Seeking assistance re: Project Recovery

Always difficult to see what you are doing, without looking over your shoulder.

So a lot of guesses by me.

You can create a new Benchmark, as an idea.

Not many clients care what your delays are, They  want to know how you are going to achieve the original delivery time, including rain etc.

So the reschedule will give you an idea of new critical path, and forecasted completion date.

Presumably, with additional resources, you can reduce some of the durations on the  critical path tasks.

So that is my rapid answer.

Always remember the human factor, I've yet to find anyone, including me, that can forecast accurately. Lots of human variations, so aim early, as there are always late surprises that you have not allowed for, and will only reveal themselves when the various task are done. 

Hence all those milestones you have in your task list, to give you some miniature targets, and assurance things are on track.

Assuming you are working for a contractor who is in turn working for the client.



You will need a method of measuring progress for each of the activities on your plan. Thereafter there are two ways of treating the 'events' that have hindered your project.



1. Seek approval from the client for a change control to your schedule and re-baseline with new durations and activities due to client instructed changes to scope, quality etc.



2. Disregard any changes that are not subject to client authorised change control to your schedule. These changes may be due to inclement weather, re-work or for other reasons deemed at the contractor's risk. Status your schedule using your methods of measuring progress.



The first way is a bit of a get out of jail free card if the client will accept responsibility for their impact on your schedule. Often they will not and want you to deliver significant more scope in the same duration. You will then be able to cover a host of indescretions if you can re-baseline.



If you get an opportunity to re-baseline I would advise you include future schedule risk due to weather etc within your activities as a bit of hidden float. You can always produce a recovery schedule, considering changing the logic, increasing resource allocation to reduce duration, running activities in parallel etc, which will get you back on track. Again include a sensible level of float across your activities.



Often delay events are so unpredictable they cannot be scheduled. Other tricks are to include activities for client activities such as method statement approval or the issue of permits. This will make it more transparently obvious when they delay you and may give you leverage.  

Thanks for the responses so far.



For the actual job, we have formulated a new schedule to deal with the outstanding works, however, as a lot of the work is civil in nature, this shows an end date that is beyond the original (with increased resource allocation).



I have some related questions:



1.) I'm dealing with a project that is running for about a year thus far. Client delays include: late issue of permits (1-2 hrs per day), changes in instructions (impacts on the pre-works which in itself involves a significant amount of work), approvals for drawings & designs. To justify the Extension of Time, how can I go back and show this on the schedule (given that this was not input into the project schedule before, but was recorded separately)?



2.) As we have learnt a bit from the execution thus far, the new schedule that we are using is not identical to the original....in this case a less detailed schedule allows for better tracking/ view as opposed to detailed (since a lot of the work is simultaneous). My question in this case is: should this be done/ what is the best practice/ should I keep to the original format (BOQ type)???



The less detailed schedule (in my view) should not be a problem since the contract stated that payment are to be made only when all the work has been completed & handed over.

I work in an industry where the client's processes often delay contractor's delivery activities.



The resulting delays are generally unanticipated for the contractor's first project and absorbed at their cost. They then learn the lesson and re-adjust their planning process to varying degrees of success and try to recoup financial losses during the next project(s).



I wish you luck in convincing the client that all these 1 to 2 hour delays are unreasonable and justified without a detailed diary of evidence. The client may take the view that this is the contractor's risk and should have foreseen it. How this is possible without extensive experience of the project environment and especially if the job is competitively tendered is beyond me....



However to help you recover some time I would suggest a detailed schedule would be more in order. You tend to find micro-management of the schedule is more necessary in your situation. A more detailed schedule at activity level will allow you to carefully plan dependancies. The BoQ is a good prompt for the activities you may want to put on the plan. This will assist you also in measuring progress accurately as you can more easily estimate progress at this micro-level by using, say, square meterages from the BoQ. This will give you some clout with your sub-contractors as you will know exactly how far ahead or behind they are and you will be able to pay them accurately on work completed. Incidently measurement of progress is generally far easier for civils than for other disciplines such as M&E.



There is however a provisio. The amount of effort you will need to expend on producing and statusing a schedule to this detail may not be realistic. I would suggest you look at critical activities:- those on the critical path, long lead-in and risky (from a project point of view). Plan these in more detail and those of less concern in less detail. By less detail I mean by rolling up several activities into a single bar on the chart. Also accuracy of work completed may not be that necessary for payment and invoicing purposes.



As a rule of thumb I was told an activity should be around 6 weeks or £30k. But again this can be varied and would not be approprate for short duration,extreme time critical works such as an overnight system outage.



There is no right answer and more than one way to do this. You will need to find a balance between too little and too much detail, have some reasoning in your own mind for what you do and be prepared to be flexible.

Sanjay,

Your question has escalated from a simple, , almost  academic question of recovering a program to a cost claim. I don't think anyone will have the level of detail you will need to substantiate a claim. There are many, many variables, one of which is which T & C are you are under , (Black book perhaps) to substantiate a claim. 



You mention you are trying to resolve permit being delayed by 2 hours, I would need to hear a lot more to see if that is a significant problem. Contract position is unlikely to be that accurate, and the terms "reasonable" etc will be in your argument and justification, more than telling me an EoT is justified because of a 2 hour permit delay in 1 year Contract. I think you have a hard job. I'm being devil advocate, but you need to go through that conversation before discussing with client. This forum is friendly in comparison.



The reason I point at Black Book is that you have to give notice at the time of the variation otherwise forfeit your claim. After all , the client should have the right to tell you not to proceed as the costs are too high from your adjusted work profile. Telling him after the event is unfair. Agreeing costs before the work is executed is of course a clean discussion, and fair to both parties, no ambushing, no unpleasant surprises.

A  reflection of my own life, I like to embrace client variations at the end of the contract, dead easy to show additional costs. Not always possible, but makes the conversation clean, which is always desirable.

Sorry, so much more to your answer than just a print off of a Gnatt Chart.

Thank you Mr Cutner & Mr Brooks for your time and consideration to my little quandry. 



I really appreciate the advice/ feedback.



To Mr Brooks: I agree that this may be one of the things that we will have to absorb, but I am trying to look at the problem at all angles before surrendering. I will also re-look the detailed schedule.



To Mr Cutner: The issue of a claim may eventually be raised post-completion, but let me expand a bit on the delays:



The contract allows for the issue of permits at say 7:00 am beyond which the contractor can make a claim using standby rates submitted. On the contractor side (my side) a late issue of permits for excavation works (for concrete foundations) affects my progress in the task of excavation, the amount of concrete to be used will be affected (ordered from a supplier off-site), this pushes back all succeeding tasks by a day due to supplier limits, etc.



A common delay that I have been facing is frequent change of scope by the client: eg. an instruction to "clear & compact an area for access" has changed to "create an access road" and then back to the initial....This affects me greatly as I have to plan my work around the equipment available, the need to complete works in a "section" to get cash flow from the project, etc. (in this job there are a number of sections being worked on simultaneously but equipment is shared/ scheduled).



Recently the client has halted preliminary works to re-do the risk assessment of the job. This stems from uncertainties underground (dead cables/ pipelines that there are no record of) that were not accounted for. 



Now when the client comes to a meeting and higlights our lack of progress, I am trying to figure out the best way to present all of this info......

 

Sanjay,

Well,if the Contract Terms gives away a claim situation, then of course you are entitled to it. I personally wouldn't wait until the end to present your claims, and variations, declare them now. That's my perspective of having been a client and contractor over many years. Don't get me wrong, I've worked with plenty of LLB and Master QS that seem , in my opinion , to ambush the client at the end. So different companies, different philosophy of claim handling. You have expressed yourself well here, so think you can show the logic easily.

You mentioned cash flow, well if you claim now, you will get cash now.

and similarly, if client is pointing at you about lack of progress, you must explain. The perception, will always linger longer than reality, so again that's why I would claim now. It stops the gossip.

I recall one client when I was Birse, complaining at me about us being in delay, yet was paying us our claim. Illogical, as Mr Spock would say, why would he pay us, if the claim was unsubstantiated, yet he still went around saying this. I hope you can see why I take my stance. As another aside, if you wait until the project end, it is always more difficult to claim cash, as the client will be wrapping up his own accounts. Late surprises don't help him, even if he is wrong.

Thanks for the feedback. I undestand your stance.



I prefer to get these questions & comments here in the forum as opposed to a client meeting.



I have also functioned in the role of client in the past. This is why I am trying to get your opinions as to the best approach that would benefit both sides. 

Sanjay, as I said previously, this is a friendly environment, and you are right about getting some thoughts. But similarly, these are shallow thoughts compared to the seriousness of the task that you have commercially. The difficulty contributors have is the volumn of information needed to determine the substantiation of your claim. We can all talk about it generically only.

If project controls is your role, and tracking variations and claims management go hand in hand, you need to go on one of the Claims courses run by Knowles or Franklin Andrews etc. It is a deep subject that can often make or break the profit on a project. Your comments have made me reflect a bit. I just discovered that the contracts that have gone sweetly are the ones with minimal variations. Having a client put together a solid contract document, not being dependant on others, being claims aware,  means variations are avoided in the first place. 

And there are plenty of stories from contractor winning the main job, as they will make up for it on the VOs.

If you search the Internet, you'll come across a humerous  photo of a yacht   , called "Claim 1".

Any other thoughts bounce them off here.

In a general sense, how do you tackle the following:



think about the construction of a basic pipeline around an island, with the job being broken down to: (1) dig trench (2) lay pipe.



Divide the total project into 4 sections (North, South, East & West).



Now as the contractor you have completed task 1 in the North and have reached 50% of task 2, whereas in the East you have 25% task 1 completed.



However, the client now requires you to halt all task 2 works in the North, but allows work to continue in the East.



You must finish task 1 before starting task 2

All work in other sections require North to be completed

You will only get paid for completed sections



My core issue is the delay. How do you treat with a delay in one aspect of your job that will eventually impact on the completion date although you have work available to you?