Context
The client received a revised time schedule for the remaining execution phase from the general contractor and requested a review of its correctness and completeness.
Methodology
FELcilitate proposed a Schedule Health Check comprising 14 review criteria, largely based on the DCMA 14-Point methodology.
In addition, activities were checked for delay against the cut-off date and milestones were compared against the contractually agreed dates. The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) of the schedule was compared with the contractually agreed scope of work on the basis of P&IDs, equipment list and plot plan. A special focus was the logical linkage of construction activities to commissioning activities.
The analysis was based on the schedule’s native file and executed with FELcilitate’s analysis tool.
Outcome
The analysis revealed fundamental deficiencies. In essence, the schedule failed the check criteria for network, critical path and constraints, and the health check confirmed that the completion milestones were not in line with the contractually agreed milestones.
The decisive finding went further: the critical milestones were not the result of the network calculation but hard-coded into the schedule as fixed dates. A schedule built that way cannot show the effect of a delay on the completion date, so it was not sufficient for steering the project.
The client used FELcilitate’s report to re-open the discussion of schedule quality with the general contractor. Within the following weeks the contractor developed a new schedule. Planning quality increased considerably, and the project could be steered properly through to the successful execution of the site works.
