re: Project Controls Cost Certification & Primavera P6 Training

P6 certified here. I paid out of pocket as an investment. The best training is going to be on the job. The course is going to be basic material and it will be dry. You may want to look at getting your project management certification.

I taught myself primavera from a book
it's not that complicated

I think the cost certification will be a waste. You already have 6 years experience. More valuable than a certificate imo. The P6 course is ok to help you learn about the software. If you want to go that route career wise you'll probably want to start out doing small projects doing both cost and scheduling maybe on the client side. That'll get you some scheduling experience to put on the resume.

Good luck on your advancement. It's a good field to be in as I work along side a lot of these types and they are always in demand.

Your not gonna get any value from P6. I can tell by your post your not qualified to do anything.

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Good luck on your advancement. It's a good field to be in as I work along side a lot of these types and they are always in demand.

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Thanks. Especially schedulers. Pay is better than cost also from what I've seen.

My industry isn't hiring a lot right now due to oil prices but I'd say make sure you know the difference between cost accounting and project controls. One is easy and anyone who knows math can do it. The other requires skill, people skills, ability to actually forecast, and proactively make corrections/solve problems. Some contractors I have only do cost accounting because it's easy and some managers don't expect much out of them. Set yourself apart.

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Do you have a desire to be a scheduler?

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Not my end goal but I would like to do it for a few years to become proficient in it. I do enjoy tracking/seeing the progress more so than just monitoring cost. On the last project I was on (over $150 MM), I had a bigger role in tracking progress through the schedule and through quantity tracking. I was a cost analyst on the project but I did use that information to forecast more accurately. Sometimes contractors will tell you what you want to hear so the quantity tracking helped keep them honest. I enjoyed that more so than smaller projects I have been on where we don't track quantities or progress as much since the scope is much smaller.

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Experienced Estimators are high in demand and pay very well also. Will need exp with Icarus or Timberline softwares but all Project Control Managers need some time in estimating. Opened a lot of doors for me when I started.

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I'll have to look into estimating more. I have some experience working with our estimators where I am at now. We are involved in the final estimate review and we are also required to track cost against that estimate.