Situation:
Project manager and superintendent involvement, buy-in, and ownership of the project schedule.
Very few project managers and superintendents are involved in the design, development, and maintenance of a project schedule. Yet, it is a tool they rely on to plan their work, organize resources, capture progress, log changes to the original scope, show impacts on the work, and validate requests for payment. Smart project managers and superintendents understand that if the schedule is not accurate, reliable, and properly represents the plan, their work becomes even harder to accomplish and to collect payments due. The fact remains that no project can succeed without the commitment and buy-in of the project team. Starting from the planning stage, project managers and superintendents who manage field operations must be involved and should own the design, development, and maintenance of the schedule that models their work.
Problem Statement:
The challenge lies in securing the involvement and ownership of the project schedule by the project managers and superintendents.
Best Practice:
The project schedule should always have the approval of those who manage the project. They should sign off on the plan and commit to it. It is critical that the schedule has support from the project managers and superintendents. Project team members typically view the schedule as someone else’s tool when they do not have buy-in on how it is developed and maintained. Project managers and superintendents should play key roles in designing, developing, and maintaining the schedule. There may be cases where the contractual requirements restrict how much logic can be changed to reflect reality. In those cases, the managers and superintendents might choose to abandon the schedule, feeling that it does not allow them to represent their plan effectively. In such situations, the best practice would be to prepare and maintain an in-house schedule (a shadow of the main CPM) with minor modifications in the level of detail and logic that truly reflect their project plan.
Case In Point:
The schedule serves as a model of the project plan as managed in the field by project managers and superintendents. It is important to note that the schedule is used and relied upon by contracting parties, and it must accurately reflect and represent the project conditions. The information incorporated into the schedule throughout the life of the project should be correct at all times. Given that the data in the schedule is critical for resource planning, progress measurement, impact evaluation, and dispute resolution, it is essential for project managers and superintendents to take ownership of the information included in the schedule. For instance, while the contract administration department may be responsible for pursuing change orders and time extensions, it should be clearly understood that the accuracy of the data on the schedule can significantly influence any request for cost and/or time extension. If actual man-hours, durations, and production rates of activities in the project schedule are not accurately recorded, any attempt to forecast time and cost is likely to be incorrect and unreliable.
