Hi Ronald,

On the contrary Im working for a construction company now as a Planner/Scheduler. For quite sometime, I also worked for consultants and owner side thats why I have a balanced perspective of planning, but of course, not detrimental to the interest of the current company Im working with.

When I said anticipating weather days, I mean by getting information from weather bureau in your location so as to anticipate what might be the effect of such to the contractual completion dates for planning purposes only. Thats why I also reiterated that this issue should be mutually agreed upon by both parties before any inputs to the schedule could be made. The contractual implications should also be cleared beforehand.

In my little understanding of planning, you anticipate for something which have not happened yet.

Se

Hi guys,

As I have understood it, there are two situations here. One, preparing the schedule anticipating wet/hot days and the other one is updating the schedule using the actual wet/hot days.

On the first one, I believe planners should anticipate weather days so as to see the effect on the contractual completion dates. But this does not give the contractor the right to claim for extension of time because at the time he bidded for the project, it is assumed that the contractor knows that project would be affected by seasonal weather. Thus, the issue should be first mutually agreed upon by both parties before any input to the schedule should be made.

As the project progress, it is a good practice to update the planned weather days with the actual weather days which, eventually can be used among others to analyze time extension and other related claim by the contractor if there is any.

Regards to all.

Se

Kelly,

There is only one current, required completion date. If the specifications state that you must reserve a set number of days (or the statistical average of days over the course of the project,) then once you have reduced the “Project Raindays” activity to zero duration, then every weather day after this is excusable and should extend the required completion date by that amount.

There are a couple of issues here.

1. I discuss inclement weather and not wet weather, as it could be too hot, too wet or too cold, etc.

2. Inclement weather is often seasonal. On some projects I have worked on we have allowed for wet weather in the winter and hot weather in the summer. The wet weather affects earthworks and other operations but not those under cover but hot weather affects a different set of activities.

3. When the inclement weather is identified at as a task at the end of a project then on a long project, say a year or more, the activities may not necessarily be scheduled in the correct time period. This for example could result in earthworks appearing in the wet period. Therefore assigning dates in the calendar for inclement weather in the calendar leads to a schedule with the dates in a more realistic timeframe.

3. When a project has some work that is affected by inclement weather and some work that is not and when the inclement weather is seasonal, then it becomes even more important to adjust the inclement weather calendar on activities that may be affected by inclement weather. The critical path may drastically change depending on the nature of the project and the relationship between the activities affected by inclement weather and those that are not.

4. It is important to document outside the schedule the calendars and which days is inclement weather, as I have not found any software that allows notes to be assigned to calendar dates.

5. As the project progresses I keep a copy of the Baseline and edit the Baseline schedule substituting planned inclement lost time with actual inclement lost time to calculate the new contract finish date. I also add other changes as activities and reschedule to provide an updated schedule finish date.

Regards

Paul E Harris
www.eh.com.au

I have seen one method of ‘reserving’ weather days implemented many times successfully. Usually, not just the total number of expected weather days (in this case 24) but also a monthly schedule of expected weather days is published in the specifications (November: 2 days, December: 5 days, January: 6 days, etc.)

The person creating the schedule adds an activity “Planned Weather Days” at the end of the schedule between a milestone called “End of Project Before Weather” and Another milestone called “End Of Project After Weather Days.” Then you assign an Original Duration of 24 (in this case.)

When you status the schedule as of the 1st of December, you reduce the remaining duration of “Planned Weather Days” by the amount set aside for November (In this case, from 24 to 22 days.) You make this change regardless of how many weather days you actually had. If there were more weather days than planned for, you adjust the Required Completion Date according to the amount of delay experienced by the weather after the reserved amount has been deducted.

On the 1st of January, you reduce the Remaining Duration of “Planned Weather Days” by the amount reserved for December (in this case from 22 to 17 days.) You proceed like this until “Planned Weather Days” has a remaining duration of 0.

As to the question of ‘letting’ the contractor take a whole month off – you can’t stop him. If for any reason the contractor is ahead of schedule, they may elect to ‘use’ the float. You didn’t hire the contractor to work for you by the hour. You only paid him to complete a project within the time limit specified.

You don’t have to really worry on this account; it doesn’t make economic sense for the contractor to leave for a month. They still have to pay their bills on the trailer rent, security control, etc. They have monthly salaries to pay. Their bonding power is still tied-up on the current project so they can’t go after another. It costs money to sit still and the contractor is in business to make money. It is in the contractor’s interest to finish a project ahead of schedule.