Month: December 2016

Construction Scheduling. Resource and Cost Loading the Schedule

person-question-300x300Once you have the basic CPM schedule development completed and you’re ready to start resource and cost loading, do you find the schedule specifications lacking in requirements or guidance for this part of the schedule development?

Some schedule requirements simply do not require resource or cost loading. Some require the assignment of resources but do not speak to cost. Some allow simple lump sum cost loading, some require unit pricing with equipment and material costs broken out.

Whatever the case, most of us prefer the schedule be cost loaded, at least the baseline schedule. This allows us to create the performance measurement cost curve for EVMS and the early and late cost curves many of us are familiar with and most specifications require.

Each planning and schedule professional will have their own preferences for resource and cost loading the schedule.

Myself, when a lack of requirements allows, I prefer the resource and cost loading be kept simple. Unless the payment process for the project is based on unit prices and crew pricing, I avoid unit pricing with equipment and material costs broken out. I work mostly in mid-size construction projects and find that lump sum cost loading works just fine.

One thing I prefer is to keep my percent complete type set to physical and make the cost percent complete equal the physical percent complete. I find this works well if the delivery of large equipment is cost loaded and work activities are assigned cost which includes labor, equipment and basic materials. Simple to develop, manage, understand and track. Remember, this is for general construction. Road, UG infrastructure, and other linear unit driven schedules will benefit from unit pricing.

I also like to assign a resource for each subcontract, even though I lump-sum cost load. This allows a resource or cost curve for each. This helps with resource level analysis.

I believe resource and cost loading of schedules is an underserved discussion topic and our industry as a whole would benefit from learning how various industries and project types approach this process.

Hopefully, this post will help start some dialogue among us.

I’d love to hear what you think!

Please visit https://conschmanservices.com to learn more about Construction and Schedule Management Services, LLC

Please visit my LinkedIn account to learn more about me.

Please visit my “The Blue Book” ProView.

Paul Epperson CCM, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP

Construction Scheduling. Reviewing a Time Impact Analyses, TIA or Change Order Fragnet. Or, “Is this for real??”

SurpriseI am sometimes bewildered by the reaction some owners have when they review the Time Impact Analyses, (TIA) or change order time extension request they receive from the contractor.

What I see, sometimes, is the owner being completely surprised that the contractor believes there was any time impact by the change order or delay. We all know that many change orders do not affect the project schedule critical (longest) path. But when they do, it gets interesting….

Let’s say the owner has delayed some part of the project in some way, but only for 3 days. When the contractor submits their TIA or change order time extension request for 5 days, the immediate reaction is usually not so good.

I find this happens more often than not because the owner does not understand how work days and calendar days work and their effect on the contract finish date.

If the 3 days happen to be 3 work days delay to the start of work on a 5 day work week calendar, it is most likely going to push the work out to include a weekend “non-work” period, perhaps even a holiday. If this happens, it will most likely push the scheduled finish date out 5 calendar days. (Most contracts have the liquidated damages based on calendar days.) In this particular case, the impact to the schedule is 5 calendar days, not 3 days.

This is can also the case when weather-sensitive work is pushed into time periods with more expected and accounted for weather days. As it should be.

How can we, as professional planning and schedule consultants help owners better understand the TIA’s and change order time extension fragnets they receive?

There are best practices and white papers devoted to the development of “fragnets”. As professional planning and schedule consultants, we should follow these best practices. But, we also need to review TIA and time extension requests to verify the “fragnet” correctly models the impact and is inserted into the most recent updated or revised schedule with reasonable logic.

Then we need to explain that to the owner to refute or validate the request. I find that once the owner understands what is driving the time from “behind the scene” in the schedule network, they tend to be more comfortable with the request. Then the negotiations can start!

None of this is possible, of course, unless there has been a disciplined process of managing the schedule development and update/revision process to maintain a valid schedule for use in validating the requests.

What other methods have you found to help with this issue?

I’d love to hear what you think!

Please visit https://conschmanservices.com to learn more about Construction and Schedule Management Services, LLC

Please visit my LinkedIn account to learn more about me.

Please visit my “The Blue Book” ProView.

Paul Epperson CCM, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP

Construction Scheduling. Key Requirements for your Schedule Specifications. Or, Owners Beware…

CPM Consultant Professional Project Management
Project Management

Do you ever find yourself pulled into projects with schedule specifications lacking even the most basic requirements necessary to establish a schedule development and management process which will produce acceptable results?

In a perfect world, we, as Professional Planners and Schedulers, would be involved in the schedule specification development. Unfortunately, more often than not, a schedule spec from a previous project, which was pulled from a previous project is used without much review for completeness or relevance to scheduling methodologies and software currently in use and endorsed.

Perhaps it would be easier to just insist on a few key requirements that at a minimum should always be in the schedule specifications. We could then edit and add additional requirements for each project as appropriate.

Each planning and schedule professional will have their own preferences for these basic requirements.

However, for me, the first thing I would add is the requirement for a CPM schedule.

This would list the requirement for complete logic to allow the production of a critical path for the project. In this requirement, I would also add the requirements for a restriction of activity durations and total float values to force the breakdown of work into enough detail to plan, manage and track the work. I would also severely limit the use of SS and FF relationships and positive lags for the same reason. I would not allow the use of SF relationships or negative lags.

Second, I would require the development of the schedule based on a WBS. This would help ensure the complete project scope was included in the schedule and make it easier for the owner’s review and verification.

Finally, I would only allow two activities to be constrained; all activities percent complete type set to physical; development of appropriate calendars for weather and other non-work days; and require manual updating of progress with correction of out-of-sequence relationships and any other schedule revisions done in a two-step or bifurcated update process with the submission of the update only and then the revised update as separate parts of the update package to allow owner review of actual progress and the impact of this to the existing schedule with follow-on review of plan corrections.

We could address resource, crew, cost, and activity code requirements as needed for each project. But at least we could start with the basics for schedule development and management.

This would help all of us in the industry.

What other requirements would you add as basic requirements to help with this issue? What requirements would you not include?

I’d love to hear what you think!

Please visit https://conschmanservices.com to learn more about Construction and Schedule Management Services, LLC

Please visit my LinkedIn account to learn more about me.

Please visit my “The Blue Book” ProView.

Paul Epperson CCM, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP