Narrative document on basis of scheduling

Refer AACE International Recommended Practice No. 38R-06

I don't think it matters which sequence you put them in, but you should cover such topics as:

-Overiding schedule philosophy

-Software to be used & settings

-Earned Value rules

-resource & cost loading

-update cycle

-RACI chart for providing update information

-Suite of Reports -internal & external

-Scheduling rules (use of constraints, relationship types, lags, level of detail, etc)

-Representation & management of time risks

-Baseline & re-baseline rules

-Relevant contractual clauses & adherance

Hi Gary

Another important factor is application of Health & safety rules.

Best regards

Mike Testro

I'll weigh in and say that THE most important topic in project scheduling (and one that is all too often either ignored or left unquantified) is the cost of time. Benjamin Franklin wrote 265 years ago that "Time is money." Never is this more clearly the case than on a project. Yet in my experience the reduction in value of the project investment for every day or week that goes by with the project unfinished is all too frequently left unquantified (outside of plant maintenance projects).

Since it is activities and constraints on the critical path that delay project completion, the cost of delays should always be driven down to the specific CP activities and constraints causing them: as Drag Cost for activities and scheduling constraints and as the Cost of Leveling with Unresolved Bottlenecks (the CLUB) for resource limitations.

Without such data and the quantitative value-based decisions they justify, most scheduling becomes little more than darts thrown at a numberless dartboard. How do we ever know which schedule is better?

BTW, Mike Testro, congrats to England on their 2-0 victory in the Wisden Trophy series. But I must say that I was pleased at how Windies fought. I think we're finally on a path to respectability. I'm even looking forward to the ODIous series.

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan

Hi Steve,

I agree it's a very important factor, or at least it should be.

In my experience though, most contracts are not let in a way which incentivises the contractor to finish ASAP. Hence the cost of delay to the contractor is reduced down to avoiding LDs and minimising prelims.

In addition, Clients often see issuing (and paying for) an instruction to accelerate as a failure of contract management, so rarely do it as a positive move to improve a project's performance, only to get themselves out of a hole when things go south.

I calculated that delay / acceleration of one of the projects I'm working on at the moment was worth approx 40k per week to the client in lost/gained revenue. But there is no incentivisation clause and little danger of delay to the point where LDs would be a factor, so as far as the contractor is concerned the only benefits to finishing early are reduced prelims, freeing up resources to work on other projects, and maybe a slightly better chance of winning more work in the future. -The latter two are quite hard to quantify, which gets us back to reduced prelims, which averages at less than £20k per week. So we're making project decisions using cost/time impact criteria which are out by a factor of 3.

So basically I don't think the true cost of delay will ever really catch on until clients start driving it with smarter procurement and contract management.

Gary,

you still calculated a cost of time. In your project acceleration is not profitable. But it is nice to know what amount of money (if any) makes sense to pay for acceleration. In your particular case none.

Best Regards,

Vladimir