Category: Schedule Review Process

In my previous posts, I described some basic schedule quality validation suggestions.

This post will cover progress updates, schedule revisions and basics for recovery schedules.

When the contractor updates the schedule each reporting period, they record the actual dates for the start and finish of activities. We all know that. What about the progress for activities underway? Are they using duration percent complete to report progress? Or are they using physical percent complete? Or schedule percent complete? Or another method? There are several choices….

The project specifications often include requirements for the type of percent complete. When they do not, the easy way is to use duration percent complete, which is typically the default setting anyway. This is fine if you’re only concerned with duration.

What about work in place percent complete or cost percent complete? I personally like to track all three. On resource driven projects, I prefer to track the resource usage against the duration percent complete and work in place progress. But that is another post….

You should verify the percent complete type used in the schedule you are using. This can be done by simply showing the percent complete type column in the Gantt Chart layout.

This is important because it defines how you will compare progress performance and identify trends and foresee problems. This is also a topic for a future post.

Require the contractor to provide validation of the percent complete type setting used and ensure it meets your project schedule specifications.

That said, the update process is just that, the entry of actual dates, adjustment of remaining durations or schedule finish dates to model the plan going forward and the assignment of progress for work in place and cost of work in place.

There is a process called a bifurcated or two step progress update. This is a valuable method which is not used as much as it should be.

When the contractor updates the actual progress, the schedule shows the actual performance and completion date with total float value based on only the period performance. This is step one. I personally keep this update for record. The next step in the update process is the minor schedule revision to correct the out-of-sequence work. This could also be done during the update process, but I prefer to do this after…. This provides the “as-built” history of the project’s progress to-date and allows any revisions to model the plan going forward to be made based on valid data.

If/when the contractor needs to change the sequence of work or reduce durations to allow the remaining plan to achieve the desired finish date, a record of these changes with the reason for the revision(s) of should be provided to the owner or their agent so all parties understand and agree with what was changed and why. Simple transparency and relationship preservation.

This is the end product, (less the list of revisions with explanation) typically submitted by the contractor as the updated progress schedule.

I prefer the two step or bifurcated process and when possible I like to get the update only schedule and then get the revised schedule. It’s possible to “back into” this process but that is not the same as working as a team to manage the schedule process…. Having both pieces of the update allows the owner, and the contractor to easily see schedule slippages and then see the measures taken to recover time. Many schedule specifications require the contractor to propose the corrective revisions for approval, but that rarely happens. The owner wants the update asap and the contractor wants the invoice processed asap…. However, it is a good practice for the project team to review the update and revisions together. Owners understand the contractor will encounter problems and schedule slippage and just needs to confirm that the contractor is taking care of business…… The tricky part is the owner not taking over the schedule by directing revisions or denying revisions unless there is a justifiable reason to do so…. Again transparency and communications are key.

From time to time, the contractor may change the plan for completing the remaining project work and a true recovery schedule is called for. This could be driven by changes in their supply line, material delivery delays, changes to the contract….. This is a big step and the process for reviewing this revised schedule is the same as that used to review the baseline schedule. After all, this will become the new baseline schedule!

I will only touch on recovery schedules in this post. Recovery schedule are typically described and required in the project schedule specifications and are required by the owner when the schedule performance trips a metric for poor schedule performance.

The development of a real recovery schedule is a specialty unto itself and the contractor has many cost/benefit decisions to weigh before they can start to make any presentations to the owner. This is a subject for a future post…..

As you can see, there is a lot to a project schedule update. And as always, the schedule settings, logic, constraints all need to be verified as part of the schedule update review. It is important to maintain a high schedule quality level throughout the project cycle.

I know many of you already know this information and can offer additional guidance and support, for all of us. 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

In my previous post, I provided some basic schedule quality validation methods for use by project management professionals without access to, or proficiency with Primavera P6.

Continuing this area of discussion, this post will cover relationship lags, leads, and relationship types. This is a sore subject and there are typically many problems found in this area.

Again, when someone hands you the schedule update Gantt Chart, how do you know that the plan is valid? How can you do a quick validation of the schedule for basic requirements?

As I said before, a pdf of the schedule is nice for meetings, but someone from the owner’s and the contractor’s project teams needs to verify the schedule quality. The contractor usually has an in-house scheduler, so this is part of their processes during the development, update, and revision processes. What about contractors using a third-party planning and schedule professional? How do you validate our work? What about the owner and their construction management agency? How do they validate the schedule as presented by the contractor?

The owner and CMa will require the schedule in native format. That will allow their planning and schedule professionals to use the schedule program and verify schedule settings and structure. This is a must. I still see owners who simply look at the pdf and hope the schedule slippage will stop, one day….

Simply reviewing the schedule log generated by Primavera P6 will let you see the open relationships, out-of-sequence relationships, schedule settings, constraints, and other information.

You will not, however,  be able to find the relationship types and lags/leads used. One word of note here, I personally, do not use leads or negative lags. This is my preference. That said, you need to know how the logic is structured to know why it flows across the Gantt Chart layout the way it does. Just because the dates make sense does not mean that the logic is valid.

You can require the contractor provide you with a logic report from Primavera P6. This can be run sorted on activity ID. You can also have the predecessor and successor columns shown. The recent version of P6 will also show SS or FF relationship information, (with lag durations) much like MS Project does. Older versions of P6 do show relationships or lags/leads in the predecessor and successor columns. The logic report does. It just requires you to use the report as a legend while looking through the schedule layout to verify predecessors, successors and lags/leads used. This is very tedious, but this is a good practice. There are third party software programs that will produce reports only showing the activities with relationships other than FS. You can also produce this report in P6. But you must know how to do so…

The use of SS or FF relationships and limits for their us is a bit of a hot topic among planning and schedule professionals. Many organizations and government agencies include requirements in their schedule specifications limiting the use to a percentage of the total relationships. Many specifications do not speak to the use of relationships at all. I personally severely limit their use during development and only grudgingly use them when I do.

I avoid lags, but I do use them to push submittal development activities out to stagger the process. I do not use lags for concrete curing or other non-work activities which drive successor activity starts. These should be activities and transparent to all users of the schedule.

When reviewing the schedule for the use of SS, FF relationships and lags, simply make note of the usage and decide for yourself if the logic could be better modeled by breaking the activities into smaller areas or processes to allow the use of FS relationships. This is always the best approach. Review the use of lags the same way. If the activities can be broken down into more detail to allow the use of FS relationships for the work process, that is your best choice.

You can’t review or validate any of the information above if you don’t have the information in a format that allows you to analyze it. Require the P6 logic report or use third party software or learn how to find and analyze this information using P6 yourself. It is basic schedule mechanics, but the logic, relationships and activity durations are the backbone of the schedule. If the schedule isn’t developed following the project schedule specifications and schedule best practices, it is very doubtful the schedule will be a valid tool for the planning or control of the project performance and management.

These are just a couple of additional items that form the basics…. There are other items worthy of validating and I will speak to these in future posts.

I know many of you already know this information and can offer additional guidance and support, for all of us. 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

When someone hands you the schedule update Gantt Chart pdf, how do you know that the plan is valid? How can you do a quick validation of the schedule for basic requirements?

First and foremost, a pdf of the schedule is nice for meetings, but someone from the owner’s and the contractor’s project teams needs to verify the schedule quality & validity. The contractor usually has an in-house scheduler, so this is part of their work during the development, update, and revision processes. What about contractors using a third-party planning and schedule professional? How do you validate our work? What about the owner and their construction management agency? How do they validate the schedule as presented by the contractor?

The owner and CMa will require the schedule in native format. That will allow their planning and schedule professionals to use the schedule program and verify schedule settings and structure. This is a must. I still see owners who simply look at the pdf and hope the schedule slippage will stop, one day….

Simply reviewing the schedule log generated by Primavera P6 will let you see the open relationships, out-of-sequence relationships, schedule settings, constraints, and other information. This report includes the most basic information you need.  You should receive and review this report!

If you only have one activity missing a predecessor and one missing a successor, you are OK. This doesn’t mean all the logic in the schedule is correct, that is a very subjective review. It just means you don’t have any open ends reported. You can still have activities with only start-to-start successor relationships, which is basically the same as having no successor relationship. But, you need third party software or the ability to use the program filter, sort and report features to ferret these out.

The out-of-sequence activities listed on this report simply tell you that the successor to these activities most likely started prior to the finish of the activity listed. There are other reasons the activity may be listed, but this is the most likely reason. Why does this matter? Because the logic continues to drive successor dates and correcting the logic ties to model the as-built progress allows the remaining work to model correctly. It also provides you with an as-built schedule, one day….. Require the contractor make corrections to remove all out-of-sequence activities from the schedule log. It’s not hard for them to do.

The schedule settings are typically listed in the schedule specifications. You can use the schedule log to verify several of these. Retained logic or progress override, total float computation, longest path definition, and predecessor calendar use are just a few of the settings which should be reviewed and verified.

The schedule log will also list activities with constraints applied. What it will not do is tell you if the project has a must finish by date applied at the project level. It will also not tell you what type of constraints, (or their dates) are applied to the activities. Again, you must use third party software programs that will report the constraints or you must know how to use the filters, sorting, and reporting functions of the program to see this information.

This schedule log is a very important tool and you should require it with each schedule submission.

What about calendars? How do you verify calendars are assigned? How do you verify the calendars assigned to activities use the correct work days, work hours, holidays? Again, third party software or manually going through the calendars for the project. You can require a pdf layout with the calendar column showing. This will at least let you verify there are calendars other than the default calendar in use.

These are just the basics…. There are other items worthy of validating and I will speak to these in future posts.

I know many of you already know this information and can offer additional guidance and support, for all of us. 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