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Dealing with a Completion Schedule
 
Ron Winter
 
December 7, 2002
 
Scenario: Project is 6 - 8 months behind contract completion date (CCD).
 
Projection: Project will go to claim, if nothing else with ‘pass-throughs’ from subs.
 
Issue: Contractor was asked to provide date and substantiating data (reliable CPM) on when he would finish.
 
What he did: Created a stand alone finish schedule with no connection to contract schedule. All new activity numbers, new logic - what activities that are left from contract schedule are recognizable only by description. New CCD is 10 - 11 weeks beyond an already extended CCD (extended to keep progress payments coming - entitlement to the extension has yet to be fully determined).
 
My inclination: Reject the schedule as not a reasonable facsimile of the contract schedule.
 
Question: Claim implications from a contractor submitting a completion schedule for the monthly update that is not tied to the accepted contract schedule?
 
 
Answer: As you surmised, the Completion Schedule does nothing for answering the question of where the critical delays were. There are two approaches to this issue.
 
1) The best approach is to review and ‘accept’ the fragnet submitted as a real positive step in correcting the issue as long as the fragnet is then incorporated in the original schedule. (I.e. treat this as a fragnet submittal for approval of logic and then have them complete the submittal by incorporating the fragnet back into the Project Schedule.)
 
2) Failing that, first check the validity of the fragnet schedule. Are the things that it says are critical match the things that are critical in the project schedule, at least in the first part of the fragnet completion schedule? If not, then you have a built-in disagreement of facts.
 
Then, you must determine the exact date of transition. Declare the number of days owed to the contractor as of that date and the number of days he is behind. (This will require that you do an ‘Engineer’s Estimate’ if you are not in possession of the contractor’s Request for Time Extension.) (This will also set a precedent as to counting days before and after the official transition date.)
 
Start with these numbers on the completion schedule when determining the final tally at the end of the project. Perhaps you can use a finish-no-later-than constraint to set-up the total float in the Completion Schedule to match the float in the Project Schedule for the critical transition activities.
 
Please Note: Ron Winter Consulting makes no claims as to the reasonableness nor applicability of the above information to your individual situation. The information supplied here is for discussion purposes only.