Project scheduling in construction sector

Par Youness MAACHI IDRISSI
Ing ENSMR / Ms 
Construction

The scheduling in construction is a very challenging topic, indeed in construction we identify the project completion date as a limestone which is very sensitive because we are saving on cost before it and losing money for every single day of delayed delivering of the project within perfect completion.

With the aim to deliver a project just in time, the company that has won the contract must perform a successful planning and this cannot be done without a well understanding of the scope in every details. A first draft of the schedule is held including just the biggest components of the project, we call that a level one of scheduling then once planners agreed with other disciplines (construction team, engineers, procurement department, quality people, etc.) about this level we can go forward through the next level. This practice allows to determine the structure of the whole project in term of the progress and then we have a strategy for managing the operations of each task in details while we eye up many others indicators as the resources (labour force, machinery, equipments, raw materials and especially managing the time). In order to catch up with this high level of operations scheduling and after be done with the project structure, the next step is to elaborate the WBS (Work Breakdown Structure).

Once we split up the project into a significant number of operations and after defining the links over all these tasks in term of priority, shared resources, and the optimal coordination. At this level of organization we can definitely see clearly through operational activities with a highest possible efficiency. Indeed, every aspects will be well managed and balanced accordingly with the company means and tools. A brief explanations are given below in different concerns:

• Staffing: the company knows exactly its need in term of managers and engineers with overall project progress, it gives a good visibility and to seek for talented people in internal or from the recruitment market, and enough time to prepare and train them;
• Procurement & purchasing: the best planning of the cash flow while applying an intelligent policy of money spending, and it’s also about having the financial flexibility as regards with keeping the cash or making orders. Ensuring also the availability of materials, equipment and services for the construction people just in time in order to prevent shortage, reducing the waste of time and to maintain the quality of these materials and equipment (the less warehousing and storage we have the best it is);
• Workforce estimation: it refers to the agility to foresee the labour as needed and as it is expected on the planned project progress, the benefit from this operational behaviours is similar to the staffing dimensioning (right qualified people in right places and on the right timing);
• Suppliers and subcontractors: with the aims to maintain the just right pressure on suppliers and subcontractors or eventually a consortium company for delivering functional items (engineering services, technical packages, equipment or construction application) within the perfect respect of limestone and the project baselines.
• etc.

Project baselines is an important tools to measure a construction project performance, we have mainly three types of baselines:

1. The scope baseline; it’s the approved project description and the validated WBS.
2. The schedule baseline; it’s a schedule with start and finish dates, it serves as a basis for the comparison between the actual progress and the calculated one initially.
3. The cost baseline; it’s almost same as the schedule baseline except that it’s a matter of the budget spending progress rather than time. Just notice that a validated Work Breakdown Structure WBS helps us to perform a Cost Breakdown Structure that will serve to elaborate the cost planning.

Nota Bene: there is also talk of quality baseline, we will speak about this topic in the next chapter.

Once all these baselines are defined we can go forward throughout calculating the actual completion date and budget, based on these two parameter we foresee the right need in term of human, material and financial resources within the perfect weighting over a time-scale in order to realize the project on time, on budget and to meet the client expectations, that will certainly ensure a client satisfaction.

The utilization of a software is highly recommended mainly in the case of megaprojects and huge construction activities. Some projects are too much complicated in terms of needed resources and the number of tasks to perform with a very improved organization, such as operation cannot be done without a calculating tools for generating the optimal schedule fed by appropriate resources which are distributed based on the progress of the project and its duration. We notice Primavera and MS Projects as two of the most usual software used worldwide.