Month: May 2017

Construction Scheduling. Recovering Lost Time or Saving Work for Later?

When the project baseline schedule is developed, most of the relationships used should be Finish-to-Start, FS. There is always the need for Start-to-Start, SS or Finish-to-Finish, FF relationships to model some sequences of work, but it’s best to break the work down enough to schedule with predominately FS relationships.

That said, far too often it seems that progress is not what was planned due to one reason or another. During the update process, assigning the actual dates and expected finishes to current activities pushes the schedule out. Sometimes only a day or so, but sometimes the schedule can push out weeks…..

How do we recover this lost time? How do we plan the remaining work to mitigate the late project finish? How do we keep from turning in a schedule update that the owner will immediately reject with the demand for a “Recovery Schedule”?

Often, there is a mix of activity duration reductions and resequencing of work.

If the parties responsible for the activities agree to the duration reductions and commit to supporting the schedule with additional resources or hours, this is usually not a problem. There may be work area size constraints that limit the effectiveness of more resources, or there may be logistical constraints that limit the amount of work which can be placed. But usually, adding resources or hours, in small quantities can work.

The trouble usually comes from resequencing the work. All too often, the recovery is achieved by taking several activities sequences with FS relationships and making the relationships SS with small lags. Basically, this is modeling the work to have each trade on top of the predecessor work’s trade. Rarely is this successful. What ends up happening is the work gets “stacked”. The work that couldn’t be completed when it was scheduled, with the resources available, is now magically supposed to be completed when other work is demanding more resources and there is less time to complete the work for that area.

Don’t get me wrong, limited resequencing of work is normal and can be done successfully. But it is not the cure-all for lack of progress.

So, how do we efficiently recover the lost time?

In reality, the scheduled finish date is only pushed out by lack of progress for work on the Critical (Longest) Path.  The key is looking at the activities on the Critical Path and finding a way to work with durations and sequencing to shorten this path. This is an iterative process because the Critical Path will shift to the next Near Critical Path as you shorten the current Critical Path.

The thing to remember is not to let work not on the Critical or Near Critical Path sit. Work where you can when you can. But always make sure you’re making adequate progress for work on the Critical and Near Critical Path(s).  If you do this, you won’t have to worry about recovering time!

I know many of you can offer additional comments and recommendations. I welcome your comments and input. My goal, as always, is to help our industry and help the projects we support….

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. Use the Work Breakdown Structure to Verify the Deliverables.

When the project baseline schedule is developed, activities are created that represent work to complete the project. It’s tempting to jump in and start adding activities as you build the project in your mind. Resist this temptation….

First, plan the schedule! How will the schedule be used? How will progress and performance be tracked? Will resource and cost be tracked by cost accounts? What presentation types are required by the contract?

What is going to be the approach to the project execution? Who are the team members? What are the contractual requirements for the schedule? Is there coordination with other work by contractors or the owner required?

Once you’ve answered these, and any other specific questions for the project execution, you should define the deliverable and break the deliverable down into smaller and smaller pieces until you have individual work packages. This helps ensure you get the entire scope of the project in the schedule.

Setting up your resources, cost accounts, activity coding and calendars is also part of the planning phase of developing the schedule.

Now you can start adding the activities to support the deliverables in an organized manner. The best part is this allows the use of mandatory logic for the completion of each work package. This makes it quick and simple.

Next, you can apply the preferential logic to create the phasing you planned earlier in the process. If you organized the WBS by phase, this is easily done as well.

Planning the schedule development and management will help ensure you end up with a complete schedule for the project. It will also make the schedule more useful and easier to manage.

I know many of you can offer additional comments and recommendations. I welcome your comments and input. My goal, as always, is to help our industry and help the projects we support….

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. What Data Columns Should be Displayed?

Do you ever look at a schedule pdf and wish you had access to more information? Know what the percent complete actually is? What produces the Total Float value?

Would you like to be able to see what is most important to you, as a PM? As an Owner? As a subcontractor?

When your contractor develops the project baseline schedule, they develop a few simple layouts for the project. (Or they should…) We typically set up a Classic Layout with Start, Finish, Percent Complete, Duration….

But we can also set up specific layouts for use by different team members.

However, often what you find in a progress or owner’s meeting is the two or three week look ahead schedule with the Activity ID, Name, % Complete, Duration, and Start & Finish dates. This doesn’t really offer much useful information.

I like to develop several layouts.

One layout that I use has the ID, Name, Physical % Complete, Duration % Complete, Original Duration, Remaining duration, At Completion duration, Start, Finish, and Total Float value. I can use these columns to see variances in duration usage and physical work completion. This quickly alerts me to production issues or potential delays. (It is possible to target previous updates and show actual variance values for duration, start and finish dates).

 

I also like to produce a simple progress update worksheet for the superintendent and field staff to use for keeping track of actual start and finish dates. They can keep these at their desk and mark off the dates as they happen each day. At the end of the month, all they have to do is add the physical % complete for the work still in progress. It’s just that simple. I provide a column for them to enter the date they now expect to finish the in-progress work. Using this expected finish date, we revise the remaining duration and the At Completion duration. This provides us with the Duration % Complete and the At Completion Duration variances which allow us to spot trends and take corrective action quickly.

Those are very simple layouts.

There are options for the Project Team. Let the scheduler show you what they can produce and work with them to find the right layouts with the right data columns that work for you. It will make managing work much easier for everyone.

I know many of you can offer additional comments and recommendations. I welcome your comments and input. My goal, as always, is to help our industry and help the projects we support….

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. Layouts and Options for Layouts.

Do you ever look at a schedule pdf and get lost in the many pages of data and bars?

Would you like to be able to quickly find out what is most important to you, as a PM? As an Owner? As a subcontractor?

When your contractor develops the project baseline schedule, they develop several activity code structures for the project. (Or they should…) We typically set up activity coding for phases, areas of work, subcontractor or trade responsibility, cost accounting source, CSI Division….

We do this so we can assign specific code values to each activity. This allows a filter or sort or group on specific or combinations of activity code values. We can filter by trade and sort by start. We can then group by area or phase or building. There are many ways to view the schedule which can make it easier for everyone.

However, often what you find in a progress or owner’s meeting is the two or three week look ahead schedule. This is a good tool. But, it is a specific tool. The look ahead schedule layout can show the work by phase or area or trade or simply as a “waterfall” by start date. The project team should decide what works best for them and request that layout for each meeting.

There are other layouts, in addition to the look ahead and the entire project schedule that are very useful.

One layout that I always use is the Critical Path (Longest Path) by Start/Finish date with no grouping. This provides a simple view of the critical activities by start date in a “waterfall” view. Very helpful for seeing what is critical and next in line.

 

I also like to produce a filtered list of incomplete and not-started activities sorted by Total Float value and then Start/Finish. No grouping, just a “waterfall” again. This allows us to see what is most likely the Near Critical Path activities by simply going down the list to the paths after the Critical Path. (I use a filter to remove the Longest Path) This is very helpful to the PM and Superintendent. They can ensure they focus on work that is near critical as well as critical. Too often this is missed.

Those are very simple layouts.

There are options for the Project Team. Let the scheduler show you what they can produce and work with them to find layouts that work for your project. It will make managing work much easier for everyone.

I know many of you can offer additional comments and recommendations. I welcome your comments and input. My goal, as always, is to help our industry and help the projects we support….

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