By and large, there is a cut-off point where a CPM construction scheduler is neither mandated, nor prepared, for projects below the line. Privatized projects are not regulated in the same way public and governmental work is, and tend to have more passive scheduling requirements, if any at all.
Government and agency schedule specifications often are so copious and onerous that they can never really be met, or if met, are never availed of. Consequently, there exists a gray area between projects that must have schedules and those that should have schedules.
Construction projects that are executed without the benefit of a schedule may or may not be characterized as unorganized, but the absence of a schedule invariably precludes organization and accountability, especially for larger projects, or those with a lot of moving parts.
Just by looking, it is often impossible to tell if a project is using a CPM schedule, or not.
Naturally, the mere fact that schedule requirements exist in no way guarantees the integrity of any given schedule. Even if it did, schedules are often perceived by contractors in the same way as general conditions are by an owner: as an intangible asset that is hard to quantify. For this reason, some contractors only retain the services of a scheduler when the contract requires it. This practice has a detrimental effect on the perception of the industry’s accountability, and as we shall see, is self-defeating
At the other end of the spectrum from too little scheduling information are mega-project schedules that become so complicated as a result of delays and unrealized mitigation strategies that they resist defining criteria, and reliable forward-passes and forensics.
What you think resembles a free-for-all, often is just that, regardless of there being a CPM scheduler in the mix.
Megaprojects with continuous disruptions and delays are even more subject to fragmentation, or obfuscation of float paths, as they can become impossible to pin down. Such lumbering databases inevitably become too cumbersome to maintain, and must be rebaselined, or abandoned. Surprisingly, despite onerous megaproject requirements by the public and governmental agencies, there seems to be a pervasive attention deficit disorder regarding schedule oversight, the higher up you go.
Owners rely on their construction managers to handle oversight of a general contractor’s schedule. For smaller works, the owner may depend on the architect to monitor the general contractor’s schedule. In the former, a savvy construction manager might retain a consultant to manage schedule oversight, whereas many others will attempt to do it in house.
Tedious analysis and forensic megaproject reports for large agencies typically go ignored by the upper brass, or become obsolete long before they were issued.
In either case, an owner should be leery of a CM’s schedule oversight reports, as CMs have their own agenda. For this reason, it behooves an owner to hire a neutral third-party consultant directly, just as he would contract direct an air-monitor or noise consultant. Only then can he trust he is making decisions based on impartial information.
For the latter, an architect is often the owner’s de facto schedule monitor, as can be weakly construed by the loosely defined AIA Owner-Architect Agreement. An architect typically sets aside a portion of his fee for managing a project: site meetings, submittal and change order reviews, and schedule oversight.
While architects can grasp the basics of a CPM schedule, their formal training includes no segment on the critical path method. Depending on the complexity of a given project, and the extent of their fees, they are prone to perform their schedule oversight service erratically.
A narrow focus on the bottom-line and sound-byte denotes that some owners deliberately ignore the forest for the trees.
Despite such less than inspiring performances, architects are loathe to suggest or recommend third-party oversight schedulers to their clients, I believe for two reasons:
- That an architect will tend to resent, and be adverse to, the idea of an oversight consultant: a person they perceive as someone inevitably stepping on their shoes, or having no qualms about exposing their shortcomings; especially if the consultant is not one of his cronies.
- That an architect feels an oversight consultant is infringing on his meal, or taking his work from him.
I find this latter set of circumstances amusing in that (until the 20th century) it was the architect who was perceived as schnorring in on the builders’ scope, not the other way around. The idea of an architect lording it over a builder in those days would have been inconceivable, if not laughable. These days, an architect – for lack of working CPM scheduler knowledge, can merely act as only crossing-guard.
The lack of uniform appreciation and substantial implementation of CPM schedulers into the building industry creates the backlash that precious little is given to subsidize training and educational programs, whether in Union shops, or the private sector. As a consequence, there is a shortage in the supply of schedulers, and only a subset of these ever seems to be properly trained.
Given what typically passes as training or certification programs, it seems that the fault lies not with the incipient scheduler, but with the integrity, thoroughness, and most of all – relevance, of today’s CPM scheduler training programs. On the other hand, such programs are neither well established, nor well integrated with the building industry.
It’s up to the industry to make the investment into training and educational programs that are designed to teach prospective schedulers not only CPM scheduling proper, but also require a good dose of practicum – for example the requirement of a semester of internship in the field, before they are released into the market as CPM schedulers.
