Construction and Schedule Management Services
Professional CPM Schedule Services
Construction-Specific Project Scheduling
As construction scheduling professionals, we’ve all developed project baseline schedules. We’ve also worked with our subcontractors to get their input for the schedule, often with less than stellar results…..
This seems to a common problem. Continue reading “Construction Scheduling. How do we Incorporate the Subcontractor’s Schedule in our Baseline Schedule Development Process?”
As construction scheduling professionals, we’ve all worked on smaller construction projects which have fallen behind schedule almost immediately after NTP.
This seems to be a common problem for smaller construction projects.
It seems that owners are expecting contract durations based on best case production scenarios. Who can blame them? They know that similar projects have been completed within these durations.
If this is so, why do many contractors fall behind schedule almost immediately after NTP? Continue reading “Construction Scheduling. Why do some Construction Projects seem to fall Behind Schedule Immediately after NTP?”
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:
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?
I’m interested in hearing your stories!
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.
Paul Epperson CCM, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP
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.
However, when in doubt, seek out the advice of a professional planner and scheduler.
Please visit https://conschmanservices.com to learn more about basic schedule concepts.
Please visit my LinkedIn account to learn more about me.
Paul Epperson CCM, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP
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.
However, when in doubt, seek out the advice of a professional planner and scheduler.
Please visit https://conschmanservices.com to learn more about basic schedule concepts.
Please visit my LinkedIn account to learn more about me.
Paul Epperson CCM, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP
You are working with a construction scheduling consultant and they use terms you’ve heard before, but you’re not 100% sure you really understand what they mean. More importantly, you’re not sure how they affect the schedule.
Do not be ashamed, why should you have any in depth knowledge of yet another specialized function of the project management process? That’s why professional planning and scheduling consultants exist!
What is the “Data Date” and why do I care?
The data date is simply the “as-of” date used for progressing the periodic schedule update.
Typically, the data date is the end of the month, but I’ve seen it be the 15th and the 25th. Each schedule specification is different based on the owner’s requirements for reporting. Note: MS Project uses the term “Status Date”.
This is the date that all progress should be updated for progress up to. Everything after the data date is the pan to execute the remaining project activities. There should never be work in progress or incomplete with dates prior to the data date. I’ve seen this all too often with schedules run in MS Project because the person doing the schedule update does not understand this concept and how to adjust the settings to force incomplete work to move to the status date. It’s a simple fix for an experienced scheduler. Always look at your schedules and know the data date and verify all work prior to the data date is complete and all work after the data date shows no progress. Think of the data date as the starting off point for the rest of your project…. This is a necessary practice for construction scheduling.
What is “OOS” and why do I care?
OOS or Out-of-Sequence is simply a way of saying that work actually completed did not progress as scheduled.
Typically, this involves an activity that was scheduled to start immediately after the finish of it’s “predecessor” having actually started prior to it’s “predecessor” finishing. Other reasons may be work progressing much differently than scheduled or work being suspended for whatever reason.
Why do you care? You care because this logic is still driving any “successor” activities and is not correct based on how you actually completed the work. It affects all downstream work logically tied to the finish of the OOS work and does not model the remaining work correctly.
This can affect change order fragnet insertions, not produce correct total float values, and does not provide you with an accurate as-built schedule. Best practice is to correct the logic for OOS work immediately after updating the progress each period update. Most schedule consultants do this, but many do not and most PM’s and Superintendents do not. Many owners are not aware of the need to correct OOS relationships and do not require or enforce this practice. This is unfortunate. There are times y0u can leave some OOS relationships in place, but absolutely OOS work on the longest path or near critical path should be correct. Most construction scheduling consultants correct OOS relationships each schedule update.
What are “Lags” and why do I care?
Lags are like invisible activities added to the schedule; which typically separate start dates of successor activities by a set amount.
Depending on which calendars are assigned and the relationship selected, a current activity’s successor activity will start immediately after the finish of the current activity, if the relationship is a Finish-to-Start, FS relationship. Adding a lag of 3 to this relationship would force the start of the successor to wait 3 work periods until starting. Sometimes this is used for concrete curing time…… I prefer to use an activity for this so the time is transparent.
But typically, lags are used with Start-to –Start, SS relationships to allow work to be schedule concurrently. The lag forces the successor activity to wait set number of work periods after the start of the predecessor activity starts before starting. This models a plan to start one piece of work and then start successive work a set duration later. Such as finishing gypsum board wall sheathing before the entire area covered by the activity to hang the gypsum wallboard has completed. This is fine if this represents your plan to execute this work. Unfortunately, this is also how most PM’s and Superintendents choose to get the scheduled finish date back on time after the periodic update shows the project is behind schedule. This is still fine if the work can actually be executed this way, and it is the actual plan to “recover” lost time. It is just so darn easy to do, that many times it is used to appease the owner only and no plan is used to actually accomplish the work concurrently. This happens when the schedule is only part of the invoice process, and not an integral part of the project management process.
Don’t be afraid of lags, but the use of lags should be judicious and justifiable. There are many ways to model the logic to reduce the number of lags used. Typically, breaking the work into smaller pieces will allow the work to be scheduled without the use of lags.
Negative lags are bad idea and should be avoided or disallowed. There are many ways to make the logic work without the use of negative lags. Most schedule consultants stay away from negative lags.
MS Project shows lags and relationship types other than Finish-to-Start, FS in the predecessor and successor columns. Primavera P6 does not. Although it is not always easy to understand the effect a lag is having on the schedule, you should always be aware of their usage and understand the effect they have on the project schedule.
When in doubt, seek out the advice of a professional planner and scheduler.
Please visit https://conschmanservices.com to learn more about basic schedule concepts.
Please visit my LinkedIn account to learn more about me.
Paul Epperson CCM, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP
You have an approved baseline project schedule, and now you are ready to receive the first periodic schedule progress update from your contractor. That is great, progress is good. You are sharing a valid tool with your contractor to proactively managing the project. But, you still need to monitor the actual work progress and ensure the contractor is realistically updating the progress and taking corrective action as necessary to maintain the project’s scheduled plan to execute the project. How do CPM consultants approach this task? Continue reading “CPM Consultants. How does the CPM Schedule Progress Update Process Work for the Project Owner? What should the Owner be Concerned with?”
How does a project owner, working in an organization without an in-house planning and schedule professional, know what to look for in a planning and schedule consultant? You are going to trust this person to monitor and report on the contractor’s schedule development and updates and revisions for your project. How do you know which schedule consultant from the multitude of schedule consultants to choose?
Cost should definitely not be the deciding factor.
Cost is not indicative of the quality of service you will receive.
Should you go to a large multi-disciplined construction management (CM) firm or an independent expert (schedule consultants) in the field of scheduling?
If you have other work you need assistance with and the CM firm has the expertise to provide it, then it makes sense to use the CM firm, if you don’t mind the markup on the services. If all you need is assistance with the project’s schedule management, then it may be a better idea to go with the consultant.
There are many consultants providing schedule oversight and management services. Most are very good and it is really a matter of how comfortable you are with the individual. However, there are schedule consultants that specialize in software operation, but not so much in understanding construction sequencing and methodologies. It’s hard to find an old project or construction manager that became a scheduler. That would be the best, provided they learned all the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering International (AACEi) and other industry best practices. Unfortunately, many of the old project and construction managers knew how to manage the project but didn’t understand how the schedule was developed or how to recognize the application of the AACEi and industry best practices in their schedules. If you can find a Construction Management Association of America (CMAA) Certified Construction Manager (CCM) or Project Management Institute (PMI) certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with an Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering International (AACEi) Planning and Schedule Professional (PSP) certification or PMI-SP certification, you have found someone with proven project management and schedule development skills. This would be a great choice.
A few of the things you should consider when deciding which schedule consultants to use are:
Once you have decided on which consultant to go with, you will need to provide them with some contract information and will also want to be involved with the schedule review and analyzation process. This will help you understand what construction schedule consultants are looking at and why. Schedule consultants will analyze the software calculation settings, types of activities used, calendars, resource loading, use of lags, total float values and the reasons for anomalies, and many more detailed items that work behind the scenes in a critical path method (CPM) schedule. You really need to stay involved in order to understand what is being found and the impact it has on the schedule. Professional planning and schedule consultants will produce a report that lists any problems in the schedule construction or settings or approach that in their professional opinion is a concern which should be reviewed with the contractor. The schedule consultant does not want to cut corners or create strained relationships that will undermine the project team’s effectiveness. Listen to what they recommend. Schedule consultants only want to provide you with their analysis of the schedule, based on AACEi and industry best practice and your contract requirements.
Please visit https://conschmanservices.com to learn more about basic schedule concepts.
Please visit my LinkedIn account to learn more about me.
Please visit my “The Blue Book” ProView.
Paul Epperson CCM, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP
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.
Please visit https://conschmanservices.com to learn more about basic schedule concepts.
Please visit my LinkedIn account to learn more about me.
Paul Epperson CCM, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP
It is surprising that many project owners don’t obtain any assistance with managing the general contractors’ schedule. They have PM’s on staff who look at the Gantt Charts and perhaps ask about milestone completion dates or basic duration or logic details. Universities, financial and medical groups usually employ a Construction Manager as Agent (CMa) to help with very large projects; other times they choose CM at Risk as the project delivery vehicle. Only they don’t have anyone as their schedule advocate after the project goes to construction. Or if they have medium and small projects, they don’t employ any CM assistance with at all.
The Gantt Chart is not much value to the owner if they don’t know how the schedule settings and calendars and logic are set up. Most PM’s on the owner’s team don’t have the background, training or experience to look at the schedule and check these. They really need someone to help them review the schedule development and update process to work as their advocate. That someone is a Professional Planning and Scheduling Consultant.
Without having the ability to open the schedule and analyze the settings and data, the owner has no way of validating the schedule as presented. While contractors don’t intentionally produce schedules that do not meet the contract requirements, it happens all too often. The only way to know is to have the training, experience and ability to analyze the schedule file.
The owner really needs to know what the schedule calculations are set for. Is it retained logic or progress override? How is the “critical” path determined? By longest path or a total float value? Are calendars established, and if so are they assigned to activities? What type of percent complete is selected? What type of activities are in use? Are there lags in use? All of these settings and selections impact how the schedule calculates. The owner should have specified requirements for these, and other items. The owner also needs to be able to check these.
The contract typically requires the use of a minimal set of activity codes. If it does not, the contractor should include at least a few activity codes for their own use. There is no reason the owner can’t use these activity codes to help group, filter and sort the schedule activities for their own use in analyzing the schedule for resource usage, area congestion, and activities specifically coded to the owner for responsibility. The owner can always request this from the contractor, but why shouldn’t the owner be capable of performing these tasks? Even if it is through the use of a professional scheduling consultant. That way they know exactly what the filter, layout, and grouping is set for.
And finally, why can’t the owner use the most recent update to run “what if” scenarios? Perhaps, in addition to creating a preliminary cost estimate for a potential change order, the owner creates a draft fragnet and adds it to the schedule to see what the potential time impact could be? This would certainly help with documenting and supporting the business decision to issue a request for proposal for a change order. How many times has an owner issued a request for proposal only to determine the price or schedule impact is too great after the contractor develops their proposal with time and cost included? This just wastes the contractor’s resources, often results in the contractor holding the start of the work being changed to prevent rework, and allows the owner more control over the project’s change management.
This is a simplified version of the topic of owners using a scheduling consultant or CMa services for schedule oversight and intended only to create thought and discussion of the issues surrounding this topic. Many owners aren’t aware of the benefits which having the ability to really analyze the schedule will provide. They have gotten by with looking at Gantt Charts so far, why should they change now?
Please visit https://conschmanservices.com to learn more about basic schedule concepts.
Please visit my LinkedIn account to learn more about me.
Please visit my “The Blue Book” ProView.
Paul Epperson CCM, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP