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Location-Based Scheduling from the Owner’s Point of View

  
  
  
Owners want to achieve bottom-line ROI from BIM and production management systems.  Scheduling methods such as CPM often fall short because they cannot transparently show (1) whether all possible ways to compress schedule have been utilized in the contractor's schedule or (2) how risky the schedule is.  During production, the monitoring of critical path and float is insufficient because contractors routinely resort to manipulation such as artificially compressing durations on the critical path.  Because the durations were not originally based on a detailed understanding of the scope or resources needed, this manipulation does not really add more value to management and, in fact, can be argued to be pointless - it is like saying that we are delayed now but we will take some (undefined) action later.  Problems are being pushed to the end of the project and there is over-optimism about the ability to catch up schedules later.  Production progress must be made more transparent so that the situation looks more urgent earlier and gives early warning signals to Owners that something must be done to restore production.  All control actions should be explainable in detail by using quantities, resources, and production rates instead of just changing durations.  (For a more detailed explanation of this formula, please review the archived webinar, Planning AND Controlling the 4D Schedule.)

 

LBMS before the Start of Construction

Because optimized production rates will be used in the buy-out of subcontractors, it is extremely difficult and costly to change the total duration after subcontractors have been bought out.  Therefore, schedule optimization and compression should happen before buy-out.  It is also extremely important that work is planned to be continuous because cascading delays during production happen because of discontinuous work - starts and stops of subcontractors.  Any discontinuity increases the probability that the schedule cannot be implemented as planned - subcontractors tend to balance their own work if the GC or CM cannot show that the plan is already balanced.

 

Owners should be interested in seeing the following deliverables for each major design release:

  • Resource-loaded schedules with continuous flow
  • Explanations for any discontinuous work patterns
  • Clear identification of bottleneck trades by General Contractor or CM
  • Detailed explanation why those bottlenecks cannot be accelerated
  • Risk analysis of the schedule showing the risky areas and the probability of completing each major milestone
  • Cash flow

 

Caption: Flowline scheduling centers around creating continuous workflow for the Subs. One easy check to ensure that there are no superfluous mobilizations and demobilizations is to compare the flowline schedule by trade and its resource histogram. Here you can quickly see any unintentional gaps which may add risk to your schedule. A quick fix in the flowline schedule resource center can solve the problem.

 

LBMS during Construction

During construction, the schedule should function as an early warning system.  By tracking completed locations, the total quantity of work-in-place can be easily calculated.  Daily reporting of total manpower on site makes it possible to calculate actual productivity and actual production rates.  These rates can be used to forecast progress and identify problems much earlier than in CPM systems.  

 

Weekly or monthly Owner reports should include the following items:

  • Comparison of completed tasks and locations to plan
  • Explanations for not implementing continuous work as planned
  • Schedule forecast before control actions (if everything continues on the same production rate)
  • Schedule forecast after control actions and documentation of those control actions (for example, adding 5 carpenters to the drywall crew, working on Saturdays, 2-shift work for selected tasks etc)
  • Problem tasks where production rate is < 80% of planned
  • Percentage of production completed compared to the plan (for the whole project and each major construction phase, such as foundations)
  • Resource forecast for the next month for each main subcontractor to reveal unrealistic resource assumptions
  • Updated cash flow forecast based on schedule forecast

  

Caption: Creating an optimal schedule with Vico Office Schedule Planner is almost easy compared to managing to that schedule on the jobsite. That's why even more functionality for Superintendents and Project Managers is included in Vico Office Production Controller. Marking percent complete per location and then comparing actuals to planned helps the team see well in advance where problems will occur. But the look-ahead schedules can be solved with the same flowline power: an adjustment in productivity, an adjustment in crew size, task splitting, or even adding buffers.

 

Parallel LBMS and CPM

Trying to run parallel schedules in a project does not work too well.  CPM schedules have traditionally worked only as Owner reporting tools and have had limited relevance in field.  The information content of a CPM schedule is extremely limited, typically lacking quantities and resources and showing only durations without revealing the manpower and quantity assumptions behind the duration estimates.  Critical path and float are faulty as concepts because they do not consider the requirement to have continuous, balanced flow of resources through the project. Only continuous workflow makes it possible to forecast production and give early warnings of problems.

 

Schedule optimization using location-based planning typically results in 10% compression without the need for additional resources or increase in risk levels. This compression can be achieved so that most of the tasks in the project have continuous flow. However, all optimization is theoretical unless the schedule is actually followed on-site.  Having parallel schedules undermines this goal unless the schedules match exactly.  Location-based scheduling typically results in better quality, optimized, resource-based schedules in 70% of the time required to build a CPM schedule.  Optimizing a schedule from scratch takes about 50% of the time of converting a CPM schedule to LBMS and using that as the starting point of optimization.  All of these facts speak to abandoning the practice of running parallel schedules.  Additionally, CPM is included in LBMS, but only about 20% of LBMS information content is included in CPM (specifically logic layer 5: random CPM links).  Why would the Owner want to pay for two schedules and often for two teams of parallel schedulers?

 

If you are an Owner interested in exploring these ideas, please contact us.  We are more than happy to help you!

 

Location-based management is very different than any scheduling approach you’ve worked with in the past, so we have packed our website full of resources that can help you learn more:

 

Our Products: Vico Office LBS Manager and the FAQs

Our Products: Vico Office Schedule Planner and the FAQs

Our Products: Vico Office Production Controller and the FAQs

Our Products: Vico Office 4D Manager and the FAQs

 

Webpage: What Is 4D BIM?

Webpage: What is Flowline Scheduling?

Webpage: What is Location-Based Management for Construction?

Webpage: Why Consider Switching Your Scheduling to Location-Based Management?

 

Webinar: The 5D Virtual Construction Workflow

Webinar: Location-Based Management Principles and Last Planner

Webinar: LBS Manager in the 5D Workflow

Webinar: Planning AND Controlling the Schedule

 

Video: 5D BIM for Dummies

 

We also offer a step-by-step guide to our 5D virtual construction workflow with video tutorials. These videos are just 2-5 minutes in length, but illustrate how to use a particular piece of functionality. You can access the video library index and view just what you need, or download the complete set of training videos. We have training videos for Estimators, Schedulers, Supers, and anyone who does CM Reporting.

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COMMENTS

LBMS is a very exacting tool. I am wondering how practical and effective it might be in a working environment that is disorganized from a planning point of view and in which others involved in the construction process are less well organized. How can it include a level of flexibility to address less well organized building sites?

posted @ Wednesday, July 01, 2009 1:05 PM by Brian Lewis


Our experience is that LBMS will force disorganized building sites to organize. The data requirements for Owner reporting alone require that things are done consistently from week to week. It is very transparent to the Owner when there are issues and when the CM/GC is not reacting to them on time. LBMS will collect numerical evidence of such disorganization and show its effects on project's bottomline. Disorganized project teams typically set up poorly designed LBMS schedules but then get caught during tracking phase. If they do not update it, it will look bad. If they update it, it will look bad until they decide to organize and start to control the project. Owners deserve an early warning if their project team is not organized. So do executives of construction companies. The key to profitability is to prevent disaster projects.

posted @ Wednesday, July 01, 2009 7:32 PM by Olli Seppänen


while I found the article interesting myself I rather suspect it is a little technical for Owners who are often no so interested in how things are done but what are the benefits to them. The Control features of LBMS in VICO are significant and could form the focus of some of the benefits to Owners.

posted @ Tuesday, September 08, 2009 7:48 AM by Brian Lewis


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