Profit Center

Control Your Schedule
Planning and communication are the keys to success during construction

By Pat Curry

July 2004

With all the variables that can affect a construction project, creating a workable schedule starts with upfront planning. The planning team should include the project manager and superintendents of each of the trade contractors, says Walid Thabet, associate professor of building construction at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.

Pre-construction planning

Photo: Dotfordot/Boulder, Colorado

All the managers should first study the plans in detail, then map out the major activities of the job, the order in which they need to occur, and how they relate to each other.

One simple way to map out the steps is the "sticky note approach," Thabet says. Give each supervisor a pack of sticky notes and have him write down the components of his part of the job. All of those are put on the wall and then moved around to visualize the project's flow.

"This is about as low-tech as it gets, but it's extremely effective," says Eric Spanitz, president of the Chicago-based management consulting firm Synergest. "The idea is to get people to think across their area of specialty. It's also a subtle team-building exercise."

Spanitz recommends breaking the activities into blocks of no bigger than a week. Contractors might balk at this, he says, but it makes the project much easier to track.

Chris Peck is vice president of business development for St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Companies, Inc., a major commercial builder. Because his projects are quite large, his process is more formalized but the system is essentially the same. His company will develop what it calls a "milestone schedule" of different divisions of work.

"It puts logic behind (the schedule) and layers in material lead time," Peck says. "Our up-front planning is very detailed."

That includes requiring a loaded manpower schedule from trade contractors, committing them contractually to provide the necessary number of workers to get the job done on time.

"It's a killer for us if we have a situation where one trade has outpaced another or another is behind," Peck says. "If we understand their loading requirements, we can make adjustments."

In-field communication and reporting

Progress reports are critical to maintaining a schedule. Each major activity should have a "task owner," similar to a foreman, Spanitz says. That person and the project manager will talk regularly, often several times a day. Once a week, all the task owners should meet with their project manager for an update.

Make sure everyone uses the same reporting units, he says, whether it's man- hours, clock-hours, days or weeks. That makes the reporting consistent. He also recommends using the zero or100 percent method of tracking completion of tasks. This means activities are either done or not done (zero percent or 100 percent complete). This avoids artificial or irrelevant percent-complete reporting.

Software can help expedite communication flow, Peck says, especially in handling requests for information. "But it doesn't replace phone contact or face-to-face meetings," he says. "Those are always the best way to resolve things."

His schedules include weekly trade contractor meetings, monthly owner meetings, and coordination meetings as needed, especially during the mechanical/electrical/plumbing phase of projects.

When reporting delays to customers, Spanitz recommends limiting the reporting to the facts. Don't over-interpret the information. And keep it unemotional. "Most customers don't get upset about slips in the schedule," he says. "They get upset because they feel they've lost control or there's no communication. It just takes a minute to call."

Contingency planning

The best companies don't let unexpected events hurt their schedules because they plan for them to happen. The three methods of correction are avoidance, mitigation, and contingency.

Avoidance is prevention, such as not using a certain material because of the risk that it won't be readily available. McCarthy Building Companies lays out mock-ups of how its mechanical and electrical systems will fit within a new building envelop. They actually assemble a typical section of pipe or ductwork to study the layout and avoid problems. They also have their clients fill out detailed questionnaires to fill in gaps in the design drawings.

Mitigation is doing something ahead of time to lessen the chance of a problem or decrease its impact. If the electrical work will be complicated and you're worried your electrician might be busy on another job, you line up two electricians.

Contingency planning is the classic "Plan B," that maps out a response for a variety of events, such as a supplier that goes out of business halfway through the project or, as builders have seen in recent months, dramatic price increases in materials.

You can't have a contingency that handles the general effects of things that don't go as expected. "You would have a contingency plan for something specific like your shingle company going out of business, where you'd identify and negotiate with a backup vendor at the beginning of the project," says Spanitz. Then if something did happen, you'd know exactly what your next step would be.

Managing contingencies is much easier, he says, if time, and the flexibility it buys you, is built into the schedule. Most projects are planned without it, and many competitive companies try to remove all the flexibility to present the shortest possible completion time. Adding time for unexpected events eliminates the risk that even the smallest delay can create problems.

"That way, if a delivery truck gets stuck at a train crossing," Spanitz says, "we don't have call our customer and say 'The truck was late, we've got to reschedule.'"

End-of-project review

Every project should include post-mortems to develop lessons learned. McCarthy Building Companies does these regularly, interviewing their clients, their trade contractors, and the architects asking about their performance on schedule reporting, cost reporting, safety and communication. A lessons learned book documents the results and is shared on the company intranet.

The process should also review how your actual timeline compared to the original schedule. Look at the deadlines that were met and the ones that were missed, and discuss why that happened. And start with your own performance. Was the project ready when you said it would be for subsequent trade subcontractors, or did you cause delays in their work? Then talk about the performance of the trade contractors. Who did a great job and stayed on schedule and who slowed everything down because they showed up late, didn't order the right materials or lacked the proper tools or manpower?

"A post mortem has value at every level," Peck says. "Don't be afraid to ask your clients how you performed. Good or bad, you need to know. You can improve either way."