and price below are for the Compact band.
| Duration | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Project Start The project is beginning and you want it set up right the first time. We build the work structure, the schedule and the budget, and record them as the baseline. | 10 working days | Included |
| Project Scan Your project is already running and you want to know where it actually stands. We record what was agreed, what has been delivered, and where those two diverge. | 10 working days | from € 4,950 |
Those ten working days apply to projects of up to roughly one hundred and twenty work packages. Beyond that we agree a term at intake. Naming a date we will not meet is worse than not naming one.
During the engagement
Whatever your package does not include can be added. The unit of account is the same throughout, so adding items never costs less than the package that delivers the same. Amounts are for the Compact band.
| Price | |
|---|---|
| Additional report line Another recipient, with a cadence and a level of detail of their own. On Monitor and Control; on Assurance several lines are part of the package. | € 625 per month |
| Risk management On Monitor, where it is not part of the package. | € 625 per month |
| Scope and change management On Control, where it is not part of the package. | € 1,250 per month |
| Baseline revision The agreement has changed and needs to be recorded again. Charged per revision on Monitor and Control; on Assurance it is part of scope and change management. | € 950 one-off |
Where do you stand?
Your project is running late and nobody can point at where
The delivery date keeps moving, the updates stay optimistic, and the question "where do we stand" produces a different answer every time. That is rarely unwillingness. What is missing is a yardstick.
Stalled project →You are starting a project and want it set up right the first time
The most expensive mistake in a project is made in the first two weeks: starting without recording what has to be delivered, when, and how you will know it is done. Much of what goes wrong afterwards traces back to that.
New project →You have to report, and it has to hold up
A steering group, a grant body, an auditor or your own board: someone asks for an account every period. And the question behind that question is always the same: is this right, and what shows it?
Reporting →Your project is running well and you want to keep it that way
Nothing is going wrong, which is exactly why nobody is looking. Until someone asks where it stands, or until the first setback arrives and it turns out there is nothing to measure it against.
Project on track →Method-neutral
Prince2, Scrum, waterfall or your own approach. The method sets the reporting cadence, not the other way round. We impose nothing.