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Hello Planners,
I am working as a Project Control engineer in one of leading DEC.
I have a query regarding Actual progress calculation while updating progress of an detail engineering project.
We all know during lifecycle of a project many scope changes are raised. And after getting approval from Project Manager and Clinet, we are incorporting this changes in our Schedule baseline also. But in actual practice, it is not feasible to incorporate this scope change as soon as it is raised. (I mean to say, we are not going to change our baseline 10 times if we are getting small 10 scope changes. But yes, if it is big scope change inpacting schedule we will surely change baseline). But we are waiting for proper phase in a project where it is found that actual schedule baseline is not valid now and we need a new baseline and at that point of time we are incorporating those approved changes in new schedule baseline.
So meanwhile once scope change is approved from client and till it is not included in schedule baseline, we are parking those man-hours as a forecast manhours.
So now my query is that while calculating Actual progress percentage completed during these phase of project, which manhours we should consider - Original Schedule manhours or Forecast manhours which includes approved scope change hours?
Hope I have made my question clear and hopeing for a solution for my query.
Thanking you in advance.
Regards,
D. Gaglani
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Just include the impact of the scope change in the Ghost Schedule and this will be your Ghost Schedule and Ghost Baseline. If scope is changed 10 times then Ghost Baseline shall be changed 10 times or you will be following an unrealistic plan. Ghost schedule you do not have to submit for approval but it might be wise to submit Ghost Schedule for information purposes, to put on record your plan at the time of impact.
Having both you can show calculated progress based on currently approved baseline and calculated progress based on a changed scope for which revisions are still pending. Everyone is informed, by no means Ghost Schedule shall be interpreted as binding.
It is not unusual for most people, for good valid reasons, to be reluctant to expose Ghost Schedule, in such case I would recommend to keep using approved baseline values only and in the schedule narrative make it clear progress as shown is based on an approved baseline that do not include pending changes, a practical approach. But always keep your Ghost Plan, it will tell you many things otherwise you might not see. Call it whatever, you can call it; What-if I do what should be done because of the changed scope.
The need for a Ghost schedule is born from the need to target a realistic plan when you are prevented from doing so because there is no formal approval of the revised schedule. This might be born as the result of final approval of a pending Change Order, might be born out of a Change Directive, might be born out of a constructive change among other issues.
http://www.fplotnick.com/constructioncpm/2016Presentations/MON37-PPR.pdf
You can continue doing what many contractors do but you might risk waiving your claim rights if you do not call it to the attention of client as it happened in the Big Dig.
In the case of the big dig there were hundreds of small baseline changes and the PM never updated them while all contractors were asked to keep following baseline, it created all sort of issues.
http://warnercon.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/AContinuouslyChanging1.pdf
Best Regards,
Rafael
Dear Rafael,
Thank you for sharing your expertise.
Now, we take a case study.
Consider a Project in which detail Engineering is to be done for a Refinery unit.
Overall Engineering man-hours for the project is suppose 1, 00,000.
Suppose at the stage where we have reached 15% of actual progress, there is a scope change of say 1,000 man-hours (and not affecting Planned Schedule end date) which is also gets approved by Client.
Since new scope is only 1% and not affecting schedule end date, we are not willing to disturb our schedule baseline at this initial stage of project. Also, during a course of time in project such small Scope changes are bound to come and are inevitable but we can’t change our planned baseline at each and every such small scope changes.
Hence we keep adding such approved scope changes in bucket. And these approved man-hours are added in baseline schedule when we are actually re-baselining or re-scheduling our base curve.
Now my quarry is, while we are keep monitoring and reporting our progress for the project (till we are not doing re-baselining or re-scheduling), Actual % calculation is based on original scope of 1,00,000 hours or new approved scope of 1,01,000 hours?
Kindly give suggestion for actual % calculation for both client schedule and ghost schedule.
Waiting for your reply.
Thanks again.
Schedules including the baseline shall be updated as many times as need be, it makes no sense to manage schedule based in obsolete schedule that misses what is going on. EVM dependency on a contractual baseline gets into the way preventing the contractor to consider changed conditions until formally approved. When this happens and contractual conditions prevent the contractor to manage the schedule the Ghost schedule must be considered.
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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