Schedule Management – Page 2 – Construction and Schedule Management Services

Construction Scheduling. Schedule Progress Updates and the PM.

The Project Manager is responsible for many deliverables and processes for the project.

Scope, cost, communication, time, and quality.

Part of managing the cost and time is the coordination of work and subsequent reporting of work completed.

Many projects base the periodic invoicing on the percentage of work completed for that period. Others use Milestones for payments. There are other methods as well. For this post, we will work with the percentage of work based on the progress completed for each activity.

Correct updating and reporting of the schedule progress is a large part of the process. And invoicing is a big deal!

How does the PM report on the work completed? Should they use the percentage of time used for the activity? Should they use the percentage of actual cost expended? Should they use the percentage of work in place?

Depending on the contract type, there are options. Personally, I prefer to base the invoicing on the percentage of physical work in place. After all, why would an owner pay for your time or actual expenses, unless the work is T&M?

To update the progress based on physical work in place, you simply manually assign the physical percent complete for work in progress and set the scheduled finish date based on the planned remaining duration or finish date. It is that simple. The cost can be calculated in the software program or in a spreadsheet.

One of the useful things about using physical percent complete and letting the remaining duration or scheduled finish determine the duration percent complete is the variance between percent complete this creates.

If you have completed 50% of the work and the remaining duration or scheduled finish date results in a duration percent complete of 70%, it is obviously taking longer to complete this work than planned.

Perhaps this indicates a learning curve for this work. Perhaps there was a delay in material delivery once the activity started. There could be many reasons. But, the PM should know the reason and they cannot know to find out if they do not have an indicator that there is a problem.

Many people just assign the percent complete as duration percent complete and let the program assign the scheduled finish date based on the original duration and remaining duration values. This is a problem for several reasons. First, this method models the time used and remaining, not the work in place. Second, the scheduled finish date is based on the assumption that the productivity rate is as planned. Seldom is this correct. Finally, letting the duration percent complete value calculate the scheduled finish date does not model the remaining work for the project accurately. Basing an invoice on this method will result in inaccurate invoices for work in place and a schedule that is not valid for the remaining work. It’s a good practice to be accurate in these areas.

Although it is not often used in the typical layouts I see, displaying the “At Completion Duration” column in the layout also provides a quick flag for activities that are exceeding the original duration. Most layouts display the “Original Duration” and the “Remaining Duration” columns. But this doesn’t really alert the PM to a potential problem with activity progress and productivity.

I’m a big supporter of using physical percent complete for work in place and setting the scheduled finish date for work in progress by revising the remaining duration value or setting the date based on field input. I also like to display the “At Completion Duration” column in my layouts. I think providing the Project Manager with as many tools as we can to help them make intelligent decisions for managing the work is our primary function.

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. Why Work When We Can Wait?

When the baseline schedule is developed correctly, the schedule logic is complete, activity durations and activity calendars are assigned, resources with cost may have been assigned, and activity coding is developed and assigned.

All of this creates the schedule network. This schedule network is made up of many sequences (logic paths) of activities.

Once the schedule is calculated (forward and backward pass), the schedule network will provide scheduled dates for activities not yet complete. At any given time, a small percentage of activities will have scheduled dates which show they should be starting and completing within a defined period of time, (say this week or this month…).

Some of these activities will be on the Critical Path. Some will be on the Near Critical Path(s). Some will have Total Float values which allow them to remain unstarted or incomplete for a period of time dependent on the Total Float value.

We all understand that the work on the Critical Path needs to be driven at all times. We understand that work on the Near Critical Path(s) also needs to be driven so it does not lag and shift to the Critical Path.

What about the activities with Total Float values which allow the work for these activities to lag without affecting the Project Completion Date?

Should this work be executed when it is convenient? Should this work be pushed out until it is on the Near Critical path(s)?

Part of the CPM Schedule development process was the analysis of the resources for activities to verify a specific resource did not have more activities scheduled to be underway than the resource could support. This can be done manually or using software programs that run Monte Carlo analysis for resource leveling.

That said, why would we want to allow work to slip? It is my opinion that any work which can logically be executed should be executed as long as the resources required do not exceed the planned resources for that time period. But, sometimes it is better to add resources to execute the work for a variety of reasons.

By allowing work to slip, only because there is no schedule driven reason to execute the work at that time, the work will eventually push out until the activities with a specific resource assignment are stacked resulting in an overallocation condition which forces some of this work to push out due to lack of resources. Whether the schedule is resource loaded or not, we all know that a subcontractor can only do so much with the forces they have on the project at any given time.

Allowing the work to slip also increases the risk of a late completion due to the potential of shifting of the Critical and Near Critical Path(s).

Finally, allowing work to slip has a negative impact on the schedule cost curve and distribution plan. The project may be reporting an on-time completion and the Critical Path may have an acceptable Total Float value, but if work is pushing out, the completed values will produce an unacceptable Cost Variance (CV), Cost Performance Index (CPI), Schedule Variance (SV), and Schedule Performance Index (SPI).

Projects with poor Earned Value metrics seldom recover.

I say, if the work is available to be executed, the resources are available, and executing the work will not lessen the focus on the Critical and Near Critical Path(s), it is wise to work in where you can, when you can.

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 are the Critical and Near Critical Paths? Why do we care?

When the schedule is developed, the schedule logic should be complete. All activities should have at least one predecessor and one successor, with the exception of the first and last activities for the schedule.

If this is done, the combination of activity durations, activity calendar assignments, and schedule logic create the CPM schedule network. This CPM schedule network is made up of many sequences (logic paths) of activities.

In simple terms, the longest continual path from the project start to the end of the project or the next hard constraint establishes the Critical (Longest) Path.

The Total Float values are a just the product of the forward and backward pass through the CPM schedule network. Just because the Total Float value is zero does not make the activity critical.

However, the Total Float values are important. If the Critical Path has a Total Float value of zero, then the Near Critical Path activities will most likely have a Total Float value very close to zero. I say most likely because the activity calendar assignment has an impact on the Total Float values. But often, this is a simple rule of thumb for determining the Near Critical Path. I like to keep an eye on work that is on the Critical Path first and then also pay attention to work that falls on the Near Critical Path(s) within one or two weeks of the Critical Path for large projects and a few days for small projects.

It’s not unusual for the PM and Superintendent to focus on work on the Critical Path and not pay enough attention to work on the Near Critical Path(s) and then have the Critical Path shift because a lack of progress for the Near Critical Path work took over the Critical Path.

This is just one reason complete logic, calendar definition and assignment, and limiting constraints are important when developing a baseline CPM schedule. If you scatter constraints throughout the schedule, you will not have a true Critical Path for the project. Without complete logic, you do not have the means to accurately complete the forward and backward pass that establishes the CPM schedule network scheduled dates and Total Float values. Without calendar definition and proper assignment to activities, durations will be erroneous and this will ultimately produce a false schedule network.

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. 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. Let Durations Help You.

How can you use the Activity Duration value to help you manage your schedule?

Simple, just look at all the columns and do some math in your head.

When your contractor develops the project baseline schedule, they develop the Original Duration for each activity. How they develop the durations is a subject for another post. But let’s assume they have used historical data, input from subcontractors, calculated productivity and quantities, or some method of developing an accurate value for the each Activity’s Original Duration.

Most Schedule Presentations (Gantt Chart pdf’s) have the activity names, dates, a percent complete and a duration for each activity shown in columns. Then there are the magical bars to the right. Sometimes there are even relationship (logic) lines drawn from activity to activity so you know what drives what, right? Can you actually read it? Doubtful…. Anyway, let’s focus on the duration columns.

If you’re looking at a Schedule Presentation from a Primavera P6 schedule, there are options for which duration columns you can see. Almost everyone uses the Original Duration column. Most of us use the Remaining duration column. That’s all we need to know, correct?

Not really, there is a column that shows the At Completion Duration. This is not seen in presentations that often, probably because we want more room for the magic bars and lines… But this is an important column to be able to see when reviewing a Schedule Presentation pdf.

If you have an Original Duration of 5 days (Work Days or Calendar Days depends on the Calendar. This is a subject for another post), and a Remaining Duration of 3 days and the percent complete (whether it is Physical, Duration, Activity, Performance, or Cost or another type is a subject for another post), is 50%, things are looking good, right?

Not always. If you look at the At Completion Duration, you may find that while the Original Duration is 5 and the Remaining duration is 3. But the At Completion Duration could be 35 or any other value if the activity finish date is riding the Data Date. This can happen depending on the settings used to manage the schedule. Unless you actually look at the dates and do some calculations in your head while reviewing the schedule, when you don’t have the At Completion duration column to use, you may not see the slippage.

Ask your contractor to display the At Completion Duration column for their Progress Meeting Look Ahead Schedules and any other pdf submission. It’s worth the trade off with the magic bars and lines!

Knowing what was planned, what is remaining and what the time impact of activity progress slippage is can save you some trouble.

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. Do You Manage Your Project with the Project Schedule?

Question Why would you not use the schedule to manage the project?

If you put the effort into developing a detailed CPM schedule with input from the project team members, isn’t the schedule the best road map you have?

One of the great opportunities development of the baseline schedule offers is the project team’s review and input into the analysis of the scope of work for the project.

Depending on how your company estimates and proposes on projects, the people charged with executing the project after the award of the project to your company may have had limited to no involvement or exposure to the project requirements and the basic plan to execute the project based on the proposal.

The schedule development process encourages the project team to review the requirements, understand the sequencing of the work and sometimes even uncover an opportunity to improve on the initial proposed plan.

Assuming the project team has developed a great detailed baseline CPM schedule. I can’t imagine why anyone would not use the schedule to plan and manage work. Management likes to use the schedule to track and measure performance, but I consider the project schedule to be the project team’s best tool for executing the project.

Unfortunately, I run into projects that only produced the baseline schedule because it was required. The progress updates were used for invoice backup only and no effort was put into accurately updating and correcting out-of-sequence work and revising the plan to complete the remaining work in the project. Sadly, these projects do not have a valid schedule to base change order and delay impacts on. They also do not have an accurate idea of if or when the project will complete, much less what is required to get there.

There are many reasons to develop and use a detailed CPM schedule to manage the project. I can’t think of a good reason not to.

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 “Time Impact” Fragnet. Or, this is how bad this change hurts!

Avoiding Project Delays I often assist contractors with their schedule development and updates. This also includes preparing the “fragnets” for Time Impact Analysis, (TIA) or change orders. I find that many smaller contractors are not used to following a procedure for managing their schedules. This makes it nearly impossible to manage their change order time impact.

What I find, more often than not, is a schedule, (not the latest update, if there is one) that someone has increased the duration for a piece of work that is “impacted” by the change order or delay.

This may seem intuitive to the project manager or superintendent. It may actually work somewhat to model the impact of the change order or delay impact.

But, does it model the actual change or delay? Is it applied to the most recent accepted update or revision? Can it be used as a tool to visually explain the sequence of events associated with the change or delay to arrive at an understanding and agreement of the change package, associated relationships to existing work, and impact to the scheduled completion date?

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 still need the involvement and direction only the contractor can provide.

The contractor needs to explain the series of events driving the impact and be prepared to provide dates and references to RFI’s, field directions, RFP’s, meeting minutes, or other records which will support the request. We can then build the model of the impact events accurately. Then the contractor needs to tell us specifically which activities this impact actually drives so we can apply the correct logic. We also need to know what work was starting or underway when the issue presented so we know how to apply that logic as well.

It is much more complicated than simply increasing the duration of the activity impacted. The goal of the professional planning and schedule consultant is to model the impact package so it can be presented to the owner as an easily understood representation of the group of events laid out in a timeline fashion with durations and logic the owner can agree to or discuss further. Once this is accomplished, there isn’t much more to argue about. The impact model or fragnet stands on its own and the subjectivity is all but removed from the issue.

But this all depends on the willingness and ability of the contractor to provide the information and direction to support the development of the fragnet.

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. Developing trust with the Owner, for Schedule Management.

person-question-300x300 I often assist contractors with their schedule development and updates. This also includes preparing the “fragnets” for Time Impact Analysis, (TIA) or change orders. I get the impression from many owners that they do not trust the fragnet or analysis supporting the time extension request.

I worked many years on the “owner’s side” of projects. I understand the concerns most owners have. It only takes being lied to once to create a skeptic…

How do we, as professional planning and schedule consultants overcome the widespread distrust owners have, specifically when it comes to developing and supporting fragnets, TIA’s, or change orders?

I find the majority of contractors I work with to be honest & above board. They act with integrity and genuinely want to provide the best product and service they believe the owner has contracted for.

I find the majority of owners I work with believe they have provided the contractor with a good set of contract documents to work with and really do want the contractor to be successful on their project.

I believe the most important thing we can do, as professional planning and schedule consultants, is educate our clients by teaching them how the time impact “plugs” into the schedule; how the various calendars with non-work days affect the scheduled dates and total float downstream of the fragnet; how to properly manage the schedule updates and revisions to use the correct schedule to base the impact on.

If we could teach our clients the basics of change management for schedules, they might have a better understanding of what is prepared and presented, which would perhaps help in making the “negotiation” of the time impact go smoothly.

Who knows? It just might help build a little trust on the project…

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. Don’t let the Near Critical path Sneak up on Your Project!

Surprise Do you diligently keep track of the work on your project’s critical path?

How we define the critical path is a topic for another time. For now, let’s just focus on what we are tracking as critical based on total float values, which do tie into the longest path definition with variances for calendars…..

How often has the critical path for your project shifted during the project duration? Do you show as much diligence with tracking the near critical activities as you do the critical path activities?

You should, and I’m betting that you do. But, sometimes, it still sneaks up on us!

I prefer to keep my eye on both. And then I usually only focus on the nearest couple of near critical paths. 80/20 rule….. By staying aware of the calendars assigned to the activities on my near critical path(s) and looking at the trend for slippage for these activities, I generally find I realize the pending in time to intervene. I like that much better than after the fact, but I’d like to deal with the pending impact sooner, as I’m sure we all would.

I do this by comparing the past near critical path activities to the current activities to look for slippage in my layout and filter. This helps. I also like to track the schedule slippage of the activities with a total float value lower than a specific total float value dependent on the schedule status. I find it easier to spot the start of the trend and make a note to track that activity next update. I then look at the drivers to see what is causing the slippage. Pretty simple. There are more elaborate methods of analysis for determining trends and slippage and identifying potential impacts, but I like to start with the simple methods to get an immediate fix on the schedule status.

There are always “exceptions to the rule”, but this is one I try to follow.

What other methods have you found to successfully identify the near critical path negative trend?

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. The problem with Start to Start Relationships. Or, Why doesn’t a Delay to this Activity Duration push my Finish Date?

person-question-300x300 Do you regularly use Start-to-Start SS relationships? Perhaps you add a lag to drive the start of the successor out a few days?

Have you had problems with this practice? Perhaps a delay to the completion of the predecessor activity is actualized, but does not impact the schedule?

This is a common practice, unfortunately. The best practice is to add an additional successor with a Finish-to-Start FS relationship, or even a Finish-to-Finish FF relationship. This will provide the logic that allows the delay to the completion of the activity to drive other work. Without that additional successor activity, what you have is an “open end” and the activity finish does drive any successive work. It could never complete and you would not see the problem in the logic.

This condition is simple to prevent. Just make it a practice to always add a FS or FF successor when using a SS relationship. The problem usually happens when you’re trying to recover time and start to schedule work concurrently. You simply forget to add the additional successor….

Personally, I like to develop my schedules with all FS relationships unless the plan actually calls for a SS condition. If I have the need to use SS relationships, I assume my work isn’t broken down into enough detail to allow me to sequence the work logically.

There are always “exceptions to the rule”, but this is one I try to follow.

What other methods have you found to successfully utilize SS relationships, with or without lags?

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