revised baseline due to changes of volume work !

Hi mimoune

A change in 1% on the total volume of work or a single day in EOT shall require a new baseline.

I always believed Baselines to be a waste of time as they do not represent true changing conditions, therefore a waste of time, hundreds or thousands of target dates always wrong. The updates tells you the true plan, if these are falling behind then upon request you should re-submit for approval an update reflecting a plan change. The updates shall be compared to true actual conditions, not to a fictitious Baseline. If there are pending items then the narrative by the contractor and the comments by the reviewer shall clearly expose the status of things to the Owner, an old Baseline is misleading to all.

At my location, in our practice we do not compare the update with the always lagging Baseline we compare actual status against actual contract milestones. It is just hands down common sense.

The term baseline should be left for the forensics and what-if analysis.

Because of high competition and the volume of work, markup in construction jobs are quite low, usually in the order of 15%, if you deduct OH (overhead) you are left with about 8%, a 10% in 8% is .8% therefore a change in 1% on the total volume of work shall require a new baseline, why 5%. By the same token, with regard to time, a single day in EOT shall require a new baseline, why 235 days? Time is of the essence.

I believe these are archaic requirements from the early dates of CPM, as archaic as requiring to constraint contractual milestones to fixed dates.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Mimoune

Depending on the form of contract changes in work volume do not necessarily equate to a variation in the contract that entitle the contractor to an EoT.

However more work usually takes longer to do.

A 10% increase in work will not equate to a 10% increase in time because some of the increased activities will use up float.

If howver a critical activity has a large increase in volume then the effect on completion could be dramatic.

You need to have a properly resource modelled programme that relates to the original cost plan before you can demonstarte any changes to the programme caused by increased work.

Best regards

Mike Testro

Dear Mimoune,

Your activities and logic did not change, but the quantities changed. If the Program of Works is not representive the actual work at site, then you need to update your program of works with the expected new durations.

So the answer to your question would be "It Depends" if the current Program of Works is useful and representing the progress of works at site or not.

With kind regards,

Samer