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The Project Schedule is the detailed construction schedule that is produced and updated with input from the awarded subcontractors. The Project Schedule should include critical submittal review and material/equipment delivery, commissioning activities, required tests/inspections, owner trainings, Substantial Completion Date, and key milestone dates. This schedule is to be updated regularly and shared/reviewed with the project team at the Progress Meetings.
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CPM (Critical Path Method) Scheduling is a term accepted widely across industry(s) as a best practice in project scheduling. CPM scheduling utilizes activities, durations and activity relationships (logic) in order to forecast future project milestone completion dates. Both Primavera and Microsoft Project are commonly used software resources for creating, baselining, updating, reporting from and analyzing CPM schedules. At Granger, we use accepted CPM software for every project we manage. Our preference is toward Primavera. The value a CPM schedule offers on a project is highly positively correlated to the level of effort we put into developing and maintaining it.
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A baseline is an important component of schedule analysis. It is s snapshot of the schedule at any point in time, saved in the background. When a baseline of the schedule is saved properly, that snapshot can be used to overlay the current schedule at any point in the future and analyzed against the current schedule. There are two primary kinds of baselines.
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A "contract baseline" is saved early on in the project lifecycle, after the work is detailed enough in the schedule so that we (Granger) feel comfortable with the schedule and our client does to. After we have "buy-in" or "acceptance" of the schedule, we save that version as our contractual baseline.
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Subsequent, or update baselines are saved each time we report on a schedule update to our client and saved appropriately alongside the contract baseline in the software's built-in baseline storage space. Same when we receive approval of a change order which affords us more time to reach us a milestone. Change order work must be added to the schedule in detailed fashion; any affected finish milestone constraints must be updated and then a new baseline is saved and titled appropriately.
A baseline is a point from which to deviate in our industry. To understand how changes effect a schedule, we must have a saved starting point from which to deviate and that saved point is called a baseline.
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Last Planner System of scheduling is a collaborative effort between all trade foreman and project management to develop a plan to achieve specific project milestones. By making this a collaborative effort, the constraints of one task on another can be identified and planned for as a group, before they become critical. Last Planner System incorporates 'pull planning' principals.
Pull Planning is the process of working backwards through the sequence of tasks required to meet a specific schedule milestone. These milestones should correspond to the milestones in your Project Schedule noted above.
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At project start-up, we must agree with our owner on how often we will report on schedule and through which reports we will communicate updates and we should agree on a date when we will have a fully detailed schedule presented to them for acceptance. At Granger, we update our project schedules bi-weekly at a minimum and report internally after every update. We should report on schedule to our clients as frequently as weekly, but ultimately as often as they prefer. At a minimum, we should be communicating schedule using an "All Activities" report, a "Remaining Activities" report and a Lookahead report forecasting the next 2-4 weeks of work.
Every project will encounter delays sooner or later. CPM scheduling is a risk mitigation tool. We use CPM scheduling to tell the story of what has occurred, so that if claims arise, we have a documented history showing how delays occurred, who's responsibility they are and the downstream impact of the delay. When we are responsible for a delay, we aim to be forthcoming about that and take ownership. This way, when our Client, Architect or Subcontractor partners are responsible for a delay, we can expect the same level of accountability from them. Delays can only be quantified and analyzed for downstream effect when we have a well-managed CPM schedule for the project, and we have done due diligence in the baselining process.
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Delay Documentation
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Certificate of Occupancy
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