Introduction

M2.1 — Planning & Schedule Development turns authorised scope and the agreed delivery strategy into a credible, structured and maintainable schedule model. It explains how to define activities, milestones, calendars, durations, interfaces, ownership and planning assumptions at a proportionate level of detail, creating a practical foundation for logic analysis, resource assessment, progress updating and forecasting.

M2.2 — Logic, Critical Path & Float connects the schedule into a dynamic network that shows how work and outcomes depend on one another. It develops the learner’s ability to select and challenge relationships, distinguish logic from constraints, identify critical and near-critical paths, interpret total and free float, and explain what is currently controlling key milestones and what may control them next.

M2.3 — Resources, Productivity & Schedule Optimisation tests whether the logically valid schedule can actually be delivered with the people, skills, equipment, work fronts and supplier capacity available. It links quantities and productivity to effort and duration, compares demand with effective capacity, identifies bottlenecks and supports transparent choices between smoothing, levelling, acceleration and resequencing by considering time, cost and risk together.

M2.4 — Progress Updating & Schedule Control establishes a disciplined reporting-cycle process for recording what has actually happened and recalculating the remaining plan. It covers data dates, actual starts and finishes, remaining durations, out-of-sequence progress, revised logic, validation and variance analysis so that schedule status is evidence-based, internally coherent and capable of showing emerging control issues rather than merely recording activity.

M2.5 — Schedule Forecasting & Analysis uses the updated schedule to form a current, evidence-based view of likely future delivery. It teaches the learner to analyse milestone movement, path change, float erosion, productivity, resource assumptions, uncertainty and recovery options; distinguish the latest forecast from the approved baseline and management target; and communicate both the expected outcome and the actions or decisions needed to influence it.