As I start working with new clients, I seek to understand how I can best help them?
What do they expect to gain from me? I know they want a project schedule developed and approved for use on the project. That’s only part of it…….
A large part of what we do, as a planning and scheduling professional consultant, is add to our clients’ knowledge base. We teach the importance of using schedule best practices, ways to better manage and use the schedule, and how to better understand what the schedule update is telling us.
I enjoy all of it.
I believe that we, as planning and scheduling professional consultants, should also improve the clients’ understanding of scheduling in general. We should improve the clients’ ability to deliver the project. We should help the client understand better how the project schedule integrates with their cost and resource management.
What has your experience been?
Do most of your clients already integrate their project schedules with their resource and cost control practice? Do they only need your expertise with the software and schedule techniques?
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 develop the schedule based completely on best case scenarios? 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 development and management?
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?
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.
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!
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.
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?”
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.
Many contractors I’ve worked with in my role as a planning and schedule professional consultant, had been developing their schedules in-house using their Project Managers, (PM’s) or Superintendents. Who better knows the project requirements! They had been using the basic functions of a simple schedule program and had been setting “milestone dates” for the completion of major pieces of the work. They used some logic, but not complete logic. They inadvertently set constrained dates for most of the activities. They let the program use the default calendar, whatever that was. They did not do any coding. They did not have a schedule driven by the durations and relationships of the work. They also did not have a schedule management process.
Basically, they had a list of tasks and milestone goals and they managed their work to that plan. They made adjustments to the dates and progress as they went along, and believed they were managing the schedule and the project. If it isn’t broke don’t fix it, right?
This is definitely not schedule management!
Why not, at the very least, consider what stepping up to CPM scheduling could do for your project control and management?
If your project team is encouraged to learn more about Critical path Method, (CPM) scheduling, it will only help them see ways they can better manage their work. My most recent client, (like most of my clients), considered going through the SOW to verify all work was in the schedule to be very familiar. But they enjoyed the intensive exercise of building all the activities to support the execution of each piece of the project and then adding the relationships to “plan” how the work will be sequenced. They always remark that it makes them look at the project differently. They like how developing the complete logicfor the schedule forces them and other project team members to really think about how the coordination of the various trades and deliveries and sequential logic for the submission/deliver/construct sequences impacted other areas they had not considered. They also enjoy having more direct control over their execution plan and having the ability to easily see when work is slipping, and which corrective actions will actually help maintain the project completion date.
Having the control over their planning and scheduling of the project has given these PM’s and Superintendents and their project teams much greater control over the project execution and their ability to proactively manage their work. It’s much better to proactively manage potential issues than spend your time putting out the fires that aren’t apparent until that specific trade is at a log jam in the work flow.
These PM’s and Superintendents don’t have the time to learn a new skill set specific to planning and scheduling. They already understand how logic works and how the activity relationships affect the sequencing of the work. What they don’t have is the specialized training and experience to understand how the calendars, resource assignments, and schedule calculation options work behind the scenes to deliver the schedule model they need. That is why they need the assistance of a planning and schedule professional to work with them as a schedule consultant to develop and manage the schedule. A good schedule consultant will work with your project team to model the project and set the calendars, resources and schedule calculations settings specific to your project. This relieves your project team of the burden of trying to make a software program they are not experts with work to fit their contract requirements and provides you with an as-needed expert resource for this specific skill set.
Having the true CPM schedule will allow your project team to identify slippage or trends in a particular trade or in a specific area and model what corrective action is best for the mitigation of this event. No guess work, no just tell them to “get back on schedule”. Your project team can actually analyze which options will produce the most efficient use of resources and obtain the required result. This is an important part of the Schedule Management process.
It does however, require a good bit of up front work during the CPM schedule development phase, but this work actually helps to identify missing scope and helps with the initial coordination of your work forces. Owners are also held accountable with a CPM schedule. The schedule includes activities for all work or deliverables for which the owner is responsible. This allows them to better plan their involvement and allows you to better coordinate this work. A well-maintained CPM schedule is also critical for managing change orders and delays to work. Once both parties agree on how the additional work or delay should be inserted into the most current updated and accepted schedule, there isn’t much to negotiate. The schedule either supports the impact claim or it does not.
The bottom line is that there is no really good reason not to plan and schedule your work with a CPM schedule. It aids in the planning, scope validation, execution management and change order/delay management. If the schedule is also cost loaded, it makes invoicing easier as well. There is a reason almost all large general contractors and large projects require the use of CPM schedules. They work.
I recommend any general contractor not currently using CPM planning and scheduling for their projects, at least, talk to a planning and schedule professional. It can’t hurt and you might be surprised at how much using a CPM schedule approach and having a schedule management process will help your projects succeed.
As I start working with new clients, I seek to understand how I can best help them?
All projects run into change orders with time extensions and just plain old delay claims.
You have created your project’s 
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.
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 
