Changes in Baseline Schedule
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Mirza Imam BaigMember for 23 years 5 months
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I am working as a Project Control/ Planning Engineer for an EPC Project.
Data:
The Project comprises of multi-discipline works. Say Architectural, Structural Mechanical and Electrical Works. In my WBS for Engineering Works, I am organizing the project in the following order:
Level 1. Project
Level 2. Discipline
Level 3. Drawings
Each activity in the schedule represents a Drawing. And each drawing has start and finish dates defined and Man-hours / resources allocated to it.
I prepared the baseline schedule and tracking it with respect to the Actual Schedule on a weekly basis.
Question:
The problem begins now. After a few weeks, the drawing list is being revised due to some reasons. This will result in the addition / deletion of the activities. But the total Budget for the Project is fixed. It will not change even there is an addition/ deletion in the drawing list.
Now my question is how to track the Actuals with respect to the Baseline when there is a change in the drawing list and when the Total Budget being the same. Whether I have to change the baseline, redistribute the Budgets each time there is a change and track? Is this the solution to this problem? If there is some alternate to it, please guide me. It is causing me lot of inconvenience. Hope the experts will help me in this regard.
Thanks.
Imam Baig
Planning Engineer
Data:
The Project comprises of multi-discipline works. Say Architectural, Structural Mechanical and Electrical Works. In my WBS for Engineering Works, I am organizing the project in the following order:
Level 1. Project
Level 2. Discipline
Level 3. Drawings
Each activity in the schedule represents a Drawing. And each drawing has start and finish dates defined and Man-hours / resources allocated to it.
I prepared the baseline schedule and tracking it with respect to the Actual Schedule on a weekly basis.
Question:
The problem begins now. After a few weeks, the drawing list is being revised due to some reasons. This will result in the addition / deletion of the activities. But the total Budget for the Project is fixed. It will not change even there is an addition/ deletion in the drawing list.
Now my question is how to track the Actuals with respect to the Baseline when there is a change in the drawing list and when the Total Budget being the same. Whether I have to change the baseline, redistribute the Budgets each time there is a change and track? Is this the solution to this problem? If there is some alternate to it, please guide me. It is causing me lot of inconvenience. Hope the experts will help me in this regard.
Thanks.
Imam Baig
Planning Engineer
5 replies
Oldest first- 0Raj Maurya ·After changing no of deliverables budget should will be changed accordingly but you are forcing that Budget will not change so you need some manupulation work to maitain the budget as it was.
In your case if there is so many changes that affects total duration & cost implications, try to convince the client and revise the schedule and make new baseline. - 0Philip Jonker ·Hi Imam,
You sit with the unfortunate problem we all have, that is drawing revisions, we can cope in our planning with a couple of revisions, but when somebody is difficult, and insists on changes, it becomes difficult to control, this is where early warnings, of compensation events come into play, and as a good planner you should spot the problems early enough,
Generally I allow enough time, with the aid of lags, and aproval/rectification activities, to cover most of the revisions,however, when you hit a ptoblem, your float and logig can go out of the door. This is the time to take a firm hand, and pulll things back into place, that is yout job as a planner.
Regards
Philip - 0Ronald Winter ·Imam,
The solution to this problem is to stop trying to track each drawing with a single activity. In fact, I normally track groups of similar drawings as a single activity. This way, when an area of the work needs an unanticipated detail, you add this extra drawing to the activity that this extra drawing ‘sprung-out’ of. If the budget cannot change (which is not so unusual,) then the additional drawing absorbs a portion of the existing budget of the ‘parent’ drawing. Good luck!
- 0Berli Berli ·Hi Imam,
I aggreed with Ronald. For activity in P3 we usually use the group of deliverable such as Specification,Data Sheet, MTO, Drawing, TBE, etc... For detail monitoring & control the progress I use the excell spread sheet and use some milestone to identify the progress like Issued for comment (IFC) 60% etc...
When the deliverable list has modification by engieeneering team so we can play in the detail list and spread the budget again (without change the Approved Budget). Usually if it happens in middle of project for additional deliverable I will use zero budget so it would not impact to our baseline... and for deleted deliverable I will put the progress to 100% (if we have already issued for Rev A)or the budget will be move to additional deliverable..
Warm Regards,
Berli
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