There are times when the schedule update process shows the project has not made adequate progress to maintain the schedule as planned. It could happen…..
The problem starts when we work with our contractor client to correct the out-of-sequence relationships and make the necessary revisions to best model the team’s path going forward.
At some point, it becomes apparent that nothing we can do to the schedule, which doesn’t include adding cost/resources, is going to model a plan to complete on time. We typically look at resequencing work on the critical (longest) path, which may or may not include costs. We look at reducing durations to work on the critical (longest) path, which almost always includes costs. This is an iterative process as the critical (longest) path continually shifts as we change the various paths.
So, what happens we’re working with the contractor’s team to bring the project back on schedule? We strive to find the most cost-effective method of reducing the time required to complete the project, but there is soon going to be a point of diminishing returns for costs to “recover” the schedule.
What do you tell your client?
Does your client arbitrarily direct work to be scheduled concurrently or reduce durations greatly without input from the subcontractor?
Does your client look at past delays or change orders and consider re-visiting them to request additional time they did not pursue during the “honeymoon” phase?
I believe that we, as planning and scheduling professional consultants, should strive to keep the project on course and assist eh project team with providing a successful project.
The question is: As consultants, how do we accomplish this?
We must always maintain our integrity and be honest with our client.
What has your experience been?
Do you tell your client to “suck it up, we can’t afford to get back on schedule”?
Do you advise your client to convene a team meeting with the major subcontractors to see if they can assist with developing a recovery plan, at the least cost to the project? They are often well aware of the problem and have great ideas….
Do you suggest your client convene with the subcontractors and then meet with the owner to see if there is a way to provide what the owner absolutely needs to make the project successful for them and allow you to finish some of the work later than required?
Real scheduling is messy. But we all deal with issues all the time…..
There is power in building team consensus and almost every owner and contractor I have had the pleasure to work with have wanted a successful project and were willing to work with the entire project team to accomplish it.
The problem comes when we don’t revise our baseline schedule and the work continues, at risk, with a disputed change order(s) and no approved revised baseline schedule to measure the pending change order against. How do we determine the change order impact? We know we need to use the most recent approved schedule. Is this the Project Baseline Schedule now? I’ve heard this argument many times.
Of course it is, it is the approved schedule at the time of the change order work insertion to create the fragnet to evaluate schedule impact. The approval of the “new” schedule which includes the changed work or delay deems it the “Revised” Baseline Schedule.
What happens to our schedule metrics and baseline cost or resource curve or projected budget cash flow? We have to revise those as well.
So, what happens when the work continues for a couple of reporting periods, the owner refuses to acknowledge change orders or delays and the schedule is reporting negative float / is behind schedule? The owner demands a recovery schedule, right? The contractor asserts they are delayed by the owner and need the change order finalized and added to the schedule to get back on schedule. Should the owner pay the contractor’s invoices when they’re behind schedule? Or hold retainage? Should the contractor stop work until the contract issue is settled? Or continue at risk creating the necessity of forensic claims analysis to resolve the unresolved change issues and delay conditions?
I believe that we, as planning and scheduling professional consultants, should strive to keep the project on course and ensure the entire project team understands the repercussions of not resolving the issues timely.
The question is: As consultants, how do we accomplish this?
We must always maintain our integrity and be honest with our client.
What has your experience been?
Have you kept updating the schedule, even while running deep into negative total float?
Do you advise your clients to force the settlement of overdue change orders?
Do you refer your client to a good Forensic Schedule Consultant you know?
Real scheduling is messy. But we all deal with issues all the time…..
All projects run into change orders with time extensions and just plain old delay claims.
But, how do we manage these on smaller projects with teams that are not well versed in CPM schedule methodology and analysis?
Typically, these projects manage change order time extensions or delays by marking off days on a calendar or looking at daily reports for days worked and deciding that if the contractor worked, he must not have been delayed…..
Part of what we do, as a planning and scheduling professional consultant, is to help the contractor support their case for a time extension for additional work, if it drives the longest path. We also help the owner defend against frivolous time extension requests or delay claims.
If the change order or the delay impacted the longest path, we need to quantify the impact to the completion date. But, even if the impact does not push the completion date, there is still an impact to the sequencing of work, delivery of materials, efficiency of work resources, and the consuming of total float from the near critical paths.
I believe that we, as planning and scheduling professional consultants, should strive to improve the clients’ understanding of change order insertion into the schedule and the analysis of the impact. We should improve the clients’ ability substantiate their impact or defend against the unsubstantiated claims. Sometimes this means telling our clients that there is no impact to the longest path. Sometimes it means helping our clients model the disruption to their work or the increased cost of resequencing their work. Sometimes it means telling the owner that the contractor is entitled to the time extension request.
We must always maintain our integrity and be honest with our client.
But sometimes, our clients demand we support their position, regardless of our analysis and advice against pursuing time for the change order or delay.
What has your experience been?
Do most of your clients understand how the inserted “fragnet” may or may not impact the completion date? Do they understand how the near critical paths can be impacted to become the longest path and even push the completion date?
Or, do you sometimes find your efforts resisted due to your clients’ lack of schedule knowledge or project management maturity? If so, how? And how do you deal with that?
Do you often feel pressured to support your client’s preconceived belief, rather than what the analysis shows? If so, how do you deal with that?
What client management techniques have you developed to better manage and help your clients with their schedule impacts and change order management?
My early construction schedule experience was gained while working on the owner’s side of the project. The issues I was concerned with were simple. Is the contractor on schedule? Will the contractor finish by contract completion? Have I delayed the contractor, and if so by how much?
Pretty basic concerns.
As time went on, and I learned from my many mentors, I found that a project schedule is an indispensable tool for managing the project. What better way to manage resources, project cash flow, spot trends in schedule slippage, and manage change order delay claims.
Maintaining the schedule through accurate updates, revisions to reflect the plan going forward, and the timely inclusion of delays or change orders is essential.
There will always be those that resist the use of a CPM schedule and those that believe it is the only tool available.
Where do you fall?
Do you believe the schedule is a necessary tool for payment or to meet the contract requirements?
Do you believe the schedule helps with managing the work and projecting your plan going forward?
Do you believe that adherence to the baseline schedule is paramount and no revisions or deviations from this plan are acceptable?
Early in my career, I was taught the project schedule was to be cost loaded and used for invoicing, as well as tracking the project’s progress. (This is strictly concerned with the invoice between the GC and the owner. Not the contractor’s internal actual cost, earned value, and GC vs subcontract cost…)
Over the years, mentors have suggested costs for invoicing be added to the project baseline schedule and then exported to a separate spreadsheet for update invoicing purposes. (This would be accomplished by applying the update Physical % Complete to the baseline budget cost value…..) Simple construction scheduling and management.
I was taught to run the cost this period, previous total cost and actual total cost to-date from the schedule program. This is a commonly used and straightforward method of creating the “Application for Payment” or invoice for each update period. (In my perfect world, this update is updated progress only. No resequencing for OOS correction work or recovery of lost time has been completed. That is done next and is the basis for any EVM metrics we want to look at). I prefer a two-step update process for construction scheduling and update management.
As I understand it, the argument for disassociating cost from the schedule update is this.
It is tempting for the contractor to look at the cost this period and cost to-date and feel pressured to adjust the percent complete to line up with their actual costs, not the physical percent complete. Valid concern, we don’t want to invoice less than we are payout out for work. It is also tempting for the owner or owner’s rep to look at the remaining cost and feel pressured to adjust the percent complete to allow what they think the remaining cost to complete should be. Valid concern, we want enough cost remaining to finish the work.
The general idea is that by keeping the costs separate from the activity percent complete update, we would get a more accurate progress to date. Since we know that best practice is to adjust the remaining duration based on the plan to complete the remaining work, we will be over or under our planned production rate. (EVM enters here, but that’s another story.) Taking the more accurate percent complete and applying it to the budgeted cost from the baseline schedule on the separate spreadsheet sheet would provide the values we need for the invoice.
Simple construction scheduling and update management.
This is based on the people doing the actual update of progress not having access to the budgeted cost or any other cost information. They only look at physical percent complete and planned remaining duration.
I find this idea interesting and I’m curious what other contractors and schedulers are doing and think of this concept. It’s not new, but I have not seen much discussion about it.
As construction scheduling professionals, we’ve all worked on projects which have been impacted by an owner delay which was not recognized as valid by the owner.
This happens. We have to deal with it. Some general examples that come to mind are:
Unrecognized change in the owner’s program resulting in a change to the contract scope of work and design.
Unrecognized unforeseen condition which changed the geotechnical design or suspended the project until remediation work could be completed.
Unrecognized specification or drawing ambiguity or omission resulting in additional or changed work.
Unrecognized delays for owner operations not included in the bid docs.
What types of schedule delay events have you seen? How did you, as a construction scheduling professional manage them? How did the project team manage them?
We’ve all worked on projects where a major event has occurred and the project team had to scramble to manage the crisis.
This happens. As construction scheduling professionals, we have to deal with it. Some general examples that come to mind are:
Very extreme weather events such as hurricanes & floods. We plan for “normal” weather and manage weather impacts in excess of the anticipated “normal”. But an extreme weather event requires the immediate involvement of the entire project team.
Drastic change in the owner’s program resulting in a gross change to the contract scope of work. This could be a facility design changing from a male facility to a female facility, at 70% construction complete. There would be a lot of rework and resequencing of work required. It happens……
A serious unforeseen condition which changes the geotechnical design or suspends the project until remediation work can be completed. This is not all that unusual and is typically mitigated. But, it is still a major disruption to the start of the project.
What types of schedule delay events have you seen? How did you, as a construction scheduling professional manage them? How did the project team manage them?
You have a baseline schedule, with a few periodic updates completed, and now you need to make a revision to the schedule to dramatically re-sequence work, add/delete work to/from the project, or provide a required “Recovery Schedule”. What do you do?
This is one of the more difficult schedule management tasks. In some ways, it is almost more difficult than creating the baseline schedule.
Depending on the amount of time you need to “recover”, you will need to find the root causation for the schedule slippage and get that under control. This could mean anything from having the party responsible for the slippage work additional hours to maintain the daily scheduled productivity, adding resources to increase the daily scheduled productivity, or resequencing of work to mitigate the lack of daily scheduled productivity or model concurrent work.
Next you will need to develop the most cost-effective means of accelerating work on the current longest path. This is tricky. Your schedule may have a near critical path which is very close to the scheduled longest path. As you shave days off the longest path, it will shift to the near critical path making that path the longest path. You will need to keep working at accelerating activities on the longest path, as it shifts until you reach the point of “recovery”.
That’s the easy part.
Now you have to obtain support for this plan from the project team. Subcontractors have to agree to provide what is needed to achieve this revised plan. Deliveries must be verified. Resource availability must be verified. There is probably additional cost involved. This must be managed a well.
In summary, any “recovery plan” will most likely involve concurrent work and/or acceleration of work. In any case, submitting a “recovery schedule” without the support of the project team for execution of the revised plan is a disservice to the owner, the project team and the project. You must be able to gain the commitment of the project team.
Schedule management includes many tasks and processes. Developing the “recovery schedule” is one of the more difficult tasks. The Project Manager should always be intimately involved with the planning of the revised work plan and “buy-in” from the project team is necessary for the successful execution of the “recovery plan”.
You may be able to manage the development of the recovery schedule without any problems.
You have created your project’s baseline schedule and now you are starting the schedule management phase of the project. What do you do?
If you have not done so already, you need to establish a “schedule log”. I like to start my schedule log when I start development of the baseline schedule. This allows me to track my revisions and reasons for making them. The schedule log provides you with historic data for each revision or update to the schedule. Very handy.
If you have not done so already, set up schedule layouts and filters you plan to use. I also set these up during me schedule development, but often times the owner decides they want to use something other than what the schedule specifications require.
Each periodic update, save your schedule with progress only. This allows you to see what the progress update did to your schedule, save this snapshot. Then make any revisions to correct out-of-sequence, OOS relationships and model the revised plan to finish on schedule. You now have your updated and revised schedule ready for use.
Update the schedule periodically. Compare your progress with the most current previously accepted schedule and the baseline schedule. Look at how you’re tracking, how your actual durations are comparing to your scheduled original durations, and how your work sequence is actually progressing. Identify problem areas and trends and develop corrective action to recover time lost.
After you update the progress for your schedule, revise the schedule update to reflect your actual plan for execution. This doesn’t mean a complete change of sequence or addition of new work. This is simply to model adjustments you are going to need to make to maintain the scheduled completion date.
Major revisions to the schedule to dramatically re-sequence work or add/delete large pieces of work are handled differently. This will be part of a future post.
Managing the simple month to month schedule update process is pretty straightforward. Correcting the OOS is more involved and care should be taken to follow best practices. This is all part of the basic schedule management process.
Now that you’ve engaged your planning and schedule professional, what will you need to provide this consultant for them to be able to successfully provide the schedule support services you need?
Before any schedule review can begin…..
First, they need to understand the project. To do this, they need to learn the basic scope of the project. They will need the IFB or RFP docs with addendums, the successful contractor’s proposal, the award documents (if the contract is already awarded), your reporting requirements or preferences, and a list of stakeholders.
They need to understand what the schedule requirements are for your specific project. (Hopefully, you require a critical path method (CPM) schedule with specific activity coding, calendar, schedule and calculation requirements). The schedule consultant needs to know what the successful contractor proposed and any exceptions they may have included. The schedule consultant needs to know what your reporting preferences are, in addition to whatever requirements you have provided. The schedule consultant needs to know who the project stakeholders are and how you want their reporting formatted, or if you want stakeholders getting reports directly from any scheduling consultants at all.
All planning and scheduling consultants must develop a basic idea of the project work breakdown structure (WBS) and organizational breakdown structure (OBS) the contractor will likely develop. This is basically an organized list of the project deliverables broken down into work packages and a list of individuals or companies from which to assign a responsible party for each package. This is necessary for the review of the contractor’s schedule development and validation that the entire project scope is included by the contractor.
Baseline Schedule Development….
The contractor will develop a preliminary or baseline schedule, (depending on the contract requirements…), and submit for your review. This needs to be forwarded to the schedule consultant immediately. Scheduling consultants will review the WBS & OBS for completeness and organization. Scheduling consultants will then verify calendars have been set up and assigned. They will review resource and cost loading, (If these required by the contract). They will verify schedule and calculation settings meet the contract requirements. They will review several schedule metrics and develop review comments. Scheduling consultants will verify required milestones are included and review the use of activity constraints. Scheduling consultants will review the proposed work sequence for reasonableness. They will review activity durations for reasonableness and note anomalies. Scheduling consultants will verify the schedule period of performance meets the contract requirements. They will then create reports and review comments for your use.
The baseline development process may require a couple of passes to get to an acceptable project baseline schedule. Once this is completed, the schedule consultant will set up schedule performance metrics to use for measuring the contractor’s progress against the baseline and subsequent accepted schedule updates.
This will provide you with a project baseline schedule, (and hopefully it is a CPM baseline schedule), based on the contractor’s plan to execute the project, of which you can have confidence in. You can use this schedule with a high degree of confidence, (If you have a CPM schedule).
Managing Updates, revisions, change orders and recovery schedules…
The planning and schedule professional will be able to review periodic schedule updates provided by the contractor and compare the progress against the baseline schedule or the most recently accepted update and identify delays in the contractors work and trends in work areas which could potentially delay work at a later date. They will do so by comparing the performance for the current period schedule update against the previously accepted schedule update and the baseline schedule and then analyzing changes the contractor makes to the schedule update. This is much easier if the contractor updates the schedule in a two-part process. First the contractor updates the progress only, with no revisions, and submits for review. This schedule will most likely include out-of-sequence work and total float values which are not acceptable. That’s fine, we only want to see what updating the progress did. Now the contractor can make schedule revisions as necessary to correct out-of-sequence work and model their plan to complete the remaining scheduled work. This is the schedule they will submit, and you will accept based on the review and comments of the schedule consultant.
If you need to make changes or additions to the contract, you will, of course, request pricing from the contractor and negotiate this additional work or change in scope. The contractor should also be including a request for additional contract time to incorporate this additional work or change in scope. Or they should be stating that no time extension is needed or requested. Prior to sending the contractor your request for change pricing, you should have your schedule consultant review the change and the potential impact to the currently accepted schedule. This involves the schedule consultant creating a “fragnet” or subnet of schedule activities to model the change order work and inserting it into the most recently accepted schedule to analyze the impact to this schedule. (This is the same as having an owner’s independent estimate completed prior to receiving the change order proposal from the contractor). The schedule consultant will then compare the contractors request for time to the estimate created and develop a contemporaneous Time Impact Analysis. This is the best way to manage potential time extension claims. Address them now and get them negotiated as part of the current change order. The schedule consultant will review the contractor’s “fragnet” for reasonableness and report on the impact to the project’s current critical path. This is what determines the change in contract duration, (if you have a CPM schedule).
If your contractor falls behind in their progress, based on the most current accepted schedule, you will most likely require them to develop and submit a recovery schedule. This schedule will need to be reviewed by your schedule consultant and also be accompanied by a narrative defining how the contractor plans to implement the recovery. Be it through additional work hours, an increase in resources, and prefabrication of assemblies…… The schedule consultant will look at the plan for recovery and compare proposed durations against historical project performance and production rates and verify the plan meets the required finish date. You will want to be involved in this review. If it cannot be determined that the contractor can actually implement the plan for recovery or the contractor’s plan is just not reasonable, there needs to be a discussion with the contractor. Your schedule consultant can provide this analysis and reporting to support your discussion.
Summary…
The owner absolutely needs a planning and schedule professional on their team to act as their advocate for the project schedule development and management. Not using professional planning and scheduling consultants is kind of like just accepting any price proposal the contractor provides with a change order request or any periodic invoice amount the contractor submits without any verification of validity by a competent team member. You would not follow a process like that for cost management. Unless you have a competent team member to validate all schedule actions, you’re not really managing your project schedule…..
I realize this is a simplistic view of the entire schedule oversight process. This is intended for use by small CMa’s and owners that do not have a planning and schedule professional on their team or completely understand the necessity of CPM schedule and professional schedule oversight.
There are times when the 
All projects run into change orders with time extensions and just plain old delay claims.
My early construction schedule experience was gained while working on the owner’s side of the project. The issues I was concerned with were simple. Is the contractor on schedule? Will the contractor finish by contract completion? Have I delayed the contractor, and if so by how much?
We’ve all worked on projects where a major event has occurred and the project team had to scramble to manage the crisis.
You have a 
You have created your project’s 