EPC schedule - split between Home Office and SITE
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Carmen ArapeMember for 22 years 3 months
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Hi Planners
Following the development of EPC schedule, you start at Home Office with a detailed Engineering and Procurement schedule. The construction section is just a rough idea of activities and a fixed time frame, for instance 12 months (that is the most important).
ONCE the project moves to Construction with Civil activities (do not take into consideration site preparation activities), you must develop a Construction schedule. The one that you used for some months at Home Office is no longer useful.
The EPC schedule is now split in two schedules with following structures and locations:
Engineering & procurement (E&P) : at Home Office
Construction : At Site
Links between E&P with Construction are now most important than before.
HOW CAN I KEEP MY EPC SCHEDULE?
Solutions
Keep EPC schedule at Home Office and update with input coming from Site. Unfortunately, I have tried this solution. Maintaining detailed construction schedules at home office is a nightmare.
Keep the EP schedule at Home Office and leave the detailed Construction schedule to Site Planners. Sounds good to me but How I can keep live the most important links such as: key drawings and Equipment&material arrival with construction activities.
Planners , How are you managing this situation.
Cheers,
carmen
Following the development of EPC schedule, you start at Home Office with a detailed Engineering and Procurement schedule. The construction section is just a rough idea of activities and a fixed time frame, for instance 12 months (that is the most important).
ONCE the project moves to Construction with Civil activities (do not take into consideration site preparation activities), you must develop a Construction schedule. The one that you used for some months at Home Office is no longer useful.
The EPC schedule is now split in two schedules with following structures and locations:
Engineering & procurement (E&P) : at Home Office
Construction : At Site
Links between E&P with Construction are now most important than before.
HOW CAN I KEEP MY EPC SCHEDULE?
Solutions
Keep EPC schedule at Home Office and update with input coming from Site. Unfortunately, I have tried this solution. Maintaining detailed construction schedules at home office is a nightmare.
Keep the EP schedule at Home Office and leave the detailed Construction schedule to Site Planners. Sounds good to me but How I can keep live the most important links such as: key drawings and Equipment&material arrival with construction activities.
Planners , How are you managing this situation.
Cheers,
carmen
15 replies
Oldest first- 0Dieter Wambach ·Carmen,
in your question there are still some open items:
1. IT infrastructure: connectivity between both locations? - I assume Internet - maybe VPN (Virtual Private Network), exchange of CD, diskettes ...
2. Software you use for schedulung I assume Primavera P3e/P5
One location must be master: home office, the other slave: construction site.
With myPrimavera (they change the names frequently) people
can access directly the data base via web server (at the home office) and an IP Address.
If not possible: check-out <--> check-in
You see, it’s rather difficult without better information.
Dieter - 0Richard Spedding ·Carmen
The answer must be do not split the two.
Any developments of the initial programme must have the original E&P at the front end, otherwise you end up in the situation you have found.
Therefore you must get the site planners to forward their programme to you, updated regularly, and you must return it to them with the E&P updated, equally regularly.
Whether you have a web-based server where the Integrated Programme is held and both locations have access, or you end up with a CD/RW of the programme being transported from one location to another is a function of the site’s remoteness. - 0Marcel van der Leij ·I fully agree with Nieman that the schedule should not be split. We used to email the one schedule back and forth between home office and construction site.
Of course now comes the next dilemma, Home Office updating once a month, Construction every week. Weekly rescheduling can lead to bizar results, so use estimated or automatic progress, with corrections at the end of each month.
Cheers, Marcel - 0Dieter Wambach ·Hi,
now Carmen should give some information before we start "beating". If she uses MSP, Niemann and Marcel, you are absolutely right, but in P3e you can just create two projects out of this one schedule. When one is checked out, nobody will be able to modify it in the home office, just read, until it will be checked-in again.
Some companies use this as a normal procedure.
In a co-operation it should be possible to agree for a weekly or a monthly update.
The automatic progress is very dangerous. Never I found a situation to use it.
Regards
Dieter - 0Carmen Arape ·Dieter, Niemann and Marcel
Thanks for your answers but the situation is like this:
Dieter,
Answering your questions:
Connectivity between locations: private network. No problem at all with communication.
Software: P3 version 3.1 . Project group structure used.
Niemann
Project Split is a MUST and I get Construction schedule once a month at Home Office. I have a level 2 and level 1 construction in my EPC schedule that I update monthly with input coming from level 3 construction schedule (site).
I spent a lot of hours detecting the changes from one month to another. Unfortunately P3 version 3.1 does not the ability of reporting changes during the month.
The boring task is detecting what the change might be: predecessor, duration, constraint dates, +/- activities among others.
Cheers,
carmen
- 0Richard Spedding ·Carmen
One of the constraints I like to try to impose is to keep the Construction level 3 programme fixed once it is agreed and signed off by the construction team.
By fixed I mean no changes to the logic unless there is a significant variation to the works.
In that way you limit the drudgery of finding where the changes are. Durations should not change except during progressing activities, where duration to completion should be correct in the report.
If your site team is allowed to change the programme month by month then they should give you a report on the changes they have made with the updated programme much the same way a revised drawing should have the revisions described in the title block - it shouldn’t have to be a guessing game! - 0Dieter Wambach ·Carmen
some additions to Nieman:
A Netherlands company Primaplan - www.primaplan.com - some time ago offered a software "Project Investigator" to compare 2 Primavera projects and to show the differences. I don’t know if they still offer it or any conditions.
After the schedule for construction is agreed you may use Primavera’s mailing function or the Export/Import to Excel.... In both cases the other side may modify data and even add activities. After being returned P3 modifies the project according to the import file.
If you copy the complete project, you’ll loose the relations to the other project.
Regards
Dieter
- 0Carmen Arape ·Nieman,
“Construction schedule being fixed” means for me to get the baseline or target schedule. After this process that could be very long because we need to get the blessing of all parties, we do start updating the schedule.
For me the schedule is a live document that must reflect the reality, which means changes. Especially in Construction, risky business where a rain or anything might change your PLAN.
I do not believe in schedules that no one believes because they reflect ONLY the Planner idea of doing things.
Besides that, I like to play with scenarios. Sometimes the Project manager comes to me with a WHAT IF situation, that I need to evaluate with my schedule in order to give comments about Schedule impact. Of course for this, I use copies of my current schedule.
Dieter,
Thanks for the comment about primaplan because I did not have any idea about software with such characteristic.
Cheers
- 0Ronald Winter ·As far as comparing two schedules goes, you have two choices;
Primavera Claim Digger (see http://www.primavera.com/customer/products/claimdigger.asp)
or Schedule Analzyer (by Ron Winter Consulting (see http://ronwinterconsulting.com/sa_brochure.htm.)
Good luck! - 0Christian Adrian De Vera ·Carmen
I agree with all the solutions given here and as far as I can see it is not the technical that is your problem but getting the site team to buy-in the system of how the programme should be updated in or to reflect what is really happening (correct me if I’m wrong).. usually, the site team have their own way of doing things...
- 0Richard Spedding ·Carmen
I fully agree that a schedule I make is only my idea of how a project can be built. We as planners must produce a schedule that reflects how the team, led by the project leader, wants to build the works, and as such we are a service which drafts this plan out, and of course advises and influences the plan if we think they are wrong!
Once we have produced the Baseline Schedule, we have two duties.
First to monitor how we are progressing against the baseline, on a regular basis, whether weekly, two weekly or monthly.
Second to review the short and medium term schedules produced by the site team and make sure they adhere to the baseline, more or less, or of course improve on it.
Obviously things change from day to day and we must be flexible, but we must be advised by the baseline, which must not be changed unless the scope of the works varies, in my opinion.
I too do many ’What ifs’ on copies of the programme, because that is another function we have to fulfil.
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