Schedule Planning & Development Quiz

Study Notes

The scheduler's role is to efficiently manage their time and represent it accurately in their outputs.
Schedule development involves both creating a baseline schedule and routine updates.
Changes in scope, circumstances, or outside influences can lead to schedule changes, which require analysis and alternative development.
Stakeholders, including owners, contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers, can have both positive and negative impacts on the schedule.
Frequent changes can make it difficult to track progress against the original plan, necessitating a new baseline schedule.

The baseline schedule serves as the foundation for project execution and is used to measure progress, identify trends and changes, and assess schedule deviations.
Analysis of the updated schedule against the baseline highlights any variances in milestones or completion dates.

The process of updating the schedule requires identifying input, logic changes, reporting periods, and actual start and end dates.
The scheduler must account for these requirements in schedule analysis, forecasting, and reporting.

Schedule development involves a two-part process: input & data gathering and schedule creation.
The process of collecting information for the schedule involves:
- Defining the scope of the project
- Developing a work breakdown structure
- Creating a schedule specification
- Gathering stakeholder feedback
- Generating a cost estimate model
The process of creating the schedule itself includes:
- Choosing the type of schedule
- Defining activities
- Assigning durations
- Specifying relationships between activities
- Incorporating constraints and calendars
- Establishing cost and resource loading
- Conducting quality analysis and compliance reviews
- Documenting the schedule basis

Understanding the project's various elements is crucial in developing the schedule scope.
This requires detailed knowledge of the work, scheduling tools' limitations, and the ability to communicate the plan effectively.

Understanding stakeholder interests ensures that the schedule is inclusive, encompassing, and responsive to their needs and the project’s goals.
External stakeholders may include:
- Owners
- Local authorities and community interests
- Permitting and code enforcement agencies
- End users and customers
Internal stakeholders may include:
- Prime contractor and project management team
- Principal subcontractors
- Second-tier subcontractors
- Suppliers
- Installers
- Startup, testing, and compliance support personnel

Activities are the plan or phase that is converted into a schedule model.
Activities represent direct or indirect work support and are logically linked to form the schedule.
Key components of an activity include:
- A unique alphanumeric identifier
- A unique descriptive name
- A workday duration
Additional activity attributes may include:
- Assigned costs and resources
- Constraints

Duration refers to the estimated time for an activity to be completed, excluding breaks, holidays, and weekends.
It becomes the "original duration" for an activity and may include multiple work elements within the activity scope.

Activities are logically linked to form a network schedule model, representing the project team's plan to complete the work sequentially.
Each activity typically has both a predecessor and successor activity, creating a network of dependencies.
Relationships define the logical connection between activities, and the longest chain of activities determines the critical path.
The scheduler needs to understand how different types of relationships affect the model and reported data.

Constraints can affect the schedule in many ways, including limiting:
- Start date
- Finish date
- Duration
- Resource availability
- Activity relationships
Calendars define working days, work shifts, and nonworking periods.
They can influence the calculation of activity durations and affect the overall project schedule.