#9: 7 CPM Tips: Supers/PM’s/CM’s This One’s For You

CPM tip #1: Hire a scheduler with Construction Management experience

The ideal career path for a scheduler is:

Superintendent->Project Manager-> Construction Scheduler.

It is the career path less traveled; but if you can find even one such scheduler, you will have really found something.

A scheduler without construction experience can’t build a schedule without the help from a CM type.

Schedules created by such coalitions are the very reason that CPM schedules have been reduced to nothing more than expensive schedules of values (at least in the case of cost loaded schedules), used primary for producing invoices, instead of managing projects.

Project managers producing CPM schedules are not the answer either. Mastering primavera is not a part time job. PM’s have enough hats to wear without adding scheduling to their list.

Anything less than mastery prevents you from properly modeling the project. Without a model of the project, you cannot properly represent or manage change conditions on-site.

If you can’t find a scheduler with CM experience let me know, and I will help you find someone.

CPM tip #2: Model the building approach with the schedules organizational structure

The beauty of critical path methodology is in its modeling capabilities. There is no better way to organize the assembly of the project. The CPM schedule has to be intuitive and that means breaking down, grouping, and sorting activities to match the planned flow of work throughout the project.

All of this work falls under the schedule design phase of work. It requires, more than any other (except special updating scenarios) the facilities of a master scheduler with CM experience. Getting this model designing process right is invaluable.

The challenge is that Primavera’s coding mechanisms are so capable. It is like an artist in front of the canvass with unlimited colors and brushes. Like a picture, no two schedules are the same. What makes the difference is simply the experience of the scheduler. Their construction experience and their Primavera experience.

When the schedule design is done right, construction challenges are uncovered early, allowing time for solutions to be formulated. Risks that could potentially derail construction are exposed, studied and addressed.

These discoveries some times result design changes, building approach changes, and even labor or equipment changes. All of the scenarios addressed early make for a smoother, more predictable construction project. And there is no more effective tool, than the CPM schedule to accomplish this. But without a scheduler with CM experience, and expert Primavera skill sets, the accurate Baseline Model is never achieved.

CPM tip #3: Fully develop your CPM schedules

A summary schedule may be good for selling, but nothing else. Ever since I was part of a team that won the first phase of a 50M project, after centering our sales presentation on our fully developed CPM schedule, I can’t even say that a summary schedule is good for that. We have used summary schedules for feasibility studies and for early risk assessment conceptual analysis.

My point is that summary schedules or even schedules that lean toward underdevelopment have no place on the jobsite. The power of a fully developed, current CPM schedule, that is designed and organized correctly,  in the hands of a competent construction management team is awesome … and it is required.

Getting back to CPM basics; to use the schedule to manage the project, it has to be fully developed. It is hard to link up activities logically, and it is impossible to model the building approach, if there are missing parts and pieces. Initial holes in the baseline further weaken the schedule with every period update that they are not addressed. The longer that the flawed model is used, the more vulnerable it is to be discredited.

CPM tip #4 Include key subcontractors with schedule design & development

If you are sincere about using the schedule to manage the project, and using the schedule as a model, to uncover potential challenges – then bringing in key subcontractors, should be automatic. A scheduler with extensive CM experience, has learned most of what he knows from CM teams along the way. The most knowledgeable  guys/gals relative to any given task; many times are the trade managers.

The cumulative mastermind of the group, inevitably; designs, develops, and produces solutions that the scheduler alone could not do. These schedule facilitation sessions benefit the project in other ways too. The construction management team meets and gets to know each other. That pays dividends, ten months later, when the painter sprays the cabinet installer in the face (future post, it happened; yes intentionally). The fact that their bosses were friends was very helpful.

Involvement with the schedule design and development, gives the trades a sense of ownership in the project. They are now more likely to buy-in to a schedule they helped to create. As well they are more likely to continue to participate in the ongoing updates and schedule optimizing, strategy sessions.

**CPM tip #5: Update the CPM as required to keep the schedule current

If you’re worried about the cost – don’t. A well designed, fully developed, current CPM schedule, has no net cost … it never has. Expensive schedules are the poorly designed, underdeveloped schedules that are updated only to facilitate invoicing. These schedules can be bought for a fraction of the cost up front. But the costs that follow loosely controlled projects make those schedules prohibitively expensive, over the course of the project.

The only thing that rivals the importance of updating the construction schedule is the performance of that schedule. The two have to work hand in glove. There is no point to updating a schedule that is not being performed. Conversely it makes no sense to use a schedule to manage the project that is not current. You are better-off with a detached two week look-ahead spreadsheet. At least it is accurate. But remember this: A detached look-ahead spread sheet is not a CPM schedule and supports results that range between failure and mediocre.

So if you’re wondering why you can’t achieve results past mediocre, and your using detached look-ahead schedules to manage complex projects; I am grateful to share what I know to be profound CM insights that will propel your project outcomes to a place that could not be imagined without such tools.

From day one of the project, you have the opportunity to transform the schedule into the seminal project document. How does this happen? This happens with the arrival of Actual Start, Actual Finish, and Percent Complete entries to the schedule. The period specific data, or progress, entered and accepted by the client, turns the schedule into the undisputed record and reason for activity progress and project pace, for that period.

As each month ends, the schedule is updated; the clients CM accept the progress. The schedule is submitted with the invoice for payment. The existing schedule is archived. A copy of that schedule is renamed for the next period use. The cycle repeats itself. It is the accumulation of these archived schedules that tell the complete story of the project. This is why, original baseline design, development and schedule updating is all important. Because the organizational structure that you design and then develop for the baseline, is the framework that you have to use to convey the whole project story with.

CPM tip #6 Performing the construction schedule – where the rubber meets the road

1. Identifying critical and near critical paths
2. Manning-up critical and near critical paths
3. Prioritizing,  managing, and measuring (EVM) mass volume work
4. Performing work concurrently that was originally planned sequentially
5. Optimizing scheduling strategies
6. Not inheriting delays caused by others
7. Achieving interim milestones
8. Using the schedule to quantify change conditions

Schedule performance is all about building momentum intensity, sustaining that intensity until the end of each construction phase and then rebuilding the momentum intensity in the next phase. As the project winds down into the close-out phase, the production focus is shifted to open issues. They need to be collected organized, disseminated, and completed to bring the project across the finish line.

The trick that many superintendents (including me at the start of my career) stumble on when it comes to performing construction schedules is this: When you come across a poor performing subcontractor or vendor – don’t be too patient. First explain your responsibility clearly to the trade foreman/super/PM.

Explain that he is just one link in the chain and your job is to keep the chain strong. Tell him you intend to do it and ask him who above him would be the best one to talk to for help. Then rinse and repeat at the next level. Do not let a day go by without seeing results or going up the chain.

If you reach the top of the subcontractor/vendor chain without results: Repeat the exercise with your own company. You might want to notify them as you are going up the chain of command with the subcontractor/vendor.

Most superintendents think it is a sign of incompetence, to ask for help from above. Actually it is the opposite. It is a sign of security. It is a sign of confidence. After all, you probably did not pick the subcontractor or negotiate the contract.

Advanced CPM schedule performance depends on understanding profound critical path methodologies. I find most CM teams do not solidly grasp these fundamental, yet they are very profound practices. These methods are easily taught, and the results are staggering.

CPM tip #7 W. Edwards Deming once said: The most important business metrics are unknowable and immeasurable

Things like; the actual value of a happy employee, or the actual value of a happy client. The trickle down values are hard to quantify. These CPM rules surely fall into that category. The Designing, developing, and performing CPM schedules have a very far reaching effect on construction businesses.

I have been building and performing construction schedules for 23 years. I learned Primavera (as a superintendent) to solve the problems on my own projects. Since then I have completed 119M as a Superintendent, 72M as a PM, and have been involved with more than 1B as a Construction Scheduling Consultant.

When I was hired to be a scheduling consultant – my new boss said: Don, right now, you are a contractor’s scheduler – I am going to turn you into a professional technical scheduler. He said it is going to take some time, but I’m a patient man.

It was a painful process. He kept his word. The point that I want to make is that there was so much more to learn. And that if I knew then, what I know now, I would never have left project management, because it would have been just too easy to stay. The construction management strategies that I know now are that powerful. They are all rooted in building, updating and performing the CPM Schedule. They clarify the construction management  process. They make managing the Client a whole lot easier. They make achieving extraordinary project outcomes, very straight forward.

I am talking about success that surpasses on-time and on-budget. I am talking about processes that make construction management enjoyable. I am talking about Processes that remove the constant stress of not knowing whether you will be able to finish on time.

When everyone (owner/subs/you) onsite knows the project is going to finish on-time, the atmosphere onsite changes. It’s because the attitudes on-site change. The tradesmen are talking openly and are not territorial, worried about who’s working where and how productivity will be affected, etc.

I call it TV construction. Because prior to learning profound CPM strategies, movies on TV, were the only happy construction sites I had ever seen … really. How about you?

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If you need help finding a scheduler with actual construction management experience, let me know.