09 MANAGING PROJECT PROGRESS

Paul,

You might have disagreement with the USA DOD but you are so biased that you publish within the GUILD a one side version about mandating EVM and a one sided version about mandating the CPM Schedule as a Payment tool. 

You said - Rafael, IF you or any other contractor, whether in the USA or Indonesia or Outer Mongolia or the Antarctic is being paid for the work they have physically completed (which is almost certainly 100% of us) then they are using SOME FORM of "Earned Value Management".

• Your statement misses that there is an abysmal difference between EV and EVM, here a single letter makes a huge differene. By the same token EV and PV look similar but represent different concepts.
• There is an abysmal difference you are unable to see and accept, a difference the DOD understands. 
• EVM attempts to integrate Cost and Schedule time element using simplified approach that is very poor as it does not distinguish between critical and non-critical activities. Basic EV does not attempt to mix schedule time element, does not attempt to mix oil and water.  

Your article are wrong, your call for ambiguous practice is wrong.

• To promote ambiguous versions of any standard is wrong. The correct approach would be to use different standards/specifications. In some cases the correct approach would be not to mandate standards not applicable to the particular case. 
• Any further EVM as well as for ES [Earned Schedule] limitations such as their dependency on a Baseline that in many cases is ever changing may be inherent to the concepts.
• Private sector uses EV without using the unnecessary acronyms EVM depends so much.
• To say private sector uses EVM is wrong, a few do, many do not.
• To say private sector across the board uses ANSI 748 is wrong.
• To pretend mandating use of EVM without disregard to contract type and volume threshold is foolish, no one size fits all.
• There is no such thing as multidimensional WBS in use, all are vertical structures, the needed to have different views or different WBS structures is another thing. What you call dimensions can be represented by different WBS levels. Any CPM software can handle more than 3 WBS levels, calling for only 3 levels is not a good call. 
• To say the primary driver for government contractors appears to be compliance to protect the contractor in the case of a government audit is not true, cannot be substantiated by wishful thinking, until the requirement is taken out of the contract it cannot be quantified and substantiated.
• If only 1.7% of the contractors partially meet the NDIA requirements it shows there is no desire of private contractors to use it and makes a statement in favor of the primary driver for government contractors to be compliance with the mandated contractual conditions.
• I take no side regarding LOE Activities as the software I use do not have such thing. Spider Hammocks and LOE activities are not the same and the differences are documented.

The DOD do not recommends EVM except for Development Contracts that meet specific thresholds and discourage its use on firm-fixed-price [FFP]contract to the extent it would require a waiver by the DOD for it to be used on FFP contracts, it is your inability to recognize USA practice that is an issue.

I do not want to add something else to Section 9 of the GUILD document, I would like it to be corrected by someone else that is not so biased as you are.   I do not want to be part of it but to raise my independent voice about the many wrong things (I think) it promotes.

My experience with the AACE International when at one time I was considering becoming part of it was that as a condition I would be required to abstain criticizing the AACE International. By asking me to abstain criticizing the GUILD unless I become part of it you are showing the same attitude, not everyone wants to be part of a group that promotes ideas they do not agree and find extreme/biased. I have no interest in becoming part of the GUILD. 

Your frequent references of articles of your authoring as to substantiate your own work seems to me a poor choice, too much of self-promoting yourself.

Best Regards

Rafael

PP Admin,

How can we help?  Please email PP Admin with what you want on there and we will update it.  As I said in my earlier post; the top thread must have (1) the GPCCAR text that you are questioning, (2) how YOU feel the text should be presented in order to be correct and (3) your logic / reasoning for it.  

• There is so much said within my already segregated posts that I doubt the space provided will be enough, I do not know how I can adequately fix it other than to cross reference the discussions prior to GPC Admin segregating them all as well as rolling back the title to the original title before it was segregated. 
• A better solution would be to roll back until all segregated discussions return to where they started to where thy belong but this is out of my hands. It was very simple everything I wanted to debate about Section/Chapter 9 in a single open discussion. 
  • http://www.planningplanet.com/forums/guild-project-controls-gpc/586276/090-managing-project-progress-and-bobbys-world
• This would never happened if not by the insistence of GPC Admin to invade other domain and take over PP FORUM as if having their own GUILD CLOSED FORUM full of restrictions is not enough.
  • OPEN TO ALL PP MEMBERS
  • 
  • CLOSED - OPEN ONLY TO THE GUILD MEMBERS
  • 
• I am posting in what I believe to be an OPEN FORUM not in a GUILD CLOSED FORUM/DOMAIN along with their particular rules you are applying to my discussion within PP OPEN FORUM.
• My interest is to have open discussion in an OPEN FORUM that have no such requirements. Such as an OPEN FORUM that does not require an "open source" published reference for each statement you make. All I am asking is a place to present my views and debate it without so many restrictions. Same as PP FORUM was before, same as it is currently applied to other discussions in PP OPEN FORUM. 
• If the GPC do not want their paper to be discussed then they should keep it within the GUILD and not make it available to anyone outside the GUILD. As soon as they make it public then it becomes a concern of anyone that can be impacted by its adoption.
• Currently only about 2% of construction jobs in the USA are mandated to use CPM Schedule as a payment tool and close to 0% of construction jobs are mandated to use EVM. Construction contracts are radically different to defense development contracts, the DOD recognizes the reality but the GPC do not. The adoption of GPC ideas by our state and municipal agencies can be detrimental to our practice. 
• To the GPC there is no distinction by location or industry sector.  The GUILD says - "The Guild of Project Controls Compendium and Reference (GPCCaR) to all intents and purposes defines the subject matter that the Global Project Communitybelieve to be neccessary in order to be a fully-rounded practitioner irrespective of Location or industry Sector." 

Best Regards,

Rafael

In our state and municipal construction jobs as wel as in private construction jobs it is not unusual to allow some flexibility with regard to the billings cutoff date.

Say that during a given billing period 100% of billable work is zero because no billable activity was not realized. Such can be the case of concrete on a mat foundation delayed a couple of days because of rain. All preparation activities that are non-billable was done during the financial period but the pouring happened a couple of days after the end of the financial period. Here it is not unusual to allow some flexibility with regard to the billing period. The contractor will be allowed to submit a payment request for a slightly different financial/billing period and not forced to wait until next billing period. This causes no problem with the time phased data if using Excel or Spider Project that allows for flexible financial/billing periods, on the other hand if using P6 or MSP software as a payment tool you will not have such flexibility.

1. How does the GPC proposes to deal in a reasonable way with this issue when P6 is used when is dependent on a single fixed financial periods definition? 
2. How does the GPC proposes to deal with P6 if using a common database when there are multiple jobs requiring different financial periods?
3. MSP being less functional in this regard will present more challenges to tackle such issues.

The same happens with other similar concrete pouring preparation activities where no payment is allowed until concrete is placed.

Everything is becoming too complicated for the average job, too many restrictions on the use of the tool as if every job will end in court.

• For the settling of ordinary change orders and scheduling issues it is common for those who will make the decision not to rely on a schedule and software intricacies they cannot understand and use common sense.
• If a job ends up in court it will be to the expert analyst to fix the schedule as for it to be valid as a claim tool; once again most judges will end up doing the same, not to rely on a schedule and software intricacies they cannot understand and use some common sense. 

No wonder most field supervisors as well as many Contractors disdain and dislike formal scheduling procedures to the point they prefer to outsource it to meet contractual requirements and use manual methods and electronic worksheets to plan their own work. 

If the GPC wants to elevate how others view the CPM Schedule it would be good not to forget there is another side of the coin. 

• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/earned-value-simplistic-explanation-carmen-bates?trk=hp-feed-article-title-comment
•  
• 7/2/2016
• Rafael Davila
• Consulting Engineer
•  
• I am against the idea of mandating EVM as well as the use of the CPM as a payment application tool with complete disregard of the implications. If the trend gets outside the boundaries of USA Federal Government it will become a heavy burden to our State/Municipal/Private contracts.  
•  
• www.planningplanet.com/forums/guild-project-controls-gpc/591073/09-managing-project-progress

• 09.5.3.1.3 Adding Activities to the CPM Schedule 

• The above suggestion to leave the original logic in place by the GPC is wrong, leaving deleted activities as well as leaving the original logic in place among other issues:
• 1. will distort resource leveling
• 2. will distort cost loading
• 3. will distort schedule updates on activities no longer existing
• 4. will be confusing and misleading
• 5. will miss necessary logic revisions common when as a result of change in scope it dictates a need for a change in logic, among others, such as necessary logic revisions common when preferential logic is used. 
• 6. GAO Schedule Assessment Guide Best Practices for Project Schedules suggests keeping deleted activities and logic while setting duration to 0. But this is not fail safe and error prone as can be if you miss the impact of still active lag in progress or any other remaining lag as well as if you miss to delete any fixed cost assignment. 
• http://www.ronwinterconsulting.com/Making_CPM_Transparent.pdf
• In-Progress Lag Report and Value: Remaining Lag should be displayed just as remaining duration is shown and editable. The CPM feature of Remaining Duration was added so that Schedulers could monitor and change this calculated duration result. Lags are to relationships what durations are to activities.
• 7. Spider Project allows you to display deleted activities on a conspicuous way when comparing schedule versions and without the risk of interfering with current schedule. Easy, everything is transparent, no need to tweak schedule versions. If your software lacks enough functionality it is no excuse to promote such misleading and error prone practice.