Project Schedule | Pro1plan Consultants

The Future of AI in Project Planning and Scheduling

May 21, 2024

The launch of ChatGPT-4.0 has shown us the incredible capabilities of AI, pushing the boundaries of what is possible. This innovation leads us to wonder how AI could be applied to fields like project planning and scheduling, potentially revolutionizing these areas. While there is always concern about technology replacing human jobs, AI in project planning and scheduling can be seen as a powerful tool to enhance human capabilities, reduce errors, and improve efficiency. Here are some ways AI could be integrated into existing project planning and scheduling software:

Milestone Extraction and Schedule Outline: AI could automatically extract scheduling milestones from tender or contract documents, creating an initial high-level project schedule. This schedule would respect the constraints of these milestones and provide a comprehensive view of project phases, helping project managers kickstart the planning process with a solid foundation.
Project Calendar Selection: By understanding programming specifications, AI can choose the correct project calendar type. This ensures that the schedule aligns with the specific requirements of the project, such as working days, holidays, and other time-related constraints.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Generation: AI could interpret tender or project specifications to generate a detailed WBS. This structure would outline the project phases, disciplines, systems, and components, providing a clear roadmap for the project execution.
Typical Work Sequences: AI can offer typical sequences for various types of work, streamlining the planning process. This ensures that project schedules follow industry best practices and efficient workflows, reducing the learning curve for new project managers.
Drawing Analysis and Quantity Extraction: AI-powered tools could read technical drawings and extract quantities directly from them. This capability would significantly reduce the time and effort required for quantity takeoffs and improve accuracy.
Interface Listing and Identification: AI can list and identify interfaces in project drawings. This helps in coordinating different project components and disciplines, ensuring that all interfaces are managed effectively and reducing the risk of integration issues.
Discrepancy Identification: AI could identify discrepancies between drawings and specifications, alerting project managers to potential conflicts early in the planning phase. This proactive approach helps in resolving issues before they impact the project timeline or budget.
Risk and Critical Path Identification: By analyzing the project plan, AI can identify risks and determine the critical path. This allows project managers to focus on high-risk areas and ensure that key milestones are met, enhancing the overall project control.
Historical Data Analysis: AI could compile a list of projects with similar scopes, including their corresponding costs and durations. This data-driven approach provides valuable benchmarks and insights for new projects, aiding in more accurate cost and time estimations.
Specialist Contractor Suggestions: Based on the project requirements, AI can suggest a list of specialist contractors for various works. This helps in finding the right expertise and improving the quality of the project execution.
Scenario Planning: AI enables scenario planning by evaluating different project strategies and listing the pros and cons of each. This helps project managers make informed decisions and choose the best approach for their project.
Programme Narrative Generation: AI can generate comprehensive programme narratives that explain the construction strategy, sequences, assumptions, constraints, assumed productivities, and labor histograms. This documentation is crucial for communicating the project plan to stakeholders and ensuring alignment.
Cashflow Curve Generation: AI could automatically generate cashflow curves, providing a visual representation of the project’s financial plan. This assists in managing project finances and ensuring that funding requirements are met throughout the project lifecycle.

Conclusion

Integrating AI into project planning and scheduling has the potential to significantly enhance the efficiency, accuracy, and effectiveness of project management processes. While there may be concerns about AI taking over jobs, the reality is that AI can empower project managers by automating routine tasks and providing advanced insights, allowing them to focus on strategic decision-making and problem-solving. Embracing AI in project management could lead to more successful project outcomes and a more dynamic and responsive approach to planning and execution.

Things to look up for when reviewing updated construction schedule

January 17, 2019

Compounding on the earlier topic about why Project Managers don’t review updated construction schedule, I will like to share with you guys ways which you can review the updated schedule effectively in managing your project.

A level 3 updated construction schedule is a very detailed schedule comprising of thousands of activities. Unless you have Primavera P6 /MS Project reader to open the native file and know how to filter the activities, it is very difficult to read and understand the project schedule. However, does it mean that without the native reader for Primavera P6 or MS Project, you cannot review the schedule? Absolutely not.

One way is to request the project planner to filter the activities in various specific layouts and save schedules in PDF format for review or you can get the project planner to filter the activities and review in front of you and your project team.

Let’s go into the various filter layouts when reviewing the schedule.

Check progress percentages and corresponding start and finish dates

Before diving into Critical Path Analysis to see which are the critical activities leading to the various completion milestones, it is important to ascertain that the progress updates (Actual Start, Actual Finish Dates, progress percentages ) are correctly input. There is a saying

“Garbage in, Garbage out”.

If the update is incorrect, any analysis is meaningless. The forecast finish date of each activity is calculated by the scheduling software as follows:

Remaining Duration = Remaining percentage x Original Duration
Expected Finish = Scheduled Data Date + Remaining Duration

To check if the progress percentages of these ongoing activities are correctly updated, all these activities should be filtered. In this layout, a column showing the previous corresponding percentage update will be useful for comparing the current progress against the previous update.

It is definitely helpful that activities are being validated against the daily site reports.

It is important that the percentage of the activities are captured correctly in each update so that:

1) The updated schedule correctly reflects the status of the project

2) The updated schedule is the basis for Time Impact Analysis during EOT evaluation

Check the programme logic for 4 weeks look ahead

Next to be examine is the 4 weeks look ahead activities. The project team should check the 4 weeks look ahead activities are still valid, considering the site condition.

However, activities that ought to take place within the next 4 weeks may be missing from the “4 weeks look ahead “window. There are 3 possibilities for this. Firstly, the “missing” activities are not in the schedule at all as it has been overlooked during the baseline submission. Secondly, there are errors in the upstream programme logic of these missing activities such that it pushes these activities out of the 4 weeks window. Thirdly, the “Retain Logic” Option is being selected for scheduling. When the actual sequence of activities are not in the same order as originally planned, the “Retained Logic” will push the downstream activities which should have taken place in the next 4 weeks window beyond.

There are some controversies in the scheduling community on whether the programme logic should be allowed to change to reflect the actual intent sequence of work on site during progress updating. On the other hand, some argued that by changing the programme logic, it is no longer reflective of the original intent of work sequences, thus making the evaluation EOT difficult.

Different organisations have different practices in allowing changes in programme logics and in the choice of scheduling options. May I hear your views here on the pro and cons of the various practices?

Arrange the activities by Total Floats

Critical path is the longest path of the project and hence determines the completion date of the project. To see the critical path, the activities shall be grouped by total floats. Activities with the biggest negative floats shall be reviewed first to identify the most critical activities. From these critical activities, the cause of delay shall be examined and catching up measures can be discussed.

Also do note those with excessive total floats. It can also mean that these activities are not properly linked or not linked at all.

In summary, a properly updated project schedule can be very useful tool for the project manager to ascertain the project status, identify bottlenecks and brainstorm for solutions.

Why Project Manager don’t trust the project schedule

January 4, 2019

Many project managers do not read the updated project schedule. I know many people (project managers and project planners/schedulers are going to feel indignant about my statement above.

But hang on, before you jump at what I said above, let me explain how I derived at this conclusion and why Project Manager doesn’t read the schedule before submission.

As a client Project Manager, I received the monthly progress schedule which was attached as appendices of the monthly report. More often than not, I noticed that the activities were not correctly updated. For example, certain activities were updated as completed but in actual fact, it was not yet completed and vice visa. Obviously, if the PM had reviewed the updated schedule, he ought to have caught all these glaring discrepancies!

Of course, for those activities that were in progress (not updated with 100% completed), it was difficult to say the updated percentage was incorrect from the updated schedule alone. There was always a degree of subjectivity when it comes to percentage updating. How to tell to tell with certainty if the updated activities should be 40% and not 30%?

So my conclusion was, the updated schedule was hardly reviewed by the PM before being submitted.

Wasn’t the updated schedule an important artifact and a basis for EOT claims evaluation when Time Impact Analysis would be performed? How would it affect the total floats and validity of the critical path if the schedule was not updated properly?

Now let us examine the root cause of why the schedule was not always updated correctly.

There were thousands of activities in a baseline schedule. It was unlikely that all dependencies between activities could be validated by the contactor’s team members. Likewise, the client’s project team could not have caught all the errors in the programming logic during the review, except for very glaring errors.
There was no agreed basis on the computation of percentage completion before the schedules began updating. For example, when the activities for slab casting was updated as 40% completed, did it meant 40% of the slab cast or rebar work? Was there an establishment of weightage for the sub-activities work?
Scheduler/Planner did not know what they are updating!. Once, I asked the contractor’s scheduler/planner what that M&E activities were referring to and why it was updated as such. His reply was, he did not know exactly but his M&E manager told him so!
The logic of project schedule was not updated accordingly with site development as work progress. Site development was very dynamic and the intended changes in the sequence of site work were not updated accordingly in the schedule. I was not sure if the changes of logic were not changed due to ignorance of the project planner/scheduler or because of the schedule control mechanism did not the logic of the programme to be changed until it was being approved or any other reasons.
As such, for the above reasons, PM did not trust the updated schedule. Also, it was very tedious to look at the schedule that runs into thousands of activities. Rather he would gauge the progress of the project by looking at site progress in relations to the milestones set in the baseline schedule.

In conclusion, I will urge the planners/schedulers to review the updated schedule with your project manager and team members regularly. It is very important to walk the site and know what is happening on site. Try to establish the basis of percentage updates for major trades with the team package leads and the subcontractors. Last but not least, do not be shy to ask the team leads about the progress updates if in doubt.

About the Author:

Stanley Tey has more than two decades of project management experience after graduating from the National University of Singapore in Civil Engineering. He also obtained a Master Degree in Software Engineering from Institute of Systems Science, NUS where he specialized in Project Management and Systems Integration.

He has worked as a Consulting Engineer, Project Planner, and Project Manager. Some of the projects he had handled are:

North East Line
Singapore 1st Desalination Water Plant at Tuas
Integrated Resort Project at Sentosa
Lonza Cell Therapy Plant at Tuas (Phase 2)
Merck Junumet plant at Tuas
Singapore Special Cable Tunnel Project

Do you Insource or Outsource project scheduling work in your company?

January 2, 2019

More and more contractors are indirectly hiring project planners/schedulers and choosing to insource project planners/schedulers from third-party outsourcer or outsource the service of project scheduling to a consultancy firm like Pro1plan Consultants.

There are many advantages in insourcing/outsourcing project scheduling as listed below:

Project scheduling is seen as a utility and non-core business of the project. It is akin to Autocad drafting, surveying, and legal services. It can be substituted and replaced easily.
Except for big projects, it is not a pre-requisite for smaller projects to use CPM scheduling tool such as Primavera P6 for project scheduling. The use of MS Excel or MS Project is sufficient for most smaller construction projects. However, when submission of project schedule using Primavera P6 is necessitated for project tendering, it is cheaper and faster to get a scheduler from a third-party provider for short term. Furthermore, there is no need to buy Primavera P6 Licence or send staff for P6 software training.
It is difficult to recruit and retain bright and ambitious young professionals in scheduling function for long in a company.
Project scheduling requires specialized knowledge of project schedule planning and project control. It is not just the mastery in the use of software scheduling tool, it takes time to master the knowledge of project planning and scheduling.

Insourcing and outsourcing each have its advantages and disadvantages. For insourcing, the planner/scheduler is at the full disposal of the project as he works full time. The disadvantage of this arrangement is it is difficult to get good quality planner/scheduler from the “body shop”. Most of these planners/schedulers are young with limited work experiences as these “body shops” cannot get qualified planners/schedulers with enough site experiences. They work merely as software operators or programmers.

Once I spoke to the boss of a “body shop” and he lamented that he could not pay the project planner/scheduler well because contractors were not willing to pay more for the services his company rendered. He could only get young project planners/schedulers from 3rd world countries with limited work experiences.

Next, we talk about outsourcing of project scheduling. The contractor engages a planning consultancy firm to develop the project schedule. Typically, during the development of tender/baseline schedule, the planning consultant works full time on or off-site until the delivery of the project schedule to the client. He usually charges the client based on effort/days he spends to develop the schedule or by specified milestones such as the 1st draft, 2nd draft, and final submission. After that, the planning consultant may work on 1 to 2 days weekly on an ad-hoc basis for the remaining tenure of the project once the baseline schedule is approved. In addition, he can also render planning/scheduling consultancy service as and when is needed. As such, there is no fixed overhead and thereby achieving cost savings.

The advantage of engaging a planning consultant is he can be counted to deliver the project deliverables without any hand-holding. During the tendering phase of the project where there is no luxury of time, a planning consultant’s service is especially critical as it speeds up the preparation of tender schedule and other related tender documentation. He knows what to look up for in scheduling development and programme requirements through his vast experience in handling projects.

The disadvantage of this option is that the planning consultant is not employed on a full-time basis. Sometimes, communication may be via phone, email or SMS and may not be as effective as communicating in person. Also, his rate is more expensive on a per day basis. Again, the experience of consultants vary and sometimes may not be as good as claim. Prior to engaging the consultant, it is important to interview him and check his credentials.

In summary, whether to insource or outsource project scheduling/planning depends on the expectations and requirements of the project. Do you need a full-time scheduler/planner with limited work experience to operate the planning scheduling tool or a planning consultant on assignment basis where he can be count on delivering the schedule development but at a higher rate?

If you are working as a planner/schedulers, I will like to hear your views as well.

About the Author:

North East Line
Singapore 1st Desalination Water Plant at Tuas
Integrated Resort Project at Sentosa
Lonza Cell Therapy Plant at Tuas (Phase 2)
Merck Junumet plant at Tuas
Singapore Special Cable Tunnel Project

Top down or bottom up for project schedule planning?

December 24, 2018

In PMBOK, a project life cycle comprises of 4 phases namely:

1.Initiation

2. Planning

3. Execution

4. Closing out

Initiation phase (also known as Conceptual phase) of a construction project is initiated from the client side. During this phase, a business case is being presented to the senior management. In this business case, the purpose of this project, the high-level description of the project, success criteria, the project budget cost and the high-level project timeline(Level 0) will be outlined. Usually, the timeline is estimated based on projects of similar complexity.

Once the project is given a go-ahead by the senior management, the planning phase of the project life cycle begins. The designated PM will proceed to develop a Project Master Schedule (usually Level 2) with inputs from Architect, C&S consultants, M&E consultants, contracts managers, and internal stakeholders. It serves as a basis on which the milestones and key dates in the tender specifications is being derived.

At the tender stage, each tenderer will be requested to submit a detailed tender programme to comply with the specified milestones and key dates in the tender specifications. To be shortlisted, It is essential that the tenderers’ demonstrate their understanding of the project scope and ability to complete the project within the timeline of the project. Hence, the tender schedule is usually a Level 3 schedule which shows sufficient details of their intent sequence of works. To aid the understanding of the programme, it is normally accompanied by a programme narrative which describe the construction strategy, general sequences of work, assumed productivity of various trades, critical path, project constraints, associated project risk and how it will be managed.

Once the project is awarded to the successful contractor, the execution phase of the project commences. A detail baseline schedule (level 3) which is further developed from the tender schedule is being submitted for approval which when approved is being used for subsequent status reporting to the client and EOT evaluation.

However, for site tracking and controlling of sub-contractors’ work, each sub-contractor will further develop a more granular Level 4 sub-contract schedule based on their sub-contract deliverable milestones.

For site supervision, a very detail 1 week look ahead work schedule is further developed from the above Level 4 schedule so as to track and manage the day to day site work.

How long does it takes to develop a project schedule?

December 20, 2018

A project schedule is a listing of project’s milestones, activities with intended start and finish dates. It is normally in Gantt Chart format. If the number of activities in the project is small, it can be created with MS Excel. However, if the number of activities is large and need to be properly linked up to perform Critical Path Analysis, then the project schedule will need a proper project scheduling tool such as Oracle Primavera P6 or MS Project to create. The duration it takes to develop the schedule depends on many factors:

Size and Complexity of the project

The greater the size and complexity of the project, one will expect more time is needed to understand the project scope and develop the project schedule.

Granularity of the schedule

The greater the schedule’s granularity, the greater the effort required to develop the schedule. Schedule granularity is classified from level 1 to 5. Level 1 being the least detail and Level 5 being the most detail. Level 1 schedule comprises mainly of key dates and milestones and it is usually meant for giving the audience an overall view of the project timeline. Level 5 schedule being the most detailed, it is developed by the contractor to track the day to day progress of site work. To ascertain the Critical Path (the longest path) of the project, there should be sufficient details in the schedule and a level 3 schedule is warranted.

Programme Specification

Some projects schedules are required to comply with the client’s programme/schedule specification. Such specification may specify the granularity of the activities such as the minimum and maximum duration of each activity. Some specifications will also specify that the activities of the project schedules be cost or/and resource loaded.

Programme Review

Project Schedule needs the buy-in from the project team and it has to be reviewed by the team. Hence the duration required for schedule development also depends on the outcome of the review and the subsequent amendments.

Experience of the project planner/scheduler

Last but not least, the experience of the planner/scheduler is very important. An experienced planner is not only adept in using the programme planning software to develop the programme, but he also has a good understanding of project planning and scheduling methodology, the full project life cycle and the domain knowledge of the construction industry.

A good planner/scheduler should have sufficient site and project experience so that he can appreciate the project scope and constraints; understand the project risks, the processes in procurement and design, authorities permitting processes, the construction sequences, interfacing work between trades, M&E works and T&C work.

Unfortunately, there are not many planner/scheduler out there who have sufficient site experience to understand the full project lifecycle development. As such, a lot of hand-holding is required and the project planner/scheduler is doing no more than a programmer’s job!

About the Author:

North East Line
Singapore 1st Desalination Water Plant at Tuas
Integrated Resort Project at Sentosa
Lonza Cell Therapy Plant at Tuas (Phase 2)
Merck Junumet plant at Tuas
Singapore Special Cable Tunnel Project

Freelance Project Schedule Planning

December 17, 2018

Are you facing bottlenecks in developing Tender/Baseline programme in Primavera P6 or MS Project and related documentation such as programme narratives, labor histogram, Cost S Curve, Time Chainage Diagram due to a lack of experience project planner/scheduler during this tight timeline?

If your answer is yes, please read on.

Pro1plan Consultants offers cost-effective Project Planning and scheduling services, starting from tender, baseline schedule, through baseline revisions, progress reporting, resource loading, analyze schedule and recommend corrective action, Extension of Time and Financial Claims.

With extensive experience in project schedule planning and implementation for projects in MRT, Commercial, Water Treatment Plant, Integrated Resorts, Pharmaceutical and Cable Tunnels using Primavera P6 or MS Project, we can customize a solution to meet your requirements.

We will work closely with your project team at any stages of the project be it in the Feasibility, Tender, Construction, Fit-out, Commissioning or Closing Up phase of the project.

Please email us at enquires@pro1plan.net or by phone at (65) 9817 6974 for an non-obligatory discussion.

Category: Project Schedule

About the Author:

About the Author:

Size and Complexity of the project

Granularity of the schedule

Programme Specification

Programme Review

Experience of the project planner/scheduler

About the Author: