Longest Path

Definition: It is the longest sequence of activities that drives the forecasted schedule completion date.

Focus: It focuses on the “longest” chain of activities and the dominant driver of the forecasted completion date.

Use Case: The longest path analysis is more prominent in the schedule updates. This analysis can examine how the forecasted completion date is derived because it can effectively determine the longest sequence of activities among other competing critical paths.

Critical Path

Definition: It consists of activities that have a total float amount of less than or equal to zero. Although the total float amount that determines the criticality threshold can be customized inside Primavera P6 under the scheduling options (refer to the below snapshot), zero is the industry standard.

Focus: It focuses on the most critical tasks that directly impact the contract’s completion date.

Use Case: The critical path analysis is used in both the baseline schedule and the schedule updates. However, in the schedule updates, the critical path analysis will produce distinct results over using the longest path analysis alone. Analyzing the multiple float paths is an effective method for performing critical path analysis during project execution.

Identifying the Longest and Critical Paths

There are some ways to identify and recognize both the longest path activities and the critical path activities in P6. However, I will only cover the most common features that I personally use.

1- Filter

You can filter the longest path and critical activities as highlighted in the below image.

2- Activity Columns

You can add “Critical” and “Longest Path” columns to your activities layout as below.

3- Grouping

You can group your activities by whether the activities are “Critical” or  “Longest Path” as per the image below.

Finally, I would like to add two final points you need to consider while analyzing the critical path and longest path activities.

• In the baseline, the critical and longest paths are the same.
• In the schedule update, a critical path is not necessarily the longest.
• The longest path is always a critical path except when the forecasted completion date is earlier than the contract completion date. In this case, the longest path will show a positive float and therefore, it is not critical. However, this is rarely the case. In my experience, Contractors do not often submit a schedule update that shows a completion date that is earlier than the contract completion date.

Conclusion

To sum up, the critical path and longest path analyses can shadow each other but are not the same. Performing any of both analyses will depend on your objective and which schedule version you are using.

Regards,

Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, CCP, PMI-SP

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The post Longest Path vs Critical Path appeared first on Smart PM Blog.

In this video, I explain how you can connect your progress photos to your Power BI model.

Here is the script:

let
BinaryToPbiImage = (BinaryContent as binary) as text=>
let
Base64 = “data:image/jpeg;base64, ” & Binary.ToText(BinaryContent, BinaryEncoding.Base64)
in
Base64
in
BinaryToPbiImage

Regards,

Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, CCP, PMI-SP

The post Connect Progress Photos with the Power BI Model appeared first on Smart PM Blog.

You will most likely need to make, document and justify schedule changes throughout the project. First, let’s look at why we need to manage the schedule changes carefully.

The Contractor is the constructor of the project so the Contractor utilizes the suitable means and methods in the baseline schedule. Both the Consultant and Client can have some comments in the baseline development phase but for the most part, the Contractor reflects the construction tools and methods in the program.

This establishes the baseline program. It represents the Contractor’s original intention of how the work should be performed over the project life cycle. Moreover, the completion date is now “scheduled” in the baseline schedule as a result of everything that has been done in the schedule so far (e.g. number of activities, durations, relationships, calendars, etc). This also means that any changes to these schedule attributes might cause corresponding changes to the completion date. Therefore, any deliberate changes in any of the schedule attributes should be managed carefully.

A huge misconception is that the schedule changes are the sole responsibility of the Contractor but this is far from the truth.

Know your rights and boundaries regarding the schedule changes as a Contractor and a Consultant.

1- Schedule changes – The Contractor’s perspective

many engineers underestimate how sensitive the CPM network is to changes. A single change in the schedule can cause dramatic changes to the network behaviour. Such change can take the schedule from order to chaos and vice versa. Moreover, the changes are sometimes incorporated with good intentions (e.g. removing out-of-sequence to ensure schedule reliability). However, in other cases, the Contractor manipulates the schedule to achieve a favoured outcome that is not necessarily in the best interest of the project. Therefore, all schedule changes must be properly documented and justified as a part of the periodic progress reports.

2- Schedule changes – The Consultant’s perspective

The consultant must carefully review these changes, and perform what-if scenarios to evaluate the impact of these changes. Moreover, the consultant should identify, report and respond to any manipulation attempts by the Contractor. The Consultant should reject any changes (full or partial) if the changes are not in the best interest of the schedule/project. In addition, the Consultant should provide feedback in a timely frame manner. If the Consultant responds to these changes after 1 year, the response will be void and useless. The changes were made 1 year ago and the corresponding outcome was communicated to all project parties for decision-making.

Everyone acted on that report back then. These actions can include developing the necessary recovery measures, reviewing the possibilities of schedule acceleration, analyzing extension of claim opportunities and drafting formal notices. You can’t now decide, for the first time, to reject some schedule changes that were incorporated 1 year ago – the changes that led to the above-mentioned actions and triggers and made everyone act on them. Although the consultant’s review time might not be stipulated in the Contract, it can be a huge weakness in any dispute resolution if the reviewer takes too long to respond.

Best practices for managing schedule changes.

• Both the Contractor and the Consultant should agree on the “Schedule Change Log Format” that will be used to document and justify schedule changes.
• The log should include all appropriate details. For example, for logic changes, specify if the changes are related to the predecessors or successors. Moreover, mention if the changes are related to the relationship type and lag. Moreover, write the Activity ID and Activity Description for all impacted activities. Finally, justify the change and explain the negative consequences of not making that change on the schedule reliability.
• It is very effective for the relevant parties to sit at the same table and discuss the changes.
• Mention when the change was incorporated into the schedule (e.g. weekly report no. and data date).
• Document and justify the changes in a way that assumes the reviewer has no prior knowledge or familiarity with the project.

Finally, managing schedule changes is a challenging and tough journey but it is worth the effort for all project parties to ensure the project’s success and fairness in calculating damages.

Regards,

Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, CCP, PMI-SP

The post Schedule Changes – Explained appeared first on Smart PM Blog.

Understand schedule constraints in 3 minutes.

In this video, you will learn what a constraint is and how it should be applied to a schedule.

You will also learn the best practices for applying the constraints and the common mistakes planners make.

If you don’t apply the constraint properly, you will have a misleading useless schedule.

Regards,

Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, CCP, PMI-SP

The post Schedule Constraints appeared first on Smart PM Blog.

A risk management register should be updated regularly. This register can include the following:

Risk description and category.

The status of this risk (active or inactive).

Cause and effect.

Risk Type (threat or opportunity).

Qualitative risk assessment (Probability, Impact and Score).

Appropriate risk response strategy.

Responsible party.

The risk assessment matrix that helps the reviewer determine the level of risk significance.

Here is a detailed tutorial that explains everything you need to know about the risk management register.

Regards,

Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, CCP, PMI-SP

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Enroll in our Planning Engineer and Project Control Courses

The post Risk Management Register appeared first on Smart PM Blog.

This amazing tool can help you plan and optimize the rate of progress and also facilitate the development of delay recovery measures.

This video explains everything you need to know about the line of balance and the associated applications in both the baseline and schedule update.

Regards,

Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP

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The post Line of Balance in Project Control appeared first on Smart PM Blog.

The value of your reports will be compromised if the results are not presented in a skilled and polished manner.

Many planners think that the more colours they show in their reports, the better.

But this is far from the truth.

Watch the below video to understand the colour patterns and the best practices of presentations in project control.

In this video, I explain the colour wheel and colour palette. I also demonstrate the associated applications in project control.

Regards,

Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP

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The post Colour patterns and presentation best practices appeared first on Smart PM Blog.

It is too much work

Here are some of the tasks that you need to implement in order to prepare a reliable plan.

• Review the scope.
• Add activities and relationships
• Have reasonable assumptions regarding productivity rates.
• Estimate durations.
• Determine manpower requirements.
• Develop a fully cost and resource-loaded schedule.
• Identify and analyze project risks.
• Discuss the work with project stakeholders.

However, the planning department doesn’t often have all the answers.  Planning Engineers will need to discuss many things with the team. Moreover, they may need to discuss certain parts of the plan with suppliers, vendors, subcontractors and other stakeholders and then consider their feedback as inputs to the program.

Employer’s Approval

Many contractors follow the wrong approach regarding baseline approval. They ensure that A) the Baseline covers the whole scope and B) it is fully cost and resource loaded regardless of the fact that the schedule may have many unreasonable assumptions. Many planning engineers aim to produce a superficial schedule that forecasts unrealistic expectations. They include a sufficient level of detail and show beautiful bar charts and eye-catching histograms. However, the plan is simply unrealistic and unreasonable to follow because the objective was to obtain the Employer’s approval. The Employer’s approval should be a means to an end.

Employer’s Expectations

We can now agree that the development of the baseline schedule requires time and effort. However, many modern contracts require the Contractor to submit the Baseline schedule within 14-30 days after the Contract award. This is a really short time frame to prepare a practical plan which will serve as a guide for the whole project over the next, let’s say, 2-3 years. Another issue is that the level of uncertainty in the project tends to be very high at the beginning. However, such uncertainty is reduced throughout the project as more information becomes available. Again, it is hard to know all the answers at such an early stage during the baseline development. For example, Employers may include a provisional sum and nominate a Subcontractor who will carry out a specialized scope of work. After the specialized Subcontractor is nominated, a detailed execution and site clearance plan will be proposed. However, the Subcontractor’s plan will likely be different from the Main Contractor’s plan because the latter included some “assumptions” when the baseline was developed at the beginning of the project. Some of these assumptions are not feasible because a lack of specialized knowledge and the unavailability of sufficient time negatively impacted the quality of such assumptions. Similarly, more vendors, suppliers and Subcontractors will join the project at a later stage after the commercial stage is completed. Hence, incorporating all inputs and developing the overall project plan takes a lot of time.

Serious consequences

A baseline schedule is a product that you will have to live with throughout the project life cycle. You may need to implement changes as necessary to maintain the schedule but regular significant alterations may put the feasibility of your plan into question. Therefore, you must spend the necessary time and effort to create a realistic plan because there will be serious consequences for not doing so. Such consequences include:

• Unrealistic expectations and forecasts.
• Useless progress monitoring because the reference that you measuring against is unreliable.
• Unfavoured responses on your Extension of Time Claims.

Overcome the challenges

In my opinion, here are the possible actions that can help us overcome these challenges and increase our chances of developing a realistic baseline schedule.

A plan

You will need a plan to create a plan. Here is what you can do to facilitate and expedite the plan development.

• Develop project control systems to facilitate such work.
• Develop templates to make the process easier and less time-consuming. For example, you may need forms, templates,tools and methods that you can use to ask questions and receive inputs from stakeholders.
• Conduct meetings with relevant stakeholders and departments.

Change in Contract requirements

We may decide that now is the time to change the way we manage our contracts. It might be effective to impose contractual milestones and give the Contractor sufficient time to prepare the plan (one milestone at a time). Hence, the Contractor can take 30 days to prepare a much more realistic plan for the first project phase instead of the whole project. However, we will need a totally new perspective on the way we manage certain contractual requirements such as baseline development, progress reporting, delay analysis, claims and other project control aspects. We shouldn’t be too worried about changing our order though. It is a part of human nature and that’s what helped us evolve over time. We started to see major developments in modern contracts during the industrialization stage after we wanted to construct more and larger bridges, roads and factories. Thanks to technology and other construction innovations, we now have the knowledge, skills, resources and confidence to complete more mega projects. Hence, we may need to review some of the existing contract frameworks to overcome the challenges associated with baseline development.

Regards,

Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP

Learn More!

Check out our comprehensive courses

The post Why is your Baseline unrealistic? appeared first on Smart PM Blog.

• Because it is a part of the contract or the client’s requirements.
• Because it is a part of my company’s procedures.

Then you don’t fully take advantage of the earned value applications in project control. This article will explain the mindset behind the cost and resources loaded schedule as well as the associated applications. The term “cost” might mean different things based on the context. In this article, I will assume the case in which we use a schedule to manage a contract, while we make the necessary reporting and submissions to an Engineer or client. For simplicity, the term “cost” that I refer to is the budgeted total cost which is based on the BOQ rate.  It is the amount that we use to load the schedule and derive the earned value from it.

Why do we need a cost and resource-loaded schedule?

One obvious reason why we develop such a schedule is to see future cost and manhours forecasts but there is more to that. In the below image, assume that there are two activities A & B in the project. Each activity has a 5-day duration.

If activity A is completed and activity B hasn’t started yet, what is the overall project % complete? Your first intuitive answer would be 50%. But what if activity A is a concrete activity that is worth $9,000 and activity B is a housekeeping activity that is worth $1,000? In this case, the overall actual % is 90%. Another example might be a procurement activity that has 90 days duration but costs $10,000 and a concrete activity that has 1-day duration but costs $30,000. hence, we can make two conclusions based on the above.

1- We can’t use time as a weighting system to evaluate performance. However, there are other approaches such as CPM that evaluate the time intensity and the project criticality levels.

2- Cost can be an effective weighting system to measure progress.

Why isn’t cost enough to evaluate performance?

As per the above example, the cost seems very effective to measure progress. Why do we need to report the Planned vs Actual %, Variance % and SPI as per manhours too? Because some activities are very costly, while others are more labor intensive. For example, a concrete activity costs a lot of money but might require 15 man-days over a 1-day duration. On the other hand, paint activity costs a lot less but might require 60 man-days to execute the work. Therefore, we need to measure progress from both perspectives. You can refer to the below image to understand the concept better.

Another example to demonstrate the concept can be seen prior to the project completion. it is very common to see the below scenario:

1- The project is completed 95% (cost wise) because most activities have been completed and all major costly materials have been delivered and installed onsite.

2- The project is completed 85% (man-hour wise) because there is a lot of pending snagging, paint, testing and final touch-ups which are more labor demanding.

That’s why we need to have a cost and resource-loaded schedule to serve as both forecasting weighting tools. Moreover, it is essential to report progress as per both cost and manhours.

Regards,

Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP

Learn More!

Check out our comprehensive courses

The post Earned Value Mindset appeared first on Smart PM Blog.

1- Collect progress data.

2- Update the schedule.

3- Prepare the weekly report and dashboards (input data in the same fields, apply the same formula, do the same formatting, etc)

4- Review the outcome.

5- identify project delays.

6- Prepare progress presentations for meetings.

7- Voila! Rinse and repeat.

Boring, right? Well, I am here today to tell you that there is a golden opportunity in this routine.

Here is an example of just one routine step. Every week, you calculate the SPI on Tuesday morning. It is when you’ve just completed the schedule update and started preparing the report. You divide the Earned Value Cost by the Planned Cost. This means that you apply the “same” mathematical operation every week on Tuesday morning. It doesn’t matter if you use excel for calculation purposes. You would still need to copy data from P6 or input a figure manually into your excel report. The same concept will apply when you try to calculate the Actual %, variance %, etc. In other words, you actively participate in the development of your report. Despite the current technology and software tools that we currently have at our disposal, 99.9% of planning engineers perform their duties in such a traditional way which impacts their productivity and limits their potential to add value.

Planning Engineers should find a way to apply technology leverage and code such routine tasks so that most of their work is passively completed; thanks to our boring routine. On the other hand, doctors can’t follow an exact routine every time they diagnose a patient because factors such as gender, age, and health problems must be taken into consideration. Hence, doctors must perform their duties in an active manner on a case-by-case basis. Planning engineers are just so lucky to have a routine whenever a reporting task is requested or completed.

Disadvantages of performing task routine

According to the above, when you “actively” perform your tasks and follow the routine, you will:

1- Feel bored by an overwhelming amount of repetitive work to produce static reports which make your work less enjoyable.

2- Spend more time, effort and energy performing the same tasks on weekly basis.

3- Have high friction in your workflow as you would need to apply numerous steps to prepare your report. Moreover, you will need to constantly review your outcome, apply P6 filters, deal with formula errors, format reports, update the cell range of your excel formula and refer to the baseline schedule as necessary.

4- Follow the “same” steps to prepare your progress presentation manually.

5- Struggle with meeting deadlines.

Advantages of coding your task routine

In this case, it makes far more sense to use data analytics processors such as Power BI to code the task routine which helps planning engineers:

1- Automate tasks and complete interactive reports and presentations on autopilot within seconds.

2- Analyze any area in the project with a click of a button using one tool.

3- Save time and effort by eliminating low-impact activities such as formatting or applying mathematical operations.

4- Not feel bored by doing the exact same work every week.

5- Enjoy less friction as you will need to worry less about excel formulas errors, reviewing your outcome or constantly referring to the baseline schedule, as necessary.

I am not talking about a few routine steps here. I mean the whole process that you follow to complete your reporting tasks such as trend analysis, progress curve, breakdown analysis, variance analysis, etc.

Conclusion

Your biggest enemy is sometimes your best ally. Your “boring” routine that you always complain about could be the reason for you to become more productive, add more value and unlock the best career opportunities. Your routine can be the way to have the time, freedom, clarity, efficiency and energy that you exactly need for a prosperous career. It is also how you stand out from the competition.

Regards,

Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP

Learn More!

Check out our comprehensive courses

The post Bored from your planning task routine? Think Again! appeared first on Smart PM Blog.