Hello Everyone,
I am working in Oil and Gas Sector on the Main Contractor Side. The senario here is we have a Contract with Cleint which says the Client Review period is 5 Calendar Days after Issue of Deliverable.
If the Client didnt respond back in 5 days I take the Deliverbale to be approved and take the full credit. The Example is below,
StartIDCIssue for ApprovalComments from ClientReissueApproved for IFC5%30%30%20%10%5%
So is it Ok to take the credit after the review period if the Client has not responded or should I wait till the Client responds to take the credit. Some times the Client takes 1 Month to respond.
What is your view on this ?
Regards
Jithin
Hi John,
The Contract says that the review period is 5 days if has passed that duration it would be considered as deemed approved.
So I think we can take credit but as you said if the Client comes up with a comment at a latter stage we can issue a variation order and show the impact on other deliverable.
Regards
Jithin
Is the contract worded if the client doesn’t reply with in the 5 days it is deemed approved? If it is then take the credit as it is approved. If the client then comes back with comments / revisions these are then variations to be costed and incorporated into the programme as required.
If the contract is silent on the approval then as soon as the dead line has passed you need to advise him he is delaying the programme and will be liable for delays to the project and or disruption / acceleration costs.
Critical Path Method 101. If the approval is on the critical path, and actually (ie actual = real) takes 10 days instead of the 5 esitimated then all of the successors and all of their successors have to wait (ie they get re-scheduled), and then the forecast overall finish date is 5 days later. If the approval is not on the critical path and has lots of float, then the effect of taking 10 days may be trivial because all of the successors and all of their successors have to wait, but it just consumes float. Not good, but not catastrophic, and manageable. This is exactly why you have the software, not so you can BS the client, but so you can distinguish between so-so consequences of actuality and really serious consequences of actuality. It's not there so you can "score" credit and cook the numbers to look good, especially if things are not good. Denial isn't just a river in Africa, you know.
Hi Trevor,
What you said is right "You can go only when it is Green.
Actually the Project is a Fast Track one. As it is a Fasttrrack Project we have put some Criteria in Contract to meet the Project end date and one of them is the review period of delvierable which is 5 days.
So I was asked to take the credit if we have lapsed the review period.
Regards
Jithin
You can"t "take credit" for it. It didn't happen yet. You can't take credit for 5 days elapsing. You didn't make 5 days elapse. The universe did that.
If you estimate that it takes 1 day to lay 1000 bricks but only lay 500 bricks after one day, you can't "take credit" for laying 1000 bricks at the end of the day, because you didn't lay 1000 bricks. If it takes 2 days to lay 1000 bricks, you can "take credit" for it at the end of day 2.
I don't know the road rules in your country, but here, if you come to a red traffic light which you think should stay red for 30 seconds, you don't just proceed to drive into the intersection after 30 seconds if it is still red. You wait until it is green.
Your client may take whatever he likes to approve your drawings, then the successors of that approval will just have to wait.
HI Zoltan,
So you think that it would be good to remind the Client that the deliverables are outstanding there review before taking the credit (Even if the Contract says the review period is 5 days).
What I used to do is after the Review Period if not responded will take the credit and if the Client responds with a comemnt then I will mark my Progress Measurement Register with those and follow up with the Dicipline engineers to Close it out.
What if this is the scenario,
What if the client was reminded and still there is no reponse ?
The thing is I do put 1 Activity as Engineeigng deliverblae say like "Tank Foundation Drawing" and 22 Days duration which includes "Start + IDC + Issue to Company for Comments + Comments from Client + Reissue to Client + Approval for Contstution form Client and the review Cycle is 5 Days. I dont like to show in schedule that the activity has taken 45 Days duration because of Delay in Client approval.
Regards
Jithin
you said "it doesnt look good in schuele to see that a deliverable is not reviewd for months" thats the WHOLE POINT of the schedule to bring things like this to ahead and get people to focus on those items to get them done. You are artifically manuliplating the schedule when you take credit for something not yet completed.
It is what it is nothing more nothing less. Tell it like it is
I for one believe that it's difficult to measure progress for detailed engineering / design (or producing drawings for construction), as you can never use an unfinished drawing or design in construction until it is issued or stamped and approved for construction (in principle).
So why bother with inventing corresponding percentage progress for the production of detailed engineering drawings?
Putting 50% or 80% for a certain drawing issued for comments and/or approval is meaningless! What if the comment of the reviewer is to change everything on it? So you will go back to 0%?
Suggest to consider your drawings issued for review, comments and or approval as 100% (from your point of view as a contractor). This way I guess your client or reviewer will do their responsibility promptly, otherwise (if they're lazy), then perhaps they might stamped it IFC or AFC immediately (which of course very good for you!).
Just my opinion (and I don't mean to take it seriously).
Hi Zoltan,
But what if even after reminding the Client still it takes a 15 days. So you lose the progress and time right just because the response takes time.
What I do is even if I take the credit I keep the log updated whenever I get comments or approval, so as to know that even if I have taken the credit I have a comment on it.
It doesnt look good in schuele to see that a deliverable is not reviewd for months, like actually the duration of that deliverable with response time would have been 10 days, but just because the response is delaeyd the activity has a duration like 45 days.
So even if we take the credit wouldnt it be good that we note it down somewhere so as to know that we did get the comment.
Regards
Jithin
you cant take credit for it. What is it comes back rejected ? Also your actuals will not accurately reflect what is happening. Bird dog the Clinet instead and create a priority list of what needs to be reviewed.