| PREPARE ANY TYPE OF CPM SCHEDULE OR BAR CHART FOR YOUR PROJECT |
Bar chart or Gantt chart, Milestone chart or summary CPM, Non-resource loaded CPM precedence schedule, Fully cost and resource loaded CPM precedence schedule, Schedule built from contract documents and contemporaneous documents, But-for or window analysis schedule (impacted/delayed), Proposal schedule aimed at winning a bid, Impacted as-planned schedule, Impact fragnets or Time-impact analysis, Demonstrous evidence charts and diagrams Recovery Schedules, Measured Mile Analysis, Linear Schedule Analysis, and more. |
| WORK HAND-IN-HAND WITH YOUR PROJECT TEAM, MAINTAINING YOUR MEANS AND METHODS, AND WORKFLOW |
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If your schedule does not represent your project team's intent, they will vary from its workflow. The more seasoned your project leader and team members the truer this will be. This is the main reason that your project/field team must meaningfully participate. I've seen websites that basically say we will scheduler it and you build it. This is ridiculous. A contract/project schedule is the project, it must represent the essence of your company's means and methods. A good scheduling consultant has seen many examples of planned and executed workflow and must contribute this experience and their expertise in modeling this workflow in the development of the project schedule. The project team must participate and make the plan theirs. Remember, the team will be gauged against how they carry out the plan. Not the scheduler. You want a scheduling consultant who will work as an adjunct team member. |
| ASSURE THAT CONTRACT AND INDUSTRY STANDARDS ARE MET OR EXCEEDED |
Let me discuss what this means. Often you will be faced with a very anal specification that defines every aspect of how you will prepare your project schedule, leaving no subject untouched. Often you will be dealing with a contract that only hints at the need for a contract schedule. No matter where your contract fits into this scale, you must comply and follow its intent. If your contract is silent or nondescript, we must apply a suitable selection of industry standards. This comes along with its own set of possible problems. This is why it is so important to work with an experienced scheduling consultant. It is their job to guide you through this vast array of possible scheduling decisions that must be made. The consultant is also there to guide you through the detailed specification requirements. Question you must be able to answer about the schedule you are ready to use ..... How do you know if your schedule or even the vendor’s schedules are any good? It always helps to have a formal guideline and the Defense Contract Management Agency’s (DCMA) provides a 14-point assessment that can be applied to evaluate project schedule quality. The DCMA is a Department of Defense organization that works with suppliers to manage the U.S. Federal Government projects. The DCMA only evaluates tasks in the project schedule that are valid tasks. Summary tasks, subprojects, zero duration tasks and formal milestone tasks are removed from the analysis. The DCMA provides 14 different schedule quality checks that I’ve divided into project schedule development and project schedule management categories. |
| WORK WITH YOU TO FULLY AND PROPERLY INCORPORATE IMPACTS AND RESULTING DELAYS INTO YOUR SCHEDULE LOGIC |
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| COMPLY WITH CONTRACT REQUIREMENT OF COE/SDEF, GAO (14 POINT ASSESSMENT), OR ANY SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS |
| PROVIDE WEEKLY AND/OR MONTHLY UPDATES, COORDINATED WITH YOUR TEAM AND CONTEMPORANEOUS RECORDS AND INCORPORATE CHANGE ORDERS |
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| USE THE SPECIFIED SOFTWARE AND PROCEDURE |
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