CPM Schedule Specifications & Requirements are generally found in CSI division 01 32 00 Construction Progress Documentation of a project manual or specifications, where they are routinely ignored or not even contemplated. Countless permutations of these requirements makes it difficult to establish standards in the industry. Accordingly, stakeholders either look to specifiers to create the requirements, establish their own, or forgo them altogether.

Governmental and public work is notorious for requiring tedious and onerous requirements, whereas the private sector tends to be far less vigorous to the point of having no CPM schedule specifications at all.  By contrast, the US Army Corp. of Engineers requires the SDEF format. The result is a chronic disconnect between expectations and results, where stakeholders are perpetually disappointed by the scheduling effort.

Thus there are over – and underspecified CPM Schedule Specifications that schedulers need to be apprised of in order to satisfy all the various stakeholders needs. Insofar as overspecified governmental and public work, this is best left to those few operators who are familiar with specific CPM schedule requirements of a particular organization. Schedulers unfamiliar with such vigorous requirements ultimately fail in their endeavors.

“When a contractor’s plan of action routinely fails to cut the mustard I maintain my own shadow CPM construction schedule

That’s not surprising given that most schedules – whether public or private sector, fail to pass muster: typically, a baseline is issued and reissued several times before a project team realizes that there will never be a reliable baseline. This handicaps the team leaving them without an adequate schedule planning and monitoring instrument. Finally, it precludes the ability of contractors to tender EOTs: advantage stakeholders.

Just like risk assessments, any large project should have a reliable schedule. That’s why I am nonplussed at those owners who fail to establish sound CPM scheduling specifications and requirements for their tenders. I recall a substantial project where a large contractor simply could not furnish a technically and practically reliable baseline – for love or money. At a certain point, the contractor discovered (to everyone’s surprise) that there were no scheduling requirements in the project manual. With that knowledge, he notified the owner that their organization utilized ‘pull-planning’ and’ Lean construction’ methodology – neither of which the owner had heard of, in lieu of any CPM schedule. 

My comment was that ‘pull-planning and’ Lean construction’ were great ideas, but should not supplant a bona fide CPM schedule. As it became clear no CPM schedules would be utilized, our CPM oversight services were no longer required and we lost the commission.

“Reviewed and “approved as noted,” are two reviewer statuses that should be avoided: schedules are pass/fail, and should not be approved when half-cocked.”

Savvy owners make efforts to establish more vigorous scheduling reporting requirements. However, many of these requirements are predicated on a reliable baseline schedule, which is an endangered species. If a baseline is not technically and practically accurate, forecasting and forward pass become problematic and dubious enterprises.  As a schedule deprecates into obsolescence, so do higher order CPM Schedule Specifications become a moot point: you need to learn to walk before learning to run.

If ownership has sound schedule oversight implemented, they will be better informed as to a schedule’s integrity and shortcomings, giving them an opportunity to act. Not unusually, it becomes clear that a project will never be accurate, and that various reports and calculations are asking or expecting too much, especially in absence of a reliable baseline. 

Are pull-plan and Lean Planners incapable of meeting CPM requirements, or do they thumb their nose at what they simply can’t produce?

At best, a contract may stipulate that progress payments will be delayed pending schedule approval, or that owners request a rebate for the cost of the failed schedule (this latter is my personal favorite) however, I have never seen those responses put into action. At worst, a broken project lumbers along its delay path without any reliable planning instrument, and founders into extreme delay.

If CPM Schedule Specifications & Requirements thus have limited relevance when they will neither be observed by the scheduler, nor enforced by ownership. Why have them at all?