The truth is, productivity varies widely depending on multiple factors—experience, location, project size, infrastructure, and workforce capabilities. Believing in fixed productivity rates without considering these variables can lead to flawed project estimates, cost overruns, and unrealistic schedules.

To illustrate this, let’s examine two carpenters working under very different conditions.

Example 1: A Carpenter with Limited Experience

Imagine a carpenter who has:

• Only two years of experience working on small residential projects.
• Been working in a developing country with limited resources and outdated tools.
• No exposure to structured workflows or large-scale projects.
• Minimal access to cranes, hoists, or material storage facilities—they often carry materials manually, wasting significant time and effort.

Example 2: A Highly Experienced Carpenter

Now, consider a second carpenter who has:

• Twenty years of experience working on megaprojects in a developed country.
• Worked under tight deadlines with strict quality control.
• Been trained in advanced construction techniques and efficient task execution.
• Access to a strong logistics infrastructure, including tower cranes, hoists, and structured material storage, minimizing unnecessary movement and delays.

Why These Differences Matter

The second carpenter has mastered their skills over decades, mastering the ability to work efficiently under pressure.

With better site logistics and tools, they don’t waste time moving materials manually. A hoist or crane can deliver everything they need exactly when and where they need it.

They also have access to standardized procedures and best practices, reducing errors and rework.

They execute tasks with high quality, eliminating the need for rework or defect correction

Meanwhile, the first carpenter does not have these advantages. They work slower, with more inefficiencies and potential quality issues.

Productivity Exists on a Spectrum

Although these two examples highlight two extremes, I wanted to explain the fact that productivity exists on a spectrum. It is influenced by:

The experience and training of the workforce.
The complexity and scale of the project—a small house is not the same as a high-rise tower.
Availability of tools, equipment, and material handling systems.
Cultural and regulatory factors that impact work efficiency.
Weather conditions—harsh climates can reduce productivity significantly.

Many companies make the mistake of applying “industry-standard productivity rates” from textbooks or databases without considering these real-world factors. This can result in inaccurate cost estimates, unrealistic schedules, and project delays.

Why Standard Productivity Rates Fail in the Real World

In my years in project controls, I’ve seen countless cases where contractors or consultants rely on assumed productivity rates without validating them on-site. Here’s what usually happens:

1. Overly Optimistic Estimates – The project team assumes a productivity rate based on ideal conditions, not actual site conditions. This results in unrealistic schedules.
2. Unexpected Delays – When the real productivity turns out to be lower, the project falls behind, causing significant delays.
3. Cost Overruns – Labor costs increase as workers take longer than expected to complete tasks.
4. Disputes and Claims – The stakeholders argue over unrealistic targets, leading to potential conflicts.

Here is a better approach. Measure actual productivity on your projects instead of relying on outdated, generic assumptions.

How to Accurately Measure Productivity

Track Real Performance – Observe how long specific tasks take in YOUR company, with YOUR workforce, in YOUR environment.

Benchmark Against Similar Projects – Instead of generic industry standards, compare productivity rates from similar projects in similar locations.

Final Thought

Applying a one-size-fits-all productivity rate to projects is like assuming every car gets the same fuel efficiency—it simply doesn’t reflect reality. If you want accurate estimates, stop relying on myths and start using real data.

Regards,

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

Learn More!

Enroll in our Planning Engineer and Project Control Courses

The post The Myth of Standard Productivity Rates: Why They Don’t Exist appeared first on Smart PM Blog.

In this article, we’ll explore why focusing only on negative float is insufficient and how time sensitivity and earned value indicators provide a more comprehensive picture of project progress.

1. Understanding Critical Path and Time Sensitivity

In Critical Path Method (CPM) scheduling, activities on the critical path have zero total float, meaning any delay to these activities will directly impact the project’s completion date. These activities are highly time-sensitive.

Let’s look at the image below as an example.

• Red activities represent the critical path (zero float).
• Orange activities have high positive float and represent non-critical activities but have significant cost assignments.

Red Activities: The Critical Path

For the activities highlighted in red, any delay will cause a corresponding delay to the project’s completion date. These activities are critical and sensitive to time. As long as the contractor maintains the planned progress on these activities, the project will remain on schedule, with zero float.

However, focusing solely on these red activities doesn’t give a full picture of project performance. There’s another layer to consider – the earned value.

2. Earned Value Metrics

Now, let’s turn our attention to the orange activities. These activities have high positive total float, meaning they are not time-critical and won’t immediately impact the project’s completion date if delayed.

But here’s the key issue:

If the contractor fails to execute these non-critical activities as planned, the earned value cost will be severely impacted – even if the project completion date remains unaffected.

In some cases, you could have zero float (indicating the project is expected to finish on time), but your earned value indicators show a negative variance.

1- To achieve the target cash-in from payment applications and strengthen cash flow health.

2- If these activities continue to be delayed, the total float will be depleted, eventually making them critical.

3. Why Negative Float Alone Is Not Enough

Relying solely on negative float to measure project delays does not account for the cost and performance impact of non-critical activities.

Here’s what happens when Planning Engineers ignore this:

• A project may appear to be on schedule (zero float), but it’s actually suffering from low earned value performance.
• The contractor may be focusing only on critical path activities to avoid schedule delays, while neglecting the progress of high-cost, non-critical activities.
• This results in poor cost efficiency and low earned value outputs.

The slow rate of progress on the orange activities (non-critical) may not turn the float negative, but it will create a significant cost variance.

4. The Role of Earned Value Management (EVM) in Project Control

To avoid this pitfall, Planning Engineers must incorporate Earned Value Management (EVM) into their project control practices. EVM provides crucial performance metrics that complement float analysis. These metrics include Planned Value (PV), Earned Value (EV), Schedule Variance (SV) and Schedule Performance Index (SPI)

These indicators help Planning Engineers measure schedule performance more accurately.

Therefore, the Planning Engineer must utilize both Criticality and Earned Value Analysis to identify:

• Cost overruns on non-critical activities.
• Poor productivity rates that could impact the total float of non-critical and future critical activities.
• The true performance of the project beyond float analysis.

There is also another layer in analyzing the earned value based on both cost and manhours but I wrote a detailed article about it that you can read here.

Conclusion

In project planning and control, focusing solely on negative float provides an incomplete and sometimes misleading view of project status.

By considering time sensitivity and earned value indicators, Planning Engineers can achieve a more comprehensive understanding of project performance, ensuring they balance both schedule and cost efficiency.

The key to successful project control lies in integrating multiple performance metrics and ensuring that both time and cost objectives are met throughout the project lifecycle.

Negative float matters — but it’s not the whole story.

Regards,

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

Learn More!

Enroll in our Planning Engineer and Project Control Courses

The post Schedule Delays Explained appeared first on Smart PM Blog.

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

Learn More!

Enroll in our Planning Engineer and Project Control Courses

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

Learn More!

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

Learn More!

Check out our comprehensive courses

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

Learn More!

Check out our comprehensive courses

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.