A programme is a live document. It is not a one-time effort and needs to be updated periodically. Not only the percentage of the activities and actual dates need to be updated in the programme, the logic links of the programme need to be reviewed periodically to reflect the actual intent of work on site. If it is not done properly, the programme will generate erroneous computation of floats which will not be useful in identifying the actual bottlenecks in the project.
In a construction project, the amount of work to keep track of the project is significant. Not only do you keep track of the schedule, the resources being deployed also needs to be tracked. These metrics are useful in determining if the current allocated resources are suffice to meet the target completion dates of the respective activities. Of course, the planner needs to gather this information for programme update from each project team members/contractors who have intimate knowledge of work progress under their charges.
Information updated into the programme needs to be verified before inputting into the programme. Otherwise, programme will not be reflecting the status of the project correctly. Some progress update information such as physical site work can be verified on site while other can’t. For example, procurement, design and authorities approval will not be so easily verified. However, there are still way to do, which I will elaborate more in the progress detail tracker section.
There are programmes such as such Primavera Viewer that allow the respective project team member to view and edit the programme and then sent to the planner to integrate and upload the changes in the programme. I have not used it myself yet but I can’t see if integrating the changes in the programme from different team members can be made easier. If there are 2 changes that in conflict, which one is correct and how do you resolve it?
To ensure the integrity of the programme, I think only one person and that the planner should update the soft copy of the programme, even though enterprise version of P6 or MS project allow access to the programme to update.
To enable concurrent updating of programmes, it will be better to create sub-projects schedules and link to the master schedule.