Step 14 — Communicating the Schedule

Communication is the key to successful projects and a Planner should spend more time communicating than planning and scheduling.

A schedule should not be a ‘black box’ that few people can read or interpret. Always keep your audience in mind and try to make the schedule as self-explanatory as possible.

Communication steps

Step 1 – Who is your audience?

The message that needs to be communicated may differ depending on the audience. To better understand how to communicate the schedule the first step is to understand your audience and what sort of information they might be looking for. For example:

Project Teams and working groups – engage to get everyone coordinated (who does what, are we on time?)

Directors – engage to report schedule status and achievability, make decisions, escalation, get team buy in and engagement, accountability, and ownership

CEO / DTF / Minister – engage for escalation (CEO to CEO), approve major changes

Contract Teams – engage to understand the status of the project and resolve issues with schedule achievability

Step 2 – What messages are you trying to communicate?

There are many different messages that Planners need to communicate, and these can include:

schedule achievability
Delivery strategy
Durations and dates
Critical and near critical paths
Compliance with contract documents
Strengths and weaknesses
Risks and opportunities
Changes and delays (incl. reasons and mitigation actions)
Progress
Resource requirements
Constraints and issues
Items for escalation

Step 3 – How do you communicate those messages effectively?

Large and complex projects typically suffer from data and information overload.

How does a project team and its decision makers make sense of all this data and information? Where do they need to focus and prioritise their efforts to help steer the projects successfully?

The most successful communication approaches convert complexity into a format that is simple to understand.

Summary schedules and visual planning tools.

Be creative and always consider your audience. An essential part of the Planner’s role is to be able to communicate key information from schedule updates to the Project team clearly, accurately and in a way that is easy for everyone to understand.

The aim is that the audience can understand your communication tool without needing you to explain it.

It is important to use other planning tools, visual diagrams, and trackers to supplement the detailed P6 schedule. These can help with communicating and understanding site constraints, interfaces, high-level timing, staging, and sequencing of works.

Examples include:

Key milestone trackers
Summary schedules
Time Chainage Diagrams
Progress histograms and s-curves
Stage/Phase diagrams
Performance Metrics/KPIs
Heat Maps
Visual Dashboards

Software:

Tilos/ChainLink/TurboChart – Time Chainage Diagrams
Excel, Power BI, Visio – schedule summary, KPIs, Dashboards, trackers
P6 V23+ Schedule Quality, DCMA
P6 for data dumps to other software packages

Other planning tools should all be based on a robust detailed P6 schedule and need to be kept up to date with any changes made to the schedule. If the P6 schedule is not the single source of truth there is a risk of confusion amongst the project team, delays, and loss of control.

Communication is a conversation

Communication of schedule status goes beyond issuing schedules and reports. Follow up regularly with team meetings and conversations about the status of the schedule.

More than 90% of communication is conveyed in our body language and our voice tone. If we want to get our message across then email correspondence is not enough.

It is very important to have ongoing face to face discussions with the project team when:

Developing a schedule for the first time
Reviewing a baseline schedule with the team
Undertaking schedule status and progress updates with individual activity owners
Reviewing schedule status, including managing changes and delays, with the project team
Advising on schedule status and achievability when reviewing schedules prepared by others
Communicating and managing delays
Don’t be afraid to tell the bad news. If the latest schedule update is forecasting a delay, then the project team needs to be informed so that they can mitigate and re-plan accordingly.
Be transparent and open about any schedule delays, issues, and risks. False optimism will not solve problems.
If the schedule is forecasting a delay:
Quantity the delay and its impact on key dates and on float
Identify the activities that are causing the delay
Identify specific reasons for delays (root causes)
Identify specific mitigation actions which should be agreed with the relevant members of the project team
All mitigation actions need owners and deadlines. Follow up on these actions until complete

Good information

A schedule allows us to build a model of how a project will be delivered in P6 – it is a virtual simulation for how a project will be built.

For the schedule to be a good predictor of future outcomes it requires information inputs that are:

Accurate
Reliable
Realistic
Robust
Proven
Based on real experience
Benchmarked

Come from people who “know”

To get good information a Planner needs to engage closely with relevant experts and activity owners:

Find out who does what – what is their role?
What do they know?
What is their background and experience?
Which activities do they own?
Which activities can they advise on?
What other information can they provide?
Plan for how you will engage with the team
Set up regular formal catch ups with everyone

Ask lots of questions, be patient and engage with an open mind.

As well as asking others for their expert knowledge and information inputs, Planners should also develop their own Subject Matter expertise by reviewing drawings, construction methods, spending time on site and looking for other sources of information.

Planners should also be good Engineers who take the time to review and understand construction drawings and methods statements, building a clear mental picture of the project.

Planners should spend lots of time on site reviewing actual progress compared to what was planned and observing how the project is delivered in practice:

Take time to watch and understand the work being done
Talk to site supervisors and trades and ask lots of questions
What is the average cycle time for each truck?
How long does it take to place rebar for the slab?
Take a hard copy of the schedule – does it match what you see?
Eyeball physical progress
Observe site access, laydown area and space constraints
Take lots of notes, photos and videos (if allowed)
Frequent visits = familiarity = better understanding

There is lots of reliable information available from many different sources and Planners should spend time reviewing these other sources to increase their knowledge about a project.

The more you look the more you will find

Check the accuracy of information before you use it by cross checking different sources. Follow the rule of ABC :

Assume nothing

Believe no one

Confirm the facts

Quiz:

1. The primary purpose of communicating project schedule information is:

To showcase the project manager’s planning abilities.

To ensure all team members understand their roles and deadlines.

To document every detail of the project plan.

To assign blame for any potential delays.

2. When communicating schedule updates, it’s important to:

Focus solely on negative variances (delays).

Use highly technical project management jargon.

Present information in a clear, concise, and visually appealing format.

Avoid discussing potential risks or mitigation plans.

3. Effective communication of schedule information should consider:

Project manager’s communication style only.

The specific needs and roles of different team members.

The technical complexity of the project activities.

The project budget limitations only.

4. Progress updates on the project schedule should be:

Infrequent and only when there are major deviations.

Highly detailed and include every minor task update.

Regularly scheduled and focus on key milestones.

Delivered solely through email communication.

5. The best approach to address potential schedule risks during communication is to:

Downplay the risks and focus on the original plan.

Discuss the risks openly and outline mitigation strategies.

Assign blame to specific team members for potential delays.

Avoid discussing risks unless directly questioned by team members.

6. Explain two benefits of effectively communicating project schedule information to team members.

7. Describe two different methods (beyond email) that can be used to communicate project schedules and progress updates.

8. Imagine you are the project manager for a software development project. The team has recently encountered a critical bug that is causing a delay in one of the key activities on the project schedule. • How would you communicate this information to your development team? • What specific details would you include in your communication?