Schedule Reviews — Overview

Schedule Reviews — Overview

Schedule reviews undertaken internally for Governance/Organisation approval are an essential part of the schedule acceptance process. A Basis of Schedule (BoS) document provides an overview of the project and the planning and schedule methodologies used.

Schedule Documentation

Basis of Schedule document (BoS)

The basis of scheduled document should include the following items:

  • Project description & Scope

  • Documents that were relied on (design documents, specifications, reports, surveys, contracts, technical requirements)

  • Project owners ‘Schedule Management Plan’

  • Schedule strategy

  • Construction Methodology

  • Key Productivity information & Resources

  • Working Calendars

  • Activity duration calculations for key activities

  • Schedule Risk Analysis report

  • Explanation of Critical Path

  • Constraints used in the schedule

  • Resource Histograms

  • Schedule Quality Checks

  • Key Milestones, Completion dates, Separable Portions etc

  • Staging or Phase drawings

  • Time Chainage Diagram if relevant

  • Summary Schedule output 

  • Detailed Schedule output

  • Critical Path

  • Near Critical Paths

Schedule Management Plan

  • The schedule management plan is a collection of processes, approaches, templates and tools that comprise the project’s execution strategy and objectives as reflected in the project’s schedule.

  • The Schedule Management Plan should be unique to each project and defines how the schedule will be developed, updated, progressed and  how it should be communicated to various levels of Management

  • The Schedule Management Plan can refer to Guidelines for additional information. Eg. a guideline for Time Chainage Diagram Preparation which provides details on the preparation, formatting etc of the TCD. Reference would be made to the chosen or specified CPM & TCD software.

Reviewing schedules by others

Schedule reviews require detailed analysis, careful investigation, and close interaction with the project team.

The reviewer’s role is not that of policing or auditing – rather it is uncovering and communicating hidden stories about the status and achievability of the project and schedule, and then working closely with the project team to help solve them.

Your organisation’s teams undertake extensive reviews of schedules developed by Contractors and other stakeholders, mostly in the latter stages of the Procurement Phase (i.e. Bid schedules) and during the Delivery Phase (i.e. Contractors’ Delivery schedules).

Schedule reviews help us to understand and communicate:

  • schedule health – is the schedule accurate and robust?

  • Change management – how is the schedule changing over time and how is this being managed?

  • Progress measurement – how is the project tracking, are its deliverables being completed as planned?

  • Contract compliance – is the schedule compliant with the relevant documents? 

  • schedule achievability – is the schedule (and project) likely to be completed on time?

Outputs of the review should strike a balance between carefully quantified data and information. Data on its own is not very useful – it needs to be organised into information to become understood and therefore useful.

Client teams should work closely with delivery Contractors, utilising the skills and experience within the client teams to add value to the Contractors’ teams – it’s a joint effort. 

The client’s role is not to simply observe but to influence and facilitate successful outcomes. 

Project success is more likely when we work well together following a ‘One Team Approach’.

Client planning teams should adopt the approach and behaviours below:

Establish a positive working relationship between the client and the Contractor based on genuine open communication, transparency, and a willingness to work with each other to achieve a common outcome.

Follow a ‘One Team’ approach by spending time at the Contractor’s office and conducting joint site inspections to review progress together.

Show that you can add value to their team and be a second pair of eyes rather than an auditor

questions that should be asked are:

  • is the critical path logical and does it make sense?
  • is there a parallel critical path
  • assess float paths or near critical paths
  • do activities have open ends ie. nil predecessors or nil successors
  • Are there activities with excessive amounts of total float – a well developed network should have noncritical activities with a minimum amount of float
  • can the critical path be shortened by :-removal of unnecessary restraints or constraints, overlapping or bypassing of activities, increase in resources ie. labour materials or equipment or alternative methods or methodology approach

  • does the critical path pass through finishes landscaping or external works. This would be incorrect on most projects it would be unlikely that painting is a critical path activity

  • does the critical path pass through the Lift motor Room or an electrical sub station on a City High rise building. For a high rise, lifts, lift motor room and permanent power are all generally critical.

  • have procurement, design, approval lead times being properly linked up with construction activities

  • do completion activities have sufficient time allowance for local Authority  inspections, and commissioning

  • have constraints being applied correctly or can they be removed

  • are dependencies logical or can activities be overlapped or by-passed

  • is there redundant or duplicate relationships

  • compare indicated total time with committed or specified time (check contractual documents, specifications, technical requirements)

Schedule Quality

DOD Defence Contract Management Agency

In its role as the DOD executive agent for earned value management systems (EVMS), the Defence Contract Management Agency’s (DCMA) mission includes conducting contractor surveillance on EVMS.46 The outcome of DCMA surveillance ensures that reported contract performance data accurately reflect the status of programs.

In assessing contractor schedule reliability, DCMA ensures that the following ANSI/EIA-748 EVMS guidelines are followed:

• Schedule the authorized work to describe the sequence of work and identify

significant task interdependencies required to meet the requirements of the program.

• Identify physical products, milestones, technical performance goals, or other

indicators that will be used to measure progress.

In its assessment of the quality of a schedule, DCMA uses a 14-Point Assessment

(14PA), a collection of measures intended to assess the technical structure of the schedule as well as the contractor’s ability to plan and execute work. The measures are:

1. Logic

2. Leads

3. Lags

4. Relationship types

5. Hard constraints

6. High float

7. Negative float

8. High duration

9. Invalid dates

10. Resources

11. Missed tasks

12. Critical path test

13. Critical path length index

14. Baseline execution index.

Several include thresholds; for example, no more than 5 percent of remaining tasks

should be missing predecessor or successor logic.

However, DCMA’s 14PA thresholds are not compliance triggers. Rather, they are used as a starting point toward an objective analysis of the schedule.

Note – there are numerous commercial applications that replicate the above. Primavera P6 V22+ has a similar functional available. DCMA may not be suitable or relevant for your project. These tools are time savers.

The DCMA does not evaluate methodology, logic, common sense or how the project will be performed.

The DCMA and many other reporting metrics should only be considered as a guideline, rather than a rigid standard. The DCMA was established for U.S. Government contracts and does not suit all projects.

← PreviousBack to Module 3Next →