P. Epperson – Construction and Schedule Management Services

Construction Scheduling. Do you have a Schedule or a CPM Schedule?

Is what you’ve created a CPM schedule? Or is it a schedule with dates and activity bars?

Can you tell the difference?

First, CPM stands for Critical Path Method and is kind of a general term often used for Precedence Diagram Method, PDM schedule development.

Almost any schedule developed, using one the many current scheduling software programs, will be created based on the precedence diagram method. Most of the current scheduling software programs are set up for that.

Creating the WBS structure or summary bars and adding activities that model the work for the project in these programs will produce a schedule.

But is this really a useful schedule? Or is it a list of activities with dates assigned through the use of incomplete logic and date constraints? We get a list of activities with planned dates. That’s all we need, right? Isn’t that a schedule…?

Not really. That may be useful for conveying the basic plan for future work. But this is not a dynamic CPM schedule that can be used to model future work based on current progress, produce a Longest Path, or model the impact added or delayed work may have on future completion dates for the project.

I run into this a lot. A PM or someone on the project team will create a schedule and assume it is a CPM schedule. There are a few requirements to meet before a schedule can be considered a true CPM schedule.

Listed below are the minimum requirements for a CPM schedule.

Calendars.

For your schedule to be reasonably accurate, calendars need to be created to allow activities to have durations based on planned work periods. This usually requires the development and use of multiple calendars to account for various work periods such as 5-day 8-hour workweeks; 4-day 10-hour workweeks; workweeks with specific holidays set as non-workdays; anticipated non-workdays due to anticipated weather impacts….

Logic.

The only activity without a predecessor should be the first activity in the schedule. Usually NTP. The only activity without a successor should be the last activity, usually Project Complete or CCD… To be a true CPM schedule, all activity dates should be driven by the predecessor activities durations and logic. Having only all the predecessors assigned is not enough. There must be activities that are driven by the start or finish of a predecessor activity. If the activity in fact, does not drive the start of any work except the end of the project, then the successor should the last activity.

Constraints.

There are valid uses for date constraints in any schedule. However, overuse creates multiple interruptions to the forward and backward passes which determine float values. This produces snippets of paths based on the types of date constraints. Just using a constraint to set a planned start date for an activity is not a valid use of a date constraint. An interim date constraint should represent an external driving force for an activity or milestone or the contractually required date for a milestone. Limiting the use of date constraints allows the activity durations and activity relationships, (logic) to drive finish dates and produce a Longest Path to the finish of the project. This gives us the Critical Path for completion of the project.

Relationships and lags.

There valid reasons for using SS and/or FF relationships to model the planned sequencing of activities. But they should not be used in lieu of decomposing the work. Using SS and /or FF relationships should only be used to model work which will run concurrently even when the work is broken down to a reasonably small duration. Lags should not be used to model work or a waiting period. Lags are not transparent and using a lag with SS or FF relationships results in the work being modeled to start or finish based on a set time after the driving relationship has been satisfied, not on actual measurable work being complete to a specific point.

These are the most basic requirements for a CPM schedule.

The idea is to end up with a schedule that will model the impact actual progress to-date has on remaining scheduled activity dates. A CPM schedule can be used by the project team to proactively manage current schedule slippage, more accurately manage resources, and project finish dates and time-scaled cost flow.

I’m sure many of you have comments or additional insight into this subject. Please share!

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. Milestones and Constraints.

From time to time, I hear a project team member refer to a constraint when what they are actually referring to is a milestone.

This is really a “jargon” issue. I’ve heard people refer to a milestone with the intention of the milestone being a constraint on the project. I’ve heard people describe a project constraint as a schedule constraint.

It gets a bit confusing.

A PM may consider a required completion date of a phase of the project as a milestone. To a scheduler, this is an interim milestone and may or may not be date constrained, (Constrained with a schedule constraint assigned in the CPM schedule software program). If this milestone has a contractually required date, a scheduler may assign the appropriate date constraint. If the milestone is just for reporting purposes, the scheduler need only make sure the appropriate activities drive and are driven by the milestone activity.

A PM may refer to a project constraint, like the coordination with an owner delivery or requirement from outside of the project scope and control of the contractor. A scheduler will consider this an external constraint and may assign an appropriate date constraint. (If the date constraint would be a “start no earlier than”, I sometimes prefer to use a lag to NTP… I like to avoid the use of date constraints….).

A scheduler shouldn’t assign date constraints to every “milestone” or “constraint” referenced by the project team. The use of date constraints should be minimized and only applied when necessary.

The PM should understand that they may need to clarify when they really need a date constraint applied. The scheduler may not pick up on the requirement based on discussions among the project team.

The communication between the project team and the planner / scheduler is critical to the successful development and management of the project schedule. The different “jargon” we use can make this more difficult. We need to be aware of this and be sure to clarify when we’re unsure.

I’m sure many of you have comments or additional insight into this subject. Please share!

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. Including Inspection, Testing, and Commissioning Activities in the Construction CPM Schedule?

Are you including activities for the testing of equipment and systems, inspections for acceptance of systems and areas, and the commissioning of systems when you develop your baseline schedule?

People often focus on the “construction” activities when developing the schedule.

But the construction activities are only a part of the plan to execute the project. There are submittals and procurement, permits, and the closeout process.

One of the areas often overlooked is the inspection, testing, and commissioning process. There will be all kinds of inspections for the acceptance of specific work and entire systems. While it’s not a good idea to try and add all the specific installation inspections and tests that occur on an almost daily basis. We should include the inspections and tests for systems.

It makes sense to include an inspection and pre-operational test for the fire alarm system, fire suppression system, elevator, security system, electrical system, and mechanical system for a specific area or structure. There may be more for your specific project… Unfortunately, I see schedules that only have an activity at the end of the schedule named “commission” or “punch list inspection”. These activities are vague and can’t really address the need to test the systems individually and as necessary, in conjunction with each other. (Think Fire Alarm and Elevator or Fire Alarm and HVAC system zone controls).

Sometimes, the schedule specifications will include specific requirements for the inspection, testing and commissioning processes. Usually, the specification requirements are more general. Regardless, it is in the best interest of the project to include activities for these quality assurance activities in the schedule.

Not having a series of activities for the development, submittal, review, and approval of a fire alarm test plan or mechanical system commissioning plan creates a large risk for the schedule. While everyone may understand these plans are necessary and the testing is required before substantial completion can be obtained, many project teams don’t include the entire process in the project schedule. We also need the actual start-up and pre-operational inspection and testing work, the commissioning of the system, and the performance testing in the schedule. Depending on the size of the project and system, these may or may not occur at the same time. For a smaller renovation project, it’s not unreasonable to expect the inspection, testing and commissioning of a system will all happen at the same time over the course of a couple of days. On a larger more complex project, there may be a third-party commissioning agent and the system may be large and complex enough that the inspection and pre-operational testing will take several days with additional coordination with other systems.

Not including activities for this work will create a delay situation at the back end of the project, when you can least afford it.

We need to put a lot of effort into looking at the end of project QA and closeout work to make sure we include everything we need. If we do not have the time for this work allocated at the beginning of the project, we will certainly not have any room to execute this work at the end of the project.

I’m sure many of you have comments or additional insight into this subject. Please share!

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. CPM Schedules for Government Construction Projects.

You’ve been successful in winning a government construction contract. Maybe it’s a project administered by a Federal agency like the United States Army Corps of Engineers or the Veteran’s Administration. Maybe it is a state agency. At any rate, if you haven’t started developing the project’s Baseline Schedule, now is the time to start.

The place to start is the CPM schedule requirements from the RFP docs. Although they may be found in different sections, almost every agency has CPM schedule requirements in their contracts. They all vary, but they are usually much more stringent than the commercial CPM schedule requirements most contractors are comfortable with.

Are you prepared to develop your baseline schedule while meeting these more stringent requirements?

There are usually limitations on the duration for work activities. There can be requirements for activity coding which you may not be familiar with. You need to understand how to develop project-level calendars, resources and activity code.

A CPM Schedule Consultant with experience developing and managing these types of schedules is a valuable resource for you. Even if you plan to keep your schedule work in-house, having an experienced CPM schedule consultant available for advice and mentoring is a good bet.

There is nothing magical or overly difficult about meeting the CPM schedule requirements, but it can be costly in terms of time and aggravation if you have to keep correcting the baseline schedule when you’re unable to get owner approval. You will have your hands full getting the site safety plan or accident prevention plan accepted. There is also the Quality Control Plan. These administrative submittals and other early submittals and subcontractor buy-out will keep your PM team tied up for the beginning of the project. A little help with your schedule development will relieve the pressure of getting all the required preconstruction work completed so you can start mobilization and doing the real project work.

And most importantly, you must have your baseline schedule accepted to be able to develop your first progress update and submit your invoice.

The key is paying attention to all the detailed requirements. These agencies usually enforce conformance with these specifications. The development of calendars, the special activity code structure, the method of assigning resources and cost, and the use of constraints are all spelled out in great detail.

Don’t be afraid to reach out for help. There are many CPM schedule consultants with plenty of experience working with these CPM schedule requirements. Find someone you’re comfortable with and let them take some of the burden from you….

I’m sure many of you have comments or additional insight into this subject. Please share!

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. Managing the Project with the Schedule.

You’ve put the time and effort into developing a CPM schedule for the project. You have the Baseline Schedule approved. What do you do with it now?

Do you use it to create your monthly invoicing? Do you use it to document delays? Did you really only develop it to satisfy the contract requirements?

Do you use it to help you manage the project?

The project schedule is a great tool for managing the project. Oh, it’s also good for invoicing, delay documentation, and satisfying a specification requirement…. But, if a PM will use the schedule to help manage the project workflow, life will be a little bit easier…

If you manage the schedule updates properly, your schedule will show you which work is critical, which is near critical, and which work can slide a little. This is itself frees you from worrying too much about what should be your focus. Get the critical work done now or sooner, don’t lose track of the near-critical work, and try not to let the other work slip.

If I have anything negative to say about using the project schedule, it is the tendency to let non-critical work slip. This will result in stacking and trade congestion which is extremely difficult to recover from. Always push all work all the time. But, critical and near critical work comes first.

Keeping the schedule current and properly updated will really help in resource projection and your subcontractors will be much happier when they see that you actually follow a schedule. For example, if you have progressed better than planned on the structure, you can see from the updated schedule that the subsequent work will be ready sooner allowing you to provide a date for follow-on subcontractors to mobilize and get work started, well ahead of time so they can better manage their workforce and delivery.

When delays do occur, having a good schedule helps in mitigating and measuring the impact. You can see potential resource shortage issues early and take action.

There are so many reasons a good CPM schedule will help the PM. As a CPM Schedule Consultant, it’s hard to see why many contractors have so much resistance to putting in the effort and time to develop a good schedule in the first place.

I’m sure many of you have comments or additional insight into this subject. Please share!

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 the Look Ahead Schedule.

When your contractor brings the Look Ahead schedule to an Owner’s meeting, are you comfortable with the information shown?

Does the pdf document include the columns you need to understand the status of the activities? And the Critical Path?

The Look Ahead schedule is a valuable tool for the contractor to communicate the planned work for the next few days, weeks, months….. Most schedule specifications have a requirement for one or two weeks back and four to six weeks ahead. Basically, the contractor filters the activities so only in progress and activities scheduled to start in the next four to six weeks are shown. This is very useful to the owner’s PM and site staff.

But what does the information tell us?

That depends on what columns are shown. Typically, the activity ID and Name are shown. The question is what are the other columns reporting? The Original Duration, OD is, of course, the planned duration for the activity. The Remaining Duration, RD is the workdays remaining for the activity. If the Actual Duration, AD column is shown, we can see the actual workdays progressed. You can ask your contractor to show the At Completion Duration. This will show the elapsed time between the actual start date and the scheduled finish date. The At Completion Duration may be much greater than the OD or the AD and RD because these are workday duration values. If this is the case, there may be a delay to the remaining work for the activity, a lack of production or some other reason work has been suspended for the activity which should be investigated and remedied.

Then there are the percent complete values. Which values are showing? The Duration % Complete is a function of RD divided by OD. This is really a duration measurement and does not tell us much about how much work is in place. Depending on the type of activity and percent complete type settings used for the project schedule, there could be a Physical % Complete, Activity % Complete, Schedule % Complete, Units % Complete, or Cost % Complete. I like to use physical for the percent complete type and enter the work in place progress in this column. But I could also use activity. Depending on the resource settings, the units % complete, schedule % complete and cost % complete can represent work in place based on units or cost. It can be very confusing to a PM looking at a pdf. Ask your contractor to show a column that represents the work in place progress, the duration progress, and the cost progress. They can explain each column so you know which is which.

Now the date columns. Some schedule specifications still require the early and late date columns are shown. I prefer to only show the Start and Finish date columns. If there is negative Total Float, TF for an activity, the early and late dates can be confusing. If I need to know what the late date would be, at a meeting, I can add the TF value in workdays to the Start date in my head and get very close at a meeting. Just remember, the dates for scheduled activities is only an output of the activity durations and logic for the schedule. Resist the temptation to state that an activity will start on a specific date. We don’t actually know what the future holds, but we can base an activity date on the predecessor activity durations and logic ties…..

Finally, we have the float column(s). I see schedule specifications that require both the Free Float, FF and Total Float, TF columns are shown. I prefer to only see the TF column. The FF only tells me how much float the activity has between the predecessor and the successor. The TF is more important to me as this tells me when a delay to an activity would impact the finish or interim milestone date.

Of course, none of this is of any use if the schedule is not a complete CPM schedule. Missing logic, excessive date constraints, a lack of realistic calendars, or improper update procedures can render a schedule invalid.

As a CPM Schedule Consultant, I find that a PM can review the percent complete for activity duration and work in place, the OD, RD and At Completion Duration, start and finish dates, and the TF values and have a pretty good understanding of the status of the current activities and near term work. If a PM digs into in-progress activities with negative TF or TF values near 0, they can manage what is driving the Critical Path now. If the activities are in progress and have At Completion Duration values greater than the OD, they can dig into the slippage now and begin mitigating delay early.

I’m sure many of you have comments or additional insight into this subject. Please share!

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. Developing the Project Schedule Plan.

When you’re bidding a project, do you start developing a schedule plan? Or plan your schedule?

Before we ever start developing activities, we should plan the project, and this includes planning the schedule.

We need to determine how we plan to sequence the major portions of the work, establish required and preferential phases, break the project down into smaller deliverables based on area, CSI code, sub-contractor, type of activities – contract milestones, procurement, administrative activities…

This information is probably part of the cost proposal development process and provides us with the building blocks for developing the WBS.

We also need to have an idea of what type of activity calendars and coding we will need to use. The resources we will need to develop can be based on the subcontractor or CSI deliverable list.

As a CPM Schedule Consultant, I use this information to develop a schedule plan. I use this plan to develop the project WBS, activity coding, resources, and project calendars. I develop these before I ever start creating the activities for the schedule. Having the WBS developed helps ensure we have the entire scope of work in the schedule. Having the activity coding developed allows me to assign these items to the activities as I create the activities. This helps with filtering and sorting to assign hard and preferential logic and for reviewing work for specific resources or subcontractors for trade stacking and for reviewing specific areas for trade congestion. It’s just easier to assign the Responsibility and CSI activity coding along with assigning the resources. This saves time and avoids mistakes. Having the calendars developed helps with setting the original durations once we have all the logic assigned.

Planning the project as well as the schedule is the important first step in developing the project schedule.

I’m sure many of you have comments or additional insight into this subject. Please share!

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. You Need a Process for Managing Your Project Schedules.

Do you have a process for managing the schedules for your projects?

Perhaps you keep them in a file? Maybe you compare the updates with the baseline schedule from time to time?

There are many methods available to us for managing project documentation. Managing the project schedules requires a little more than just a filing system. The use of a schedule log for tracking the baseline and each update for project-level schedule IDs, data dates, milestone dates, cost performance, or any other info you may choose to track is a good practice.

The Schedule Log is simple to set up and use and will save time when referring back to previous schedules and the status of the project at a given time.

As a CPM Schedule Consultant, I use an MS Excel workbook with multiple worksheets, but a more simple schedule log could be managed on a single worksheet. Starting with the baseline schedule, you simply enter data from the schedule such as the P6 Project ID, data date, substantial completion date, milestone dates, contract completion date, number of activities, project total float value, description of the critical path, total actual cost, or other metrics. These can then be easily retrieved for quick analysis or used as a data set for creating curves or histograms for date slippage, float erosion, cost curves…

Using the schedule log is quick and easy and provides a ready reference point for schedule metrics.

Need to know the status of the project at the update previous to the current update? Maybe there is someone from higher management requesting the status of cost performance or float erosion over the past three periods? If you’ve set up your schedule log and kept it current, this information is easy to locate, and you can even provide a report from the schedule log.

How we file the schedules is important too. Keeping a set of folders for the baseline and schedule updates is something everyone does. What about adding delay issues and change orders that occur in a specific update period? Would a copy of those added to the update folder be handy for future reference? How about copies of photos and field reports for the update period? RFI’s?

Document control is a profession of its own and there are tried and true methodologies for this. Adding references to the schedule files for other supporting documentation or copies of the documents can be part of the process.

Managing the project schedule process is more involved than simply filing the updates. The schedule log can be used as another tool to help you better manage your projects.

I’m sure many of you have comments or additional insight into this subject. Please share!

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. Schedule Performance Measurement, Part 5. (For Owners).

When monitoring and responding to the Contractor’s schedule performance on the project, how do you know if the schedule update is even valid for use?

When we review a schedule progress update, we need to first determine if the schedule update is a valid update. By that, I mean is the logic still complete? Have there been any revisions with this update that result in the schedule not meeting the contract requirements or best practices? It doesn’t take much to render a schedule useless….

There are most likely logic revisions, changes to lag values, or possible changes to calendars or assignments. There are also deletions and additions of activities and/or Activity Relationships. Then there are changes to quantities or Resources which may impact Activity Durations or Resource Calendars.

For this post, we will address the lack of correcting Out-of-Sequence, OOS Logic.

Personally, the first schedule “quality check” I make is for complete logic. Please see the previous post, Schedule Performance Measurement, Part 2. (For Owners).

Next, I check for changes to Relationships and Relationship Lags. Please see the previous post, Schedule Performance Measurement, Part 3. (For Owners).

I then check for changes to Activity and Relationship Calendars and Calendar assignments.

But, my personal pet peeve is OOS Logic which has not been addressed.

When the Contractor is assigning actual and expected dates to the schedule update, while assigning the current progress for work in progress, it is common and acceptable for actual work in the field to have been executed differently than planned. This results in Out-of-Sequence, OOS Logic.

Primavera P6 provides a Schedule Log with lots of information. One of the things this log provides is a list of activities with OOS Logic. This is simply a list of activities with assigned Actual Dates which are not progressed the same as the Schedule Network Logic.

For example, if activity A drives activity B with an FS Relationship and Activity A is assigned an Actual Start Date with a projected scheduled Finish Date and activity B is assigned an Actual Start Date, activity A will show up on the Schedule Log as having OOS Logic because activity A does not have an Actual Finish Date prior to activity B actually starting. This condition is simple to correct. We simply change the logic to an SS relationship. This allows the as-built relationship to match the revised logic. If activity A has not actually started and activity B is assigned an Actual Start Date, then more work must be done to correct the OOS logic. Activity A is obviously either not progressed and missing the Actual Start and Finish dates or the actual sequencing of the work is being executed differently than planned and activity A should no longer be the predecessor to activity B.

If the issue is OOS logic, it should be addressed. Leaving OOS logic in the schedule allows the now incorrect logic to drive the successor activity dates, which is incorrect. This happens when we use Retained Logic, which most schedule specifications require. It is also best to use Retained Logic to allow the planned logic to drive the schedule. We just have to correct the OOS logic with each update.

Not correcting OOS logic with each update can produce erroneous specific Network Path scheduled activity dates. This can create a Critical Path based on the original logic which is no longer valid due to the actual OOS work in the field. We want the Critical Path, and Near Critical Path(s) to be based on the most accurate progress input and plan to execute the remaining work.

Typically, correcting OOS logic for driving activities on the Critical Path will shorten the Remaining Duration of the Project Schedule. I prefer to correct the OOS Logic immediately after I assign the actual dates, expected dates, and actual progress. This way, when we need to determine the best method of recovering any lost time, we are working with a valid Schedule Network.

The same applies to Near Critical Path(s).

That said, understanding the impact of the uncorrected OOS Logic, and reporting those findings is important to the Owner. Personally, I do not consider the Schedule Update valid if the OOS Logic is not corrected. But many schedule specifications do not address this issue.

As Planning and Schedule Professionals, we need to provide the Project Team with the “tools” they need to manage the project. The owner needs to know what the performance of the actual work in the field is, compared to the planned performance. Unless we have a valid schedule update to measure with, and against, and understand the impact of acceptable schedule revisions, we cannot provide an accurate measurement.

I’m sure many of you have comments or additional insight into this subject. Please share!

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. Schedule Performance Measurement, Part 4. (For Owners).

When monitoring and responding to the Contractor’s schedule performance on the project, how do you know if the schedule update is even valid for use?

For this post, we will address changes to Activity or Relationship Calendars.

Personally, the first schedule “quality check” I make is for complete logic. Please see the previous post, Schedule Performance Measurement, Part 2. (For Owners).

Next, I check for changes to Relationships and Relationship Lags. Please see the previous post, Schedule Performance Measurement, Part 3. (For Owners).

I then check for changes to Activity and Relationship Calendars and Calendar assignments.

When the Contractor is making schedule revisions to recover lost time for the update period, they may decide to work a crew more than the Activity or Relationship Calendar currently allows. If the Activity is assigned to a 5 Day Workweek with Holidays and Weather Days, they may decide to work 6 days a week for a specific resource to recover lost time. To be able to do this, they need to create an additional Calendar and set the work days up accordingly. They then replace the existing Calendar with the new Calendar. This allows the same amount of work, or Work Day Duration, to be scheduled over fewer Calendar Days. This results in shortening the Calendar Day Duration of the Activity Network(s) which contain the affected Activities.

This is the kind of schedule revision the Owner must be aware of and understand. It can be checked for in Primavera P6.

What Primavera P6 is not good at checking are changes to the work days in an existing Activity or Resource Calendar. As long as the Calendar Name does not change, P6 does not report it.

Most of us use third-party software designed to identify changes to Calendars. That’s great, but we still need to understand the impact of the changes identified.

Changes to Calendars and the Work Days in a specific Calendar do not make the schedule invalid for use. But, the owner needs to know what changes were made and what effect the changes have on the affected Logic Path(s).

That said, finding the changes to any Calendars, understanding the impact of the changes found, and reporting those findings is important to the Owner.

I’m sure many of you have comments or additional insight into this subject. Please share!

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