Are You Late Before You Start ?

The contrator must also review quality lest he ends up maintaining a team ( maintenance team an hidden cost ) till the maintenace period. Its some of the higerups in the company who take up rash decisions for the sake of money and the end result " THE BOSS IS ALWAYS RIGHT "

Bill,

Given that a time constraint does not fit with available accomodation? Then perhaps additional accommodation can be provided and at the relevant logistical cost?? In order to achieve the programme??



Does this make sense??



Then the Client can take it or leave it??



Regards,

Darrell

Hi PP,



Good question as to why Contractor’s agree to time schedules which are unattainable from the start!! ;-)



I suppose no Contractor wants to turn down a project, and by their nature, Contractor’s tend to be optimistic in nature. They ALWAYS believe that they can overcome any challenges put in their way; sometime the “hairier” the challenge (as Darrell pointed out!!) the more optimistic they become!!



And far be it from me to suggest that Contractors are more dazzled by $ or Euro signs in their eyes than by the practicalities of completing a project to schedule.



Cheers,



Stuart



www.rosmartin.com

Are You Late Before You Start ?



JD.



If a "Contractor" is aware that time is a constraint, that will have to be dealth with, then most contractors are fairly scrupulious now-a-days anyway. I have to believe that no Contractor wishes to end up in a claims situation.

Most will assess the risk to time, and add in a value to that risk, or charge a premium in recognition of that risk.



I personally believe that anything can be done where programming and planning are concerned. Have worked on a few "hairy" projects to say the least. More often than not, programme times / durations are pretty accurate, even from the clients side. And often but not always, what can let a project down is, might I suggest, "Design Development, Decision & Deployment". The Deadly "D"s.



Regards,

Darrell

...for all other decent people here



i just wanna say i’m not a god of planning and i’m not a super planner as well, but i’m a normal planner learning from all of u and sometimes i try to help as much as i can



Thanx

i’m not surprising that someone like u(with this background) is talking that way.



i mean what r u trying to say here..is it a try to show off or a try to increase ur number of posts..and where is the moderator of this forum ??



are u bored or disperate or maybe a loser????



what about the other polite people in this forum, are they happy with ur attitude?



for ur information this is a formal and profesional forum, if u r not able to control urself and behave then u r a big loser & big mouth.



i don care about your shit but u still donot have the right to evaluate people.



I doubt that u r a successful planner or person...cos u r offensive but u r still a big loser.



have something to say about the subject or to help people or to get help then say it, Else shut ur big mouth up

Hi planner planner,



Somehow you have tried to tell us your are the guru of all planning, You run 60 projects, and you do not have a clue what you are doing, as gauged from some of the questions you are asking, you need a quick course in the basics of the subject, which will take about two hours, so reveal yourself. You are either Josetph in his amazing dream coat’or Moses or Alexander the great, naybe Genghis Khan or Napoleon or maybe Rommel or Hitler ( Not a practical solution) or maybe OLLie North or Bush, or even Saddam Hussein himself, maybe Hannibal with his elephants going over the alps, or there is other possibibilities of the not so greats like Churchil, or Stalin, or lenin or Mao tse Tsung. Maybe you are are the re-incarceration of Tsun Tsu, We as planners would like your credentials, because maybe you are the Messiah we have all been waiting for.

In any event you are a pain in the arse, until you can give honest answers and stop talking bullshit.

Stuart,



I agree with u 100% but if the case is like those unscrupulous clients imposing those unrealistic demands then why did the contractors agree and accept the deal from the begining?

Hi PP,



I have had experience of American, European and Australian international conglomerates forcing – and I mean forcing – contractors into accepting certain terms and conditions, which – as I said earlier – even a blind man could see were impractical from the contractor’s point of view.



For example, I have just finished being involved in a case where the Client is a European Consortium of major international companies and the Contractor is another major international specialist in his field. After the project was underway, the Client enticed the Contractor into accepting a six month reduction in his schedule in exchange for a big bag of money, by way of a Change Order.



The Contractor accepted the money and reduction in his schedule, but soon realised that he could not meet the reduced schedule, primarily because the Client did not keep his end of the bargain in terms of providing necessary support to meet the new completion date. Indeed, the Contractor later realised that he was set up, since at the end of the day, the Client’s project was completed ahead of the original schedule (by three months) for a very little additional cost, since the Contractor had to forfeit almost all of the additional cost made available under the Change Order. The case ended up expensively in tears and arbitration.



So my point is that there are a large number of international unscrupulous Clients out there, who impose unrealistic demands on Contractors, and this is a world-wide practice!!



Hope this clarifies,



Stuart



www.rosmartin.com

Well stuart



can u tell us then how these scenarios go in your country and according to your experience...



we would love to know how the clients think there and also the contractor’s....



by the way ,donot forget that most of these companies in the Middle East are Multi-national and the people there as well(Background issue).

Philip,



I am not entirely sure of which utopian environment you work, but in my experience, projects are not always put out to competitive tender, the Client usually selects the lowest tender where there is a selection, and he then proceeds to brow-beat the Contractor into offering an even lower price and also adds further restrictions on scheduling.



I am not sure what you mean by saying the Client has a duty to himself (?), but again in my experience, it is not ‘a few bucks’ at stake, but can be millions of Euros.



IMHO, Clients very often – if not usually – have only their own interests at heart and do not care for the well being of the Contractor, and against this background, it is noted that this thread began – unsurprisingly – in the Middle East.



Stuart



www.rosmartin.com

Hi Stuart,



I think the client has a duty to himself, ’why put the project at risk in the effort to save a few bucks’. The point being that when you receive let’s say 7 tenders, reject the highest and lowest, then average the other five, and select the one that is nearest to the averave ofthe five. This means you are protecting your own interest, as well as that of the contractors. You are much less likely to walk out of the project with claims and extra cost.



What Bill said was quite true, if we all score we are all happy in relative simple terms.



Regards

J.,

I think your answer was already in your comment that “…the Contractor has 2 options: to decline or to accept…”



The Contractor should be able to price everything necessary for his successful execution and completion of the project, and if this requires increased resources (of all sorts) to complete the Works, he can add the relevant costs into his price. If that prices him out of the running, it may be a blessing in disguise.



I have been involved in many projects where a blind man could see that the Contractor could never ever finish by the due completion date; it has ALWAYS ended in tears for the simple reason that when he signs the Contract, the Contractor undertakes to execute and complete the Works in accordance with the project’s clearly stated milestones. Having made that commitment, he is duty and legally bound to carry it out!



Hope this helps,



Stuart



www.rosmartin.com

J.Daniel, you are quiet correct. This is the situation prevailing all over the world or atleast wherever i had the experience before. Philip & Bill have given nice reply. Either contractor or client, playing with their buffer. in other words, they have one internal schedule(late finish) and external schedule(early finish), this external schedule is used to call for bidding.



The contractor hopes to recover something through VOs and other matters. Infact (main) contractor also got some buffer(using another schedule) when he calls for a sub-contracting, that is what i understood. That would be the reason no LAD is issued in my previous works, Client and Contractor have some understanding, Contractor very well knows that client is having a weapon of LAD, so he acts smartly to counter this problem through EOT, after all they are also human beings...



Its a big game really..........Planners have to be smart right from the beginning........



I must thank you for bringing up a nice thread on this forum, i hope more answers to come from other pper’s



Cheers!!!



Daya

Always remember buffers, every client builds in a buffer, and probabaly has a managing contracto, who also builds in a buffer. Remember to do you first schedule honoustly and presnt it as that, everybody is open to negotiation, and will probably give away some of their buffers if you can prove your schedule is practicle/practicable.