M2.1 Planning & Schedule Development

Module 1 establishes the essential building blocks for effective project controls. It explains how to define and structure project scope through a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), establish consistent coding and control structures, and integrate scope, schedule, cost and responsibilities into an approved baseline. It also covers how to measure physical progress using objective evidence, distinguish actual performance from forecasts, and maintain reliable, traceable project data. Together, these practices provide a consistent and trustworthy foundation for planning, monitoring, reporting, decision-making and controlling change throughout the project lifecycle.

Module 2 establishes the essential practices for developing, managing and controlling credible project schedules. It explains how to translate project scope into a structured schedule, establish logical relationships, identify critical and near-critical paths, and understand float and milestone dependencies. It also covers how to assess resource availability, productivity and delivery constraints, optimise schedules, and maintain accurate progress updates using objective evidence. Finally, it explains how to analyse schedule performance, forecast likely completion dates, identify emerging risks and evaluate recovery options. Together, these practices provide a reliable foundation for understanding project timelines, monitoring delivery performance, anticipating delays and supporting informed decisions to keep projects on track.

By the end of this section, the learner should be able to take a credible current schedule and use it to forecast likely future outcomes, explain what is driving those outcomes, test alternative scenarios, assess the effect of uncertainty and management interventions.

1. Practical outcomeBy the end of this section, the learner should be able to take an approved schedule and turn it into a trustworthy current control model at each reporting cycle. They should be able to establish a clear data date, collect and validate actual progress, record actual starts and acomplishments.

By the end of this section, the learner should be able to test whether a logically valid schedule is actually deliverable with the people, skills, equipment, facilities and other constrained resources available to the project. They should be able to distinguish resource demand from capacity.

The learner should be able to construct and analyse a logically linked schedule, choose relationships, recognise missing or inappropriate logic, distinguish logic from constraints, identify critical and near-critical paths, understand total and free float, recognise negative or unusually high float.

By the end of this section, the practitioner should be able to design and apply a coherent set of coding and control structures that allows project information to be organised, integrated, aggregated, reconciled and reported without repeatedly rebuilding the underlying data.

By the end of this section, the practitioner should be able to establish, test and explain an integrated project baseline that brings authorised scope, schedule, budget, assumptions, progress rules and accountability into one coherent reference position.

By the end of this section, the learner should be able to establish and operate a project-controls data environment in which important information is complete enough, accurate enough, timely enough, consistent enough and traceable enough to support management decisions.

By the end of this section, the learner should be able to turn authorised scope and an agreed delivery strategy into a credible, structured and maintainable project schedule that explains what work must be performed, in what broad sequence, and over what durations and calendars etc.

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