Bonus Technical Article /

Top Ten Successful Approaches to On-Time Completion

by Glen R. Palmer, CFCC PSP FAACE and
Christopher W. Carson, CEP DRMP PSP FAACE

Abstract

Many projects today fail when it comes to completing on the planned final completion date. This failure is generally because of several issues related to the quality of the analysis of delays, owner commitments, and contractor performance problems.  A deep-dive technical analysis, supported by lessons-learned and deep experience in problem resolution and mitigation of delays, greatly improves the opportunities for achieving on-time completion.  Unfortunately, this deep dive technical analysis is often not performed, whether it is because of inexperience, lack of competence, limited time for analysis, or weak analysis.  The use of a system to provide completion prediction and analysis streamlines the effort and ensures that these ten approaches are consistently followed for a successful completion.  In this article, the authors continue their series of “Top Ten” issues and will give you their top ten approaches for enhancing a project’s chances of meeting this planned date. The authors of this article are widely experienced in planning and scheduling complex projects, dispute resolution analyses, project controls, project management and have testified as experts in forensic and project schedule analysis. This article was first presented at the 2020 AACE International Conference and Expo as CSC.3429.

Introduction

In the last decade, many projects have failed when it comes to finishing on the planned final completion date. There are several project management approaches that greatly improve the chances of on-time completion and reduce the risks of performance issues.  In keeping with the authors’ top-ranked series of papers and presentations on the ten best or worst approaches to various aspects of project controls; this article will provide the authors’ top ten favorite and most effective approaches for enhancing a project’s chances of meeting its planned completion date.  These approaches are the aggregation of two lifetimes of successful projects, support a collaborative approach to project controls which is promoted by the authors, and have worked well on past projects. 

The authors of this article are widely experienced in planning and scheduling complex projects, dispute resolution analyses, project controls, project management and have testified as experts. With a combined experience of more than 75 years in the engineering and construction industries. They have seen the execution of many successful and many unsuccessful projects. This combined experience has shown both authors that many unsuccessful project management teams fail as a result of not taking one or more of these important approaches to achieve the project completion date. 

It is important to understand that these steps will only help a project succeed when that project has both experienced and committed project personnel, preparing and analyzing the project’s data. There are no adequate substitutes for project experience and a committed project team.

These ten approaches will be discussed in ascending order of importance, but the authors believe that all ten approaches are very important to the success of any complex project.

APPROACH NO. 10 – “Manage the Project with an Approved Project Schedule”

A well-developed project schedule, designed to achieve approval, requires a number of steps in order to result in a schedule to which all of the stakeholders agree and are willing to support its use as a management tool. The following important points will be discussed to support the development of an approved schedule.

Important Discussion Points

  1. Scheduling Specification
  2. Detailed Planning Session
  3. Constructability Review
  4. Weekly Scheduling Meeting
  5. Accountability
  6. Schedule Updating
  7. Float

Detailed Discussion Points

Scheduling Specification – Many of the complex projects executed today are subcontracted on a discipline basis. This means that the integrated project schedule will be developed and updated by multiple schedulers, most of whom may use a different approach to creation of a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), activity detail, constraints, activity relationship requirements, and so on. The only way to ensure that the input is done consistently is, in the very beginning, to define the method for baseline schedule development and periodic updating. Projects that require multiple inputs without a scheduling specification struggle to have this required consistency and often must pay a premium by not spelling out these requirements prior to the bidding process.  The owner can only require from the contractor those conditions that are specified in the contract, so the scheduling specification is vitally important.

Detailed Planning Session – Every complex project should be planned in a joint multi-day session which includes all the stakeholders, including the owner. This is the only way to get a consensus on the project plan. This process is best accomplished by using an experienced facilitator who is neutral, can moderate the discussion, and keep the process moving. It is also best to hold this session in a neutral location to avoid interruptions from a busy office environment. These sessions are best accomplished by including the experienced personnel who will actually execute the project, especially the construction personnel (if the project includes construction), because they have the knowledge from previous projects to understand what it takes to accomplish the work needed to support the schedule requirements. Fixed price contracts and subcontracts can complicate these planning sessions due to the inability to dictate the means and methods associated with fixed price work, but these sessions still need to be held. This may require an individual meeting with those contractors prior to the session that includes all stakeholders, but it is necessary in order to get a plan for the project on which everyone agrees and will support.

Constructability Review – Project schedules that include construction must be driven by construction. The planned construction sequence will determine how engineering and procurement need to be sequenced. The only way to ensure this happens is to have construction personnel involved in the detailed planning session and have periodic engineering and construction reviews of the 3D model (if applicable), and/or the drawings and specifications. Construction also must be part of all-important purchase order approvals. The industry has long recognized that construction involvement during the engineering process improves engineering documents.  Constructability reviews are also shown to reduce the likelihood of resource-draining litigation.

Weekly Scheduling Meeting – Once a schedule has been approved and becomes a project management tool, there needs to be a weekly scheduling meeting, including all parties currently performing project work. The only way to ensure the project team will use and perform to the schedule is to make the schedule the focus/agenda of a weekly meeting. The schedule needs to be issued as a look ahead schedule, showing only 2-4 weeks in the future, depending on the size of the project. It is very important to limit the number of pages for these schedules so that it is easy for the team to review and update for the meeting. This is where problems are discussed, and action items are developed, ensuring the schedule can be supported. 

Accountability – The project must develop an atmosphere where all team members are held accountable to support the plan and schedule that they helped develop for the project completion date to be achieved. In most cases this can be accomplished using a non-adversarial approach, but there may be instances where team members will need to be replaced throughout the project to achieve the schedule requirements.  

Schedule Updating – Updating a project schedule must be completed accurately and quickly. The main purpose of a schedule is to accurately forecast a project’s status with respect to important milestones. An updated schedule needs to provide management a timely and accurate projection of the schedule status to allow them to have the necessary information to manage effectively. When a schedule update takes too long to issue, it is essentially only tracking history which may not be actionable. Requiring the schedule to do too much, such as detailed cost loading, can impede the ability to get the schedule updated, reviewed and issued on a timely basis.

Float – Recent history and industry studies indicate that a very small percentage of complex projects finish on the planned completion date. Too many two to three-year complex projects finish on time without any float or time contingency available.  It is almost impossible to predict every possible schedule risk that can derail a project. Having float and/or time contingency should be no different than having dollar contingency on a fixed price estimate, but it is. Most owners want their project completed by a certain date to create revenue. Some projects produce hundreds of thousands of dollars per day in revenue and this makes a two-month delay in production a very painful issue. Some owners need to complete by a certain date in order to beat their competition and survive. There is no easy answer to this issue but in many cases, it requires a contractor to build an effectively risk-adjusted schedule by an expensive acceleration program in order to achieve the schedule completion date.

Important Advice

If the team wants to make a completion date, it is important to develop a schedule with a good plan, ensure the entire team has bought into it, approve the plan and schedule, and then go make it happen every day. If the schedule is simply thrown over the fence to the stakeholders and then not used as a management tool, THE PROJECT WILL FAIL.

APPROACH NO. 9 – “Update the As-Planned and As-Built Separately, No Less than Monthly”

Each schedule update consists of two parts, the as-built portion and the as-planned portion, and accurate data is important for both.  The as-built data, to the left of the update data date, documents the TRUE performance and progress or lack of progress.  The as-planned data, to the right of the update data date, shows the INTENDED plan, often a mitigation plan, designed to recover the lack of progress from the as-built performance.  Schedules are most commonly updated monthly, but contractors may fail to submit each monthly update, and this can create numerous problems.

Important Discussion Points

  1. Update and validate the as-built data separately
  2. Update and review the as-planned predictions separately
  3. Ensure that the schedules are updated no less than monthly

Detailed Discussion Points

The important performance part of the as-built update portion of the monthly schedule update is the accuracy of the actual dates and the assignment of the remaining duration for activities that have started but are not completed.  These are actual indicators of performance, similar to the actual invoices for time and material work that is completed.  The as-built side of the schedule update is not subject to change except for accuracy mistakes, so it should be validated to ensure the dates are correct.  

Whatever performance was achieved will be documented in the as-built side of the schedule, so this is very useful in discovering if the field team achieved the planned performance.  The as-built data can be reviewed either as a stand-alone update, or can be developed in a temporary, created update, that is often called the end-of-period (EOP) update to indicate that it is the end of the actual performance period just before the contractor makes logic and other changes to the as-built schedule.  If the contractor updates the as-built data, and it predicts completing on time, it is likely that there will be no logic changes made and the schedule will be submitted with only the completed changes in the as-built data.  However, when performance has slipped, the contractor will commonly “adjust” the schedule to attempt to mitigate the lack of performance.

The as-planned side of the schedule update is a PLAN that has not yet happened..  When the contractor makes logic, or more accurately, non-progress, changes (including changes to calendars, future durations, relationships, lags, and constraints) those create a model of actions that they plan to undertake but have not started.  There is no guarantee that that revised model will be followed, that it is reasonable, or that they will be able to achieve the planned mitigation that is modeled.  

In Figure 1, the top bar chart is the EOP update, the as-built progress-only side of the update.  This schedule shows clearly that the critical path driver was the installation of Pier Cap #3, perhaps caused by lack of performance (analysis would need to be made to determine if so and the cause of any lack of performance).  This resulted in an actual performance delay in July.

In the bottom bar chart of Figure 1, for the full Update #3, that same activity’s original duration was reduced in the as-planned portion, so it showed less impact on the critical path.  This removed the delay in July and showed the update as if it was still on target.  If an owner-caused delay occurred in August, it would have been measured from the zero critical path on-time schedule instead of having 5 days of float due to the pier cap delay.  Therefore it is vital to separate the progress from the mitigation efforts in the as-planned portion.

Figure 1 – End of Period vs. Full Update Schedules (Mark Nagata and Chris Carson)

Many projects complete late due to a failure to work the plan as shown in the baseline and each subsequent update, and this split analysis approach is an important method to identify this failure and take corrective actions.  In addition, the reason for delays that are mitigated by the contractor’s logic changes are often concealed so it appears that the wrong party is responsible for delays from update to update.  However, the real delays exist in the as-built schedule, while the concealment can be disguised by the as-planned mitigation effort.  This is not to say that there is necessarily any intent to conceal the performance failure, more often than not, it is just weak scheduling practices.

In addition, often contractors fail to provide regular monthly updates and there are numerous reasons, from the loss of their scheduler, leaving no one who can use the software, to performance issues that they believe will be corrected by the next update, so they simply do not provide the poor performance update.  However, going without updates generally creates larger problems as the project continues to slip, and the slip is too often performed without analysis into the cause.  

Analysis is easier and more accurate when the update periods or “windows”  are narrow, so monthly is a good update frequency for most projects, and it tends to align with invoices thus providing some correlation between cost and progress.  The longer the project runs without updates, the more problems exist that are concealed by not performing the monthly analysis, demonstrated by many claims showing long periods of no updates with large amounts of delay during those periods.  This makes for a difficult analysis to determine what happened and who was responsible, and removes the ability for the owner to participate in any mitigation effort if it should prove to be required by owner-caused delays.

Important Advice

Always review the performance side of the update, the as-built data, separately to monitor failures to meet the plan (“work the plan”), identify causes of performance delays, review the as-planned side of the update to determine the reasonableness of the plan and identify any mitigation plans that may or may not be achieved.  Also ensure there are frequent updates, no less than monthly, and if the contractor fails to provide these, perform an update even if temporary, to analyze the performance, assign responsibility for any delays, and engage the owner in mitigation if there are owner-caused delays.

APPROACH NO. 8 – “Manage Resources by Using Off-site Prefabrication (Modularization) on Large Projects”

The authors have both seen instances where pre-fabrication or modularization have hugely benefited the project by accomplishing parallel work without adding to site resource requirements. This should be planned early in the project’s life cycle. This approach can accelerate the burn rate of project manhours without adding workers to the site.

Important Discussion Points

  1. Planned Resources
  2. Specialized Skills/Controlled Environment
  3. Acceleration
  4. Cost Benefit Analysis
  5. Engineering Sequence

Detailed Discussion Points

Planned Resources – Reducing the planned resources by reducing the craft manhours, that would normally be required to be expended on a construction project, can be very beneficial to on-site performance. Any time the number of workers on a project is lowered without a loss of work being accomplished, the potential for trade stacking becomes less and this can have a tremendously positive impact on project performance.

Specialized Skill/Controlled Environment – Many construction projects require specialized skills, such as alloy welding. Having some of this work performed in a vendor’s shop can reduce the number of these qualified welders required on the job site, as well as the number of welds that must be tested on site. This can cause the number of weld inspectors required on site to also be reduced, thus saving on staffing costs. In many cases, the welding may be performed in a more controlled environment with better welders because the vendors have weeded out less capable workers, producing a higher quality product. 

Acceleration – Taking worker hours out of the field and putting them in a vendor’s shop and performing that work in parallel with other work can have a hugely positive acceleration impact on the project. An example is discussed under the pipe rack module in Figure 2.

Cost Benefit Analysis – It is always important to do a cost-benefit analysis when considering this step to ensure that the schedule advancement benefit is worth any additional associated costs. However, avoid assuming that this possible acceleration benefit is going to cost more, since, on subcontracted projects, this can be just another way of subcontracting and can even be less expensive. 

Engineering Sequence – Most of the time, prefabrication will alter and usually accelerate a portion of the project’s engineering. This may require engineering sketches to give a structural steel vendor a pipe rack size and configuration to get on the vendor’s fabrication schedule for a prefabricated pipe rack.  At the same time, it could result in an acceleration of the pipe and support design to get a vendor to fabricate a pipe rack module (See Figure 2).  This also applies to sequences for structural metal and steel fabrication and erection and other opportunities for prefabrication.

Figure 2 – Example of a Pipe Rack Module

The piece of pipe rack in Figure 2 (pipe rack module) is built and all the pipe is welded, supported, insulated and lagged off-site while the on-location or field project team is completing the rack foundation design and construction. That could not happen on a “stick built” project. Once two modules are set next to each other, the joining ends of the pipe are welded together, the weld is touched up with paint, insulated and lagged. All this work is completed with just a fraction of the worker hours being expended on site.

Important Advice

Prefabrication is always worth looking at early in a project’s lifecycle, as a possible schedule execution benefit, but perform a cost-benefit analysis to fully understand the cost ramifications.

APPROACH NO. 7 – “Develop and Maintain a Schedule-Oriented Culture”

A schedule-oriented culture is one where everything is viewed through the lens of the schedule, which places the focus on the regardless of related float.  Without this culture, meetings tend to discuss all submittals, requests for information (RFI), designer directives, non-compliance reports, issues logs, change request logs, change order logs, correspondence, and other items, with the schedule treated as a separate discussion.  When the culture is schedule-oriented, the schedule is the opening discussion, and all these discussion items are raised only when they are critical or near-critical.  This removes high float items from the discussion, allowing a strong focus on the high priority items.  This approach does require a good CPM schedule, so the float values are reasonable and accurate, but the schedule orientation improves project performance and validates the value of the time investment in developing the better schedule.

Important Discussion Points

  1. Senior management support
  2. High-end technical scheduling effort
  3. Continuous change management effort
  4. Documented processes and procedures
  5. Continuous review of performance
  6. Schedule prominent in all meetings

Detailed Discussion Points

This culture can only be established if senior management has embraced the culture and the construction management (CM) team has bought into this approach.  Without this support, scheduling will not be seen as providing the value that it can demonstrate within the right culture.  Senior management must demand succinct and clear summary reports that keep them informed as to the performance, lack of performance, change management, analysis of delay and disruption, action plans to mitigate poor performance, and continuous efforts to improve even already reasonable performance.

There must be support for a deep-dive detailed technical scheduling so there is time and budget allowed, and the scheduling staff are competent and a vital part of the CM team.  Part of the reason why the team will appreciate the scheduling effort is if the analysis process is insightful and provides value in identifying delays and trends that will result in delays, as well as continuous recommendations for action to mitigate and to improve performance.   The scheduler must have a close relationship with the construction manager so they can discuss issues that affect schedule, and the scheduler must feel comfortable in making suggestions related to performance and progress.   Achieving value from tasks like walking the project to review the update data is simplified and improved using standardized checklists and forms, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 - Example of a Field Update Form

Changes occur in all projects, and part of a good schedule-orientation culture is a solid change management effort that includes not just costs, but, just as importantly, the time associated with change.  Changes occur and create delay situations, but the schedule has an important role in identifying delays that have already been absorbed into the schedule, as well as future delays that may result from changes in project conditions or performance issues.

As noted in the 2016 Carson and Palmer paper, “The project schedule is the primary coordination tool, and the communication tool, so without a schedule in place early, the project is being managed without that primary tool.  So, construction management is left to flounder and maybe, worse, as the project is started, unforeseen conditions can be discovered but not easily analyzed.  It takes a good, detailed CPM schedule to enable credible and detailed analysis of delays.  Without the ability to support delay analysis, additional scope and unforeseen conditions would be absorbed into the contractor’s schedule and ultimately, scope of work.  Without the detailed early schedule, the project is at a higher risk of failure.”

The scheduling program should be written down as standard or best practice documents and explained in a step-by-step procedure to ensure consistent and standardized implementation.  Every project should have a detailed schedule, developed with the CM team so everyone has input into development and ownership of the schedule.  Of course, industry best practices should be incorporated into any standard practice documents, like the AACE Recommended Practices. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]

Figure 4 – Examples of Processes & Procedures for Scheduling Program

The value of good scheduling is most often recognized through continuous review of performance and a good scheduler may have more insight into the schedule than the CM or contractor, because the scheduler is digging deeply into the logic and plan that is explained by the schedule details.  With continuous review of performance, the scheduler provides action items that promote correction of performance slippage, and uses trending analysis to find negative trends that can be corrected before they cause too large of a problem.  In addition, the analysis supports recommendations for improvement suggestions that could not just mitigate known delays but will help avoid potential delays.  Organizing the schedules with a good schedule log is valuable, provides insight from a summary level, and can ensure practical use of the schedule data.

Figure 5 – AACE “Schedule Logs” Recommended Practice

The last important point is that the schedule must be prominent in all meetings in order to reinforce the importance, and to help identify issues and actions that can be taken to improve performance.  Running the project by the schedule is the best approach and helps to both establish, as well as to reinforce, the schedule-orientation of the project.   One good way to ensure visibility and use of the schedule is through good reporting in the form of dashboards that summarize the schedule information into customized reports for each of the stakeholders.  An example of a project dashboard is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6 – Example of a Program Dashboard (Carson, Divvela, and Napuri)

Important Advice

Embrace the value of a good schedule-oriented program, ensure the CM team is supportive and works with the scheduler to get the utmost value out of the technical scheduling effort, ensure that the project is run from the schedule plan, and provide insightful, succinct reporting in customized dashboards for each stakeholder.  This will yield valuable returns and enable the ability for the project to complete on time or early.

APPROACH NO. 6 – “Manage Project Delay Claims Timely to Ensure Best Efforts to Maintain the Schedule”

The authors have both seen instances where slow responses to delay claims have ruined relationships on a project and caused progress to slow down. Completing a complex project by its completion date requires the steady commitment of all its team members.

Important Discussion Points

  1. Timely Communications
  2. Improperly Developed Claims
  3. Monthly Delay Analysis
  4. Constructive Acceleration

Detailed Discussion Points

Timely Communications – Timely response to all project time extension requests and claims is key to project schedule performance. This is the only way to protect relationships with project team members and ensure the proper focus is on getting the work completed and supporting the ability to manage by the schedule. When a contractor or subcontractor is waiting for an answer on a request for a time extension for delay or other type of claim, that party often has additional pressure put on them from their management to get the issue resolved.  This pressure often distracts from the other important issues and actions required to maintain schedule.

Improperly Developed Claims – Many delay claims are prepared improperly. An un-absorbed delay needs to be developed using a prospective time impact analysis (TIA) where an absorbed delay needs to be developed using a retrospective forensic analysis method. These methods are detailed in AACE’s Recommended Practices – RP52-R06 “Prospective Time Impact Analysis” and RP29-R03 “Forensic Schedule Analysis.”  Studies show that this is one of the top causes for disputes, in fact, “Poorly drafted or incomplete and unsubstantiated claims” ranked as the third cause for disputes in North America.

Figure 7 – North American Dispute Causes Survey

Monthly Delay Analysis – It is extremely beneficial for a complex project to perform a forensic schedule analysis on a monthly basis during the month following each schedule update. Doing so allows the analysis to be performed and discussed when the events are fresh in everyone’s mind, which makes causation analysis easier, usually more accurate, and always less expensive than hiring an expert at the end of the job when the project team has been disbanded. It also highlights the party or parties that may need to take on the responsibility to accelerate the schedule and make up for a prior schedule delay. Finally, it can help avoid an expensive dispute process by settling the delay issues monthly. It is always easier to negotiate and award 5 days of delay, 10 times during a project, than it is 50 days of delay at the end of the project.

Constructive Acceleration – Delaying the response on a delay claim can cause the other party to send a letter claiming constructive acceleration on top of the delay claim. Constructive acceleration is when an owner denies or is silent on a legitimate excusable delay claim forcing contractors to accelerate their work. Constructive acceleration can be much more expensive than a simple extension of time.  And failure to respond could turn an excusable but non-compensable delay that would not carry any cost to the owner, like unusually adverse weather, into an acceleration claim costing money.

Important Advice

Respond quickly to all claims on all projects to protect the schedule and seriously consider doing a monthly forensic delay analysis to deal with the project delays.

APPROACH NO. 5 – “Provide a Resource Plan to Ensure Resource Availability”

A common symptom of project failure is an inability to provide sufficient resources on the project, often because of a lack of available resources in the local culture.  Often, resource consumption is not considered during schedule planning, and resources are not benchmarked. Therefore, usage is not evaluated on a regular basis.  A schedule is not a legitimate schedule if it does not accommodate the available resources and there is no easy way to monitor resources without planning for the consumption of resources into the schedule as the project progresses.

Important Discussion Points

  1. Types of resources and best use in resource loading
  2. Challenges in loading resources in schedules that impede resource loading
  3. Risks of out-of-sequence progress in monitoring resources

Detailed Discussion Points

There are basic challenges in loading resources in schedules, starting with the type of resource to be loaded.  The industry has three common resource pools used for scheduling; individual named resources, role-based resources, and crew resources.  Individual named resources are most commonly used in engineering schedules where each person is tracked to ensure they are fully billable and efficient. They may be the only resource who can perform some scope of work.  Role-based resources are used when it is important to understand how many trade and role-specific staff are needed, such as the number of plumbers or plumber laborers planned to accomplish a task or activity.  Use of crew resources recognizes that the practical issue with respect to resources is that the crew composition is best left to the trade contractors to handle crew composition decisions, which might be at the foreman level.   

While the role-based resource loading is very useful, there are risks to the contractor with out-of-sequence progress in monitoring resources, the use of which frequently creates problems.   When schedules are developed to a great level of detail with almost all finish-to-start relationships, the role-based resource loading works well, but if there are lags and/or progress that causes numerous out-of-sequence work, the roles tend to stack up unrealistically.   The authors have seen projects where a major trade contractor was at risk of termination due only to the number of role resources scheduled by the out-of-sequence updates compared to the count of roles on the project.  On one mid-rise cast-in-place concrete structure, the concrete subcontractor was threatened with termination because the updated schedule called for over 600 role-based resources and they only had about 350 workers onsite each day.  Once the out-of-sequence progress was corrected, the schedule required dropped back down close to the actual count, and analysis determined that the out-of-sequence work was mostly caused by poor drawings, multiple requests for information, and slow response, which turned out to be an owner-responsible set of delays and disruptions.

It is crucial that resources are planning and monitored, but a good choice is to consider the trade crews for loading, keeping the crew composition as information in the basis of schedule or written narrative.  With crews, analysis can be done for similar crews, such as all the concrete crews or even subdivided into work scope resources such as concrete formwork crews, as well as for total crews that are planning to work in any given space or time frame.  Analyzing these types of crew resources is very insightful and can help determine when there are insufficient crews planned or too many crews planned for the spaces, time, or availability of local resources.  

For example, looking at the total plumbing or storm drainage crews promotes a discussion about how many crews the contractor expects to employ on the project, when, and where those crews are scheduled to work.  One of the benefits of this analysis is based on the recognition that one crew should be capable of completing the scope of work identified in each activity within the original duration of that activity.  That requires each crew to have some lead worker that can lay out, direct the crew, and ensure the work is completed, as well as any unique equipment for that activity.   If there are four paving crews that are scheduled to install pavement at the same time, the project will require four pavers to make that happen.  These analyses allow good insight with relatively simple analysis that does not take long to implement. They can be done even if the contractor’s schedule does not contain the crew loading; a few global changes in a software like Primavera P6 will yield the crew-loaded schedule.  This is shown in Figure 8, where the comparison between the planned early and late dates shows significant slippage of workers, pushing the crews to later in the project and stacking those crews higher than the original plan.

Figure 8 – Resource Plan – Based on Both Early and Late Dates

The analysis can include similar crews and any overallocation, similar spaces and any overloading, and limited time frames and overloading in those time frames.  If the as-planned schedule shows 25 drywall crews needed to hang and finish the third floor of a building over a one-week time frame, and the contractor only has 10 crews, or the space cannot accommodate any more than 15 crews without overloading the available spaces, the schedule is not reasonable and will ultimately be delayed just by insufficient crews.  At this level of analysis, the composition of the crews is not a vital part of the issues raised.

Important Advice

A common symptom of failure is inability to provide sufficient resources on the project, often as a result of a lack of available resources in the local culture.  Often resource consumption is not considered during schedule development, partly because it can be difficult to load role-based resources (carpenters) since there is often a lack of detail in many schedules.  And during routine updates, out-of-sequence work causes the resource need to double with each out-of-sequence pair of activities.  Loading crew resources is an excellent alternative that provides a solid basis of analysis without significantly increasing the workload on schedulers or the team to collect information.

APPROACH NO. 4 – “Assign a Specific Team Member for Each Schedule Activity”

Each activity within a complex project schedule must have an experienced team member in charge of that activity. This person oversees developing the total scope of that work by communicating with the other team members to ensure that the work scope is understood, not duplicated, and that the total scope of work for the project is covered. Assuming that the scope is understood is a common error made on projects and often leads to the project team even disputing the definition of an activity. This person is also the person in charge of getting the work accomplished in the planned duration and may very well handle a trade, scope of work, or perhaps a sub-specialty.  The important point is the assignment of responsibility. 

Important Discussion Points

  1. Accountability
  2. Schedule Sorting
  3. Risk Management
  4. Schedule Quality

Detailed Discussion Points

Accountability – Every activity in a schedule needs to have a single experienced person that is accountable for making sure that scope of work gets done as planned. This person is the main point of contact on the project for that work scope and the person who discusses (in the weekly scheduling meeting) the progress, the problems and risks, and the actions needed to make the work happen as scheduled. This approach usually shortens the length of the weekly scheduling meeting because everyone knows who is in charge of the item about to be discussed.

Schedule Sorting – The project schedule should have sort code for these people to avoid having to distribute 50 pages of the schedule to them and make them have to hunt for their activities. Often, when given a 50-page schedule, project people do not look at them because of the time required to navigate through the pages.

Risk Management – These people become the backbone of the project’s risk management program as they are the experts on this scope of work.

Schedule Quality – There is no better scheduling approach to improve the quality of a project schedule. As this experienced team member takes a deep dive into the scope of an activity, he/she will learn, in many cases, that either the schedule logic or the duration needs to be modified to be more accurate. This process always improves the quality of the schedule and the team understanding of the schedule.

Important Advice

Assigning a specific person to be responsible for each activity is effective, saves time, enhances a risk management process, and improves the schedule.

APPROACH NO. 3 – “Use Formal Trending Analysis to Recommend Mitigation Actions”

Critical path slippage is important to monitor because those are the activities that will immediately cause a delay, and near-critical path delay is also very important to monitor because those are the activities that might suffer a mid-period critical path delay, overtake the critical path, and cause a delay to the project; these near-critical path delays tend to be insidious because often no one is really monitoring that near-critical path.  But the third important factor in delays is even harder to identify and monitor and this is the non-critical path or all the activities.  When the work in general is not being installed at a rate commensurate with the schedule time remaining, there will be slippage of the work activities to later in the project, causing work to stack at the end of the project.  This will increase risk of cost overruns, quality problems, disruption, and delays to the project.  

Important Discussion Points

  1. Trending delays are typically not related to the critical path
  2. Delays that are not recognized can accumulate over multiple months into an unrecoverable delay
  3. There are a number of methods to analyze these types of delays and identify negative trending
  4. Metrics collected to help identify trends toward negative performance should be part of a standard schedule update analysis.

Detailed Discussion Points

A delay during one period is usually not earthshattering, but a delay that is caused by the same situation in each of a number of subsequent update periods will accumulate to a large, potentially unrecoverable delay.  These delays often are unrelated to the critical path, and may have significant float, so they tend to be overlooked during routine analysis.  These are the delays that tend to stack up and overwhelm the construction management team with concurrent workload.

Identifying a delay in one period is useful, but it is more valuable to analyze to determine if that delay will likely occur again and again, until the accumulation is much greater than the original delay.  A four-day delay in June may not affect the schedule, but if the condition causing the delay continues into November, the four-day delay can easily become a 24-day delay, which is much more difficult to mitigate.

Trending analysis is even more important in programs than in projects because often a delay in one project on a large program can drive a delay into another project or contract.  Trending analysis can be performed using a variety of tools and techniques:

Earned value management (EVM) is useful, particularly looking at the time metrics of schedule performance index (SPI) and schedule variance (SV) over subsequent updates and earned schedule. The importance of this increases if the project is running late and approaching the 2/3rd point of completion when typical EVM results start to become misleading.  These metrics are lagging indicators (providing historical data only) but trending of the changes in slope of SPI is significant in predictions of completion.

In addition to the historical indicators, it is valuable to run the predictive EVM calculations like to-complete performance index (TCPI) using the predicted budget at completion (BAC).  TCPI is calculated as (BAC – EV)/(BAC – AC), using earned value (EV) and actual cost (AC), recognizing that if TCPI is less than 1, there is improvement required to meet the goal.   TCPI can help determine the efficiency needed to bring the project back to an on-time completion.

Another useful metric that is often overlooked is the estimate at completion (EAC) which should be analyzed by one of two calculations:

  1. Total budgeted cost/cost performance index (CPI) is a somewhat optimistic prediction of total project cost at completion, useful when project is still predicting on-time completion. 
  2. Total budgeted cost/ (CPI * SPI) is a bit more pessimistic prediction of total project cost at completion because it takes into consideration schedule performance, so this is the better metric to monitor if the project is starting to predict late completion.

Actual duration overruns, commonly called “Tipper” or time performance ratio (TPR), from the name of the original software, are very useful metrics to monitor.  These values should ideally be 1.0 or less for activities on the critical or near-critical paths, and somewhere between 1.0 and 2.5 for all the activities.  In addition to the value for monitoring weak performance, Tipper is also useful for identifying opportunities for improvement when certain trade contractors are running very good historical Tipper values that could be used to reduce future durations.  As noted in the original Tipper manual, “Running a TPR chart on activities that were on the critical or near critical path can indicate manipulation of the schedule if the TPR is greater than 1.0, but the end date of the schedule never slips.”

Implementing Tipper for analysis requires using the historical data and modeling future durations at the same ratio, so if the TPR ratio for concrete work is 1.8, increasing all future concrete work original durations to that ratio will show the impact if that productivity continues.  The authors have found this to be a very useful analysis technique.

A common metric collected, missed starts and finishes, is valuable because it indicates when work is not started on the early dates, which allows slippage towards the critical path.  The most important impact of this metric is when the slippage forces resources, especially labor, to slip toward the end of the project, causing stacking of trade work.  This elevates the risk of overallocation of resources, perhaps beyond the capability of the local market, and forces more dissimilar trades to work concurrently in restricted spaces.  This problem can have a major impact on cost overruns, quality, and schedule overruns, and is most at risk in areas like equipment rooms and commercial kitchens.

Erosion of float has been a traditional method of monitoring this work, however, it relies on good critical path method (CPM) schedules that are not missing significant logic.  With good schedules, activities enter the float path on the high end, see their float reduced and eventually show up on the near-critical and finally critical paths.   Graphing and monitoring this can help identify patterns in where the trade work is focused and help avoid ignoring work in some trades or areas of the project.  For example, in the float dissipation chart in Figure 9, it is obvious where the program focus was on one facility and float evaporated in the paths to the other facilities’ completions.

Figure 9 – Trending Tool – Float Dissipation or Erosion of Float Graph

For programs, erosion of interdependency buffers is a significant and important metric to monitor.  This is critical in multi-prime programs or projects since any delay to one prime is likely to show up delaying work in another prime’s scope.  The driving relationships between contracts or primes must be identified and monitored to avoid two claims in the event of an owner-responsible delay.

Important Advice

Non-critical path delays, or delays to all the work activities unrelated to float values, cause work to slip later and later in the project, and eventually the work requires too much effort, resources, and space to complete within the remaining time.  Just as a 10-mile roadway that needs to be completed in 10 months must install work at some rate commensurate with getting done on time, maybe one mile per month, the non-critical work must be put away in a similar rate.  Trending analysis is vital in monitoring this aspect that is commonly a cause of late project delivery.

APPROACH NO. 2 – “Perform a Formal Critical Path Analysis on a Project”

Both authors have been involved in claims where a contractor did not perform a monthly critical path analysis and when their schedule was filtered by the “longest path” the only activity that appeared was the final completion milestone. Critical path analysis is the fundamental element of CPM scheduling. The chances of achieving a project’s planned end date without closely monitoring the critical path is slim at best.

 A study performed in 2015 showed that only a quarter of all the projects surveyed came within 10 percent of their original completion deadlines. It is probably not a stretch to assume that the number of projects that completed on time is a much lower number.

Important Discussion Points

  1. Longest Path
  2. Near Critical Activities
  3. Forward Looking

Detailed Discussion Points

Longest Path – Perform a critical path analysis (longest path) sort every time the schedule is updated and make sure the CPM network is functioning properly (a continuous string of activities, proper float values and so on). If the schedule end date or an important milestone is falling behind schedule, have an impromptu meeting with management at the end of the day to discuss the path forward. Avoid making logic changes or reducing future durations to hold the end date, but instead, put a formal recovery plan in place to recover slippage after the team knows what is impacting the schedule. Have a formal critical path discussion at least monthly in the weekly meeting.

Near Critical Activities – Also examine the near critical activities to avoid these pieces of work taking over the critical path.

Forward Looking – Do not just examine the current period activities during the analysis; look at all of the activities in the path and get commitments from the leaders that those activities are on track to finish as planned (see Figures 10 and 11).

Figure 10 – Commonly Used Approach To Critical Path Analysis

Figure 10 shows how most people analyze critical paths – looking only a few activities in the near future.

Figure 11 – A Better Approach to Critical Path Analysis

Figure 11 shows how critical paths should be analyzed – looking at all of the activities in the future.

Important Advice

This process is a lot of hard work, but there are no shortcuts in making this effort successful– this is the fundamental basis of CPM analysis and done correctly is one of the best validations of a schedule’s completion date.

APPROACH NO. 1 – “Maintain a Continuous No-Cost Performance ‘Acceleration’ Effort”

High value schedule review services include facilitating a collaborative culture and working with the contractor in an transparent schedule effort working as a team.  One of the most valuable services that can be offered to facilitate the team approach is to not only monitor performance failures, but also to look for opportunities to shorten the schedule.  This requires a continuous effort.

Important Discussion Points

  1. Collaboration with full CM and contractor team
  2. The recovery or mitigation effort
  3. Changing focus from one-time mitigation to no-cost acceleration opportunities in each update

Detailed Discussion Points

Projects always go better when they are run collaboratively, with the owner, contractors, designers, and construction manager all working together to plan, manage, and resolve problems.  This is one of the reasons why integrated project delivery has increased in popularity; it requires a contractual commitment to partnering or collaborating.   Moving the culture away from a confrontational approach to just protecting the opposing parties’ interests and toward a collaborative effort improves project successes.  

Recovery scheduling is a process, and the process can be used for both recovering lost time and for gaining time by a no-cost “acceleration” effort.  As noted in the relevant Recommended Practice, “While often recovery plan efforts are developed outside the project schedule, the recovery plan should be shown in the schedule, with clear and well thought steps for recovery.”  Acceleration often requires additional resources and cost, but the goal is to look at true acceleration as a last resort.  This process starts with identifying fast-track opportunities; those critical path activities that could be performed in parallel to save time without additional impacts to other stakeholders.  Then near-critical activities can be examined in the same manner.  

A process that works well for recognizing fast-track opportunities is to sort the schedule by the original durations, from highest to lowest, which provides the best opportunities in a prioritized list format.  The larger the duration, the more likely that there are successors that would not have to wait until that activity is complete before they can start.  Sometimes this is already demonstrated with start-to-start relationships and lags, but these large duration activities are the best place to start.  What the sort looks like is shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12 – Schedule Sorted by Original Duration

This is pretty straightforward, and working down this list, the Fabricate Production Piles in three activities seems to be the first opportunity.  These activities are scheduled for 25 workdays for each group of rows, overlapped with total fabrication taking 6 weeks.  These activities in the schedule, sorted now by early dates, looks like what is shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13 – Fast-Track Opportunities Sorted by Early Dates

The next step is to review the predecessors and successors to look for opportunities.  In this case, the fabrication could not be expedited, however the Drive Piles activity could be started earlier, saving time on the critical path.  The opportunity can be modeled in a what-if scenario, using “Reflection” views in Primavera P6 schedules, and if it shows gains, this could be a suggestion.

This effort can be performed quickly each month, and opportunities identified and modeled to ensure that there appear to be gains, and if so, they can be communicated to the contractor.  These are suggestions only, not intended to direct the contractor or to dictate means and methods but intended as potential ways for the contractor to gain time.  

Other analysis suggestions should include issues like out-of-sequence (OOS) work, identified by modeling corrections to the OOS activities, if the model shows gains.  A quick check, if using Primavera P6, as to whether correcting the OOS work would result in an opportunity to gain time is to change the P6 setting from “Retained Logic”, the preferred setting, to “Progress Override”.  “Retained Logic” provides a slightly conservative (and safe) approach making sure that no successor can complete before one of its predecessors completes, while “Progress Override” provides a more optimistic view by ignoring the logical relationships between the activities that are OOS.  If the re-calculated schedule under “Progress Override” shows significant gains to contractual milestones, that indicates that the OOS work is critical or near-critical and making the corrections will yield reasonable benefits without additional risks.  This is a temporary setting change only to serve as an indicator, and industry best practices do not suggest operating under “Progress Override.”

Figure 14 – Example of Out-of-Sequence Correction Suggestions

Another analysis that is very useful is to take the trending metrics such as better performance in original durations using the time performance ratio mentioned earlier and modeling savings from the trade historical data, such as the F/R/P (form/reinforce/pour) activities shown in the graphic in Figure 15, which completed with a TPR ratio of 0.50.  If the contractor performing this concrete work recognizes that they are performing their work at half the original durations, they will often agree to reduce future durations by 50%, saving what appears to be 12 calendar days to the project.  The benefit of this reduction is that all other work on the project will be rescheduled to allow this trade to complete early.

Figure 15 – Gains Suggested by Modeling Productivity from Historical TPR Reports

Important Advice

There is a huge opportunity in all projects to analyze for trending and fast-track gains by modeling the ideas, and then communicating the potential gains to the contractor.  Once the contractor buys in to reviewing suggestions to improve productivity, they can take advantage of the strong technical schedule review skills of the reviewer.  Teaming in this manner will provide opportunities for the contractor to regain lost time and reduce the risk of paying liquidated damages due to performance delays.

Conclusion

Completing projects on time is important to all the stakeholders on the project and there is no single approach or step that can be taken that will ensure on-time projects.  However, there are certainly lessons learned to be acquired from successful projects, as well as failed projects.  The authors have experienced a high level of success by implementing the approaches discussed in these ten suggestions.

For a project to succeed in achieving its planned completion date, these are the successful approaches most recommended by the authors:

 

  1. Manage the project with an approved project schedule.
  2. Update the as-planned and the as-built separately and no less than monthly.
  3. Manage resources by using off-site prefabrication (modularization) on large projects.
  4. Develop and maintain a schedule-oriented culture.
  5. Manage project delay claims timely to ensure best efforts to maintain the schedule.
  6. Provide and manage a resource plan to ensure availability of project resources.
  7. Assign a specific team member to be in change of each project schedule activity.
  8. Preform a formal trending analysis to recommend mitigation actions.
  9. Perform a formal critical path analysis on a project.
  10. Maintain a continuous no-cost performance “acceleration” effort.

REFERENCES

[1] AACE International, Recommended Practice 29R-03, “Forensic Schedule Analysis“, Morgantown, WV: AACE International, Latest revision. 

[2] AACE International, Recommended Practice 93R-17, “Schedule Logs“, Morgantown, WV: AACE International, Latest revision. 

[3] AACE International, “Recommended Practice 53R-06, “Schedule Update Review – As     Applied in Engineering, Procurement, and Construction,” AACE International, Morgantown, Latest revision.

[4] AACE International, “Recommended Practice 78R-13, “Original Baseline Schedule Review – Applied in Engineering, Procurement, and Construction“, AACE International, Morgantown, Latest revision.

[5] AACE International, “Recommended Practice 49R-06, “Identifying the Critical Path“,  AACE International, Morgantown, Latest revision.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Glen R. Palmer, CFCC PSP FAACE

Christopher W. Carson, CEP DRMP PSP FAACE

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