“The New Era of Project Scheduling: The Practical, the Possible and the Pitfalls”

By John Armstrong

Today, one of the most challenging tasks facing the construction is the ability to complete projects on time. Construction firms and owners are seeking creative solutions to manage schedule risk and perfect their ability to deliver certainty. Liquidated damages, spoiled reputations and lost profits are just a few motivators for any player the industry to improve its performance on projects.

Improved schedule management practices can take multiple forms. The most basic is planning and scheduling resources in the most efficient manner. The industry is experiencing workforce shortages across nearly all trades and lack of qualified labor is a regular cause for delays on construction projects. This can be partially mitigated by ensuring subcontractors and crews are working without interruptions caused by congested areas, multiple mobilizations, sporadic work flow and/or partially available work fronts. Giving crews continuous, logical and uninterrupted work flows helps improve productivity and efficiency as well as improves subcontractors’ confidence in the schedule and aides in their planning efforts.

Another method to improve schedule certainty is to improve the accuracy and frequency in which schedules are updated. The schedule is at the very least a contemporaneous representation of the parties’ understanding of that overall plan, what has been completed and what will happen in the future. The schedule is then intended to be used to make informed business decisions and without accurate and timely information, contractors and owners cannot make smart decisions on how best to proceed. Having accurate, contemporaneous records increases the likelihood of resolving time-extension requests at the project level and identify practical methods for accelerating the schedule when faced with delays. Accurate schedules also minimize costly disputes that cause distractions on the project and rarely results in a winner when it turns into litigation or arbitration. Contractors, owners and other construction firms can improve update accuracy by closely adhering to AACE International’s published recommended practices for planning and scheduling.

Recently, the call for aggressive schedules is more likely to come from owners than contractors. However, most owners fail to realize that accelerated schedules come with higher price tags. Contractors aren’t typically willing to forecast optimistic completion dates because they are feeling the real impacts of labor and material shortages that often prevent aggressive schedules. The most common times aggressive schedules are being implemented is when the owner demands it or a contractor is relying on an early completion date as a bidding strategy. As a whole, the overall industry focus is more on driving scheduling certainty than aggressive schedules, which can be pricy, risky, and often unachievable.

PROJECT SCHEDULING AND THE PROMISE OF TECHNOLOGY

Scheduling-related software has been increasingly improving for the last decade, making it easier to create schedules, perform risk analysis and produce reports.

PROJECT SCHEDULING AND THE PERILS OF TECHNOLOGY

While technology is unquestionably a driving force in scheduling, it’s not without its caveats. In fact, technology—in and of itself—may not necessarily improve efficiency and productivity. Today, many schedulers function more like software developers than they do actual planners. They are not able to determine the accuracy of the information produced from these new software packages. Accordingly, it’s important to make sure that advances in technology aren’t just a cool new toy and are a tool that leads to smart decision-making and identifying pragmatic solutions to common problems.

STAYING ON THE RIGHT TRACK

Continual growth and improvement should always be the primary goal for the construction industry, regardless if we are talking about safety, quality, time and/or money. There are three actions that can improve the industry’s scheduling and planning performance:

• Promote advancing technologies. Technological innovation can help address the shortages in competent schedulers by minimizing redundancies and sharpening data analytics. Specialized technology, such as artificial intelligence, can also help with running scenarios and quantifying risks that previously have been difficult and time-consuming. Developments in 4D scheduling also help eliminate conflicts prior to work starting in the field and aid in planning efforts. Finally, new scheduling software is creating much-needed competition that the industry has not seen in a while. This is dropping the costs of software while simultaneously improving performance and usability.
• Democratize project planning and scheduling. Succinctly put, this means getting all project stakeholders (including the people who are actually building the work) involved with the upfront planning. While there has been some industry-wide progress on this front in the last few years, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. There are many exciting practices being generated by groups like the Lean Construction Institute, and it is likely that this trend of collaborative scheduling will continue.
• Emphasize field experience as well as software proficiency. It is concerning that many of today’s schedulers lack relevant field experience. They are unable to critically evaluate the accuracy or validity of outputs that come from scheduling software. There is no simple answer to this problem; however, some contractors successfully train foremen and superintendents to become full-time, long-term schedulers.

Expanding this practice would be a win-win for all involved. Implementing these three strategies will simultaneously help reclaim the basics of sound planning and scheduling and ensure a vibrant, relevant future for the practice. If construction professionals follow the recommended practices published by AACE International, the late projects, blown budgets, claims and confusion that are the inevitable result of slipped standards can be avoided. By collectively addressing issues that range from shaping the best software to educating and training new practitioners, the benefits will extend to the entire industry.