Learners will discover the key project scheduling techniques and procedures including; how to create a network diagram, how to define the importance of the critical path in a project network, and defining project activities float. Also covered are the fundamentals of Bar Charts, Precedence Diagrams, Activity on Arrow, PERT, Range Estimating, and linear project operations and the line of balance.
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The Role of the Scheduler in Construction Management
Jennifer Buermann, of the STV Group, discusses the role of the scheduler in a construction project and how to determine if a project is on track to meet the estimated goals. Also covered are ways to adjust to ensure the project stays on track.
Instructor, Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Columbia University Director of Research and Founder, Global Leaders in Construction Management
Now looking back at the past is just as important,
although it's easy for people to neglect in the role of a scheduler.
We always want to have a perfectly accurate record
of exactly how the project was built.
It's an As-built schedule,
exactly the same way as you'd have an As-built drawing.
The as-built drawings are going to tell you what was in fact
built whereas the As-built schedule tells you how it happened, how was it built.
It documents the progress of the project over time.
So we're recording additional scope,
we might be adding activities to the schedule for that.
We're keeping records of project delays that are outside of our control,
whether they be things like weather,
days that we had to take off because the weather was too bad to work.
You could have delays and often do that are caused by your client.
Right up front in the early part of the job quite often design documents
are not delivered in a timely fashion, so that would be recorded in the schedule.
You want to have a record of any change in your construction sequence that out of
sequence work that I talked about, you want to be able to reflect
exactly how the project actually was executed now, why is this so important?
It's most important as support from management of crossed or
delayed claims either by you if you're the contractor or
against you if you find yourself on the client side of things.
Or potentially as a subcontractor for
better or worse, we deal with a lot of claims in the construction industry.
Now what actually constitutes the cause of delay claim,
it's a contractor saying, I am entitled to either additional time or
additional money or both because of some unforeseen delay or condition.
That I as the CM, or contractor, had no control over.
So the CM in that case needs to be able to go back and
take a look at the schedule and say, look, here it is.
I documented it right here, and they need to be able to prove that they themselves
were not also delaying themselves in what's called a concurrent delay.
Okay, so when we're talking about concurrent delays,
we're talking about a situation where the contractor has delays of their own.
And potentially there's a delay by the client as well or
some unknown outside source, but if the contractor or CM was delayed also,
then they may or may not be entitled to additional compensation for that.
But the schedule is where we're going to document all that.
So the scheduler is in large part, a historian the responsible for looking,
not just at the future and planning what's going to happen on a project, but for
documenting what's happened in the past.
A good construction manager or in most large companies that I've worked for
that schedules become a very powerful tool for lessons learned.
Large company will maintain a database of all their schedules for passed projects so
that if you have to perhaps create a proposal or
execute a similar project to one that was done.
Some time ago you can always refer back to those schedules and
say well we planned it this way but
we know that we had this particular issue on this project because it was a hospital,
or because it was in this particular part of the city or the world.
And that As-built schedule becomes a great tool for future development.
The Cost-loaded schedule if it is Cost-loaded is,
I wouldn't say often but sometimes use as a tool for invoicing.
So if you have cost associated with your schedule,
you can use it to show your client.
Look, this is exactly the work in place that we executed this month.
This is how much it's worth and therefore here's my bill,
my invoice that goes with it and you can use it as a way to support your invoice.
So when we're looking back to the past,
we're alway asking did we achieve the project's established goals?
And if we didn't, why or why not?
What are the financial ramifications, did we in fact manage to finish early and
get that bonus?
Should we be sending our client a bill for the bonus that we are entitled too?
Or conversely, do we unfortunately have to pay liquidated damages or
some other form of damages because we didn't achieve the project milestone?
And overall, what can we learn from this project experience?
So you see here, the scheduler's role varies from stage to stage of the project,
but it's equally important throughout the entire life of the project.
So when you're looking at the future of the project the scheduler again is
really the leader because the scheduler and the estimator,
nine times out of ten are going to see the project documents before anybody else.
And the estimator for the most part is looking at it in terms of quantities so
it's not, they don't need to gain quite as thorough of an understanding
of the project as quickly as the scheduler does.
And again, because the scheduler often has no assistance or
no other input than their own to start planning the project.
They become narrator and the story teller, they have to then present the documents
to the field team and say well here, this is what I was thinking.
This is how I planned it, they may have very different ideas, and
that's fine, but you need to be able to convey as a scheduler,
the story that you created when you envisioned the project for the first time.
When working in the present, I think the scheduler's most important role is as sort
of an advance scout, there are the person again who's maybe jumping two or
three months into the future and delivering back to project team,
this is what I foresee, this is what I'm forecasting, these are all potential risk.
As well as potential opportunities to maybe pick up time,
there are translator and interpreter.
One of the most important,
I think that's probably the most important role that I found as a scheduler.
Because again, the project team, the superintendent, the project manager,
they don't always have time or the wherewithal to be looking through pages
and pages of a very advanced, very elaborate P6 schedule.
They need someone who can quickly tell them right off the bath, this is what this
means, these are the important parts that you need to pull out of this right now.
That should concern you as a project manager, so,
it's translating from very dense data rich language of
rover P6 into plain English I guess.
There are also a creator in the present in the sense that they're working to again
develop alternative scenarios and alternative schemes for
completing the work in time because as we all pretty much know,
nothing ever goes exactly as according to plan.
So the scheduler needs to be very much a creative person that thinks on their feet,
and is able to quickly come up with solutions and
options for how to execute the work.
And looking back at the past the scheduler again is a historian.
They're a person that's responsible for keeping the record books straight and
making sure that the progress of the project is documented correctly.
They're an educator because they're a person that then needs to go forward to
the next project and say hey.
On this project we did it this way, or let's refer back to another schedule that
I worked on six months ago, a year ago and use what we found there.
Now the custodian for the knowledge based, of keeping all that knowledge
stored in a database so that we can pull it out and use it as needed.