Speaker: Gokhan Gelisen, Cost Manager, Skanska USA Civil Inc.

Automated Productivity Based Schedule Animation (APBSA) is a dynamic scheduling system that will utilize weekly trended construction labor productivity data in order to automatically update the baseline schedule that was created at the beginning of the project by the construction manager. APBSA will report the construction activity duration variances and animate the progress of the job with most up to date data available in a 4-D environment. Contractors can improve their planning by utilizing APBSA with BIM. As a case study we modeled Systems Engineering Facility III of Hanscom Air Force Base (AFB) which is a three storey building.

Speaker: Carlos Nazario, Principal Associate, PMA Consultants, LLC & June Thompson, Project Services Manager, BP IST

BP is in the midst of executing the BrightLights Project, consisting of the relocation of its US global oil trading division and its US customer facing businesses from suburban offices to a new fit-for-purpose space in an existing structure downtown Chicago. The vision of making open team communication the cornerstone of the project controls strategy has become a reality. This paper highlights how organizational relationships must be used as enablers when setting up a project controls program. The authors will discuss how stakeholders collaborated to develop and manage the project’s integrated schedule, including the process of defining and monitoring crucial transition points and turnovers. The paper will also demonstrate how an ""open team vision"" and effective communication played a key role in the conception and tracking of metrics in the areas of project execution planning, cost and risk management.

Speaker: Brian M Evans, Principal, MCR LLC

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) Terminal Facilities organization is responsible for construction and upgrade of all Air Traffic Control Towers (ATCT) and Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facilities. The Terminal Facilities organization has implemented Earned Value Management on construction contracts using a scheduling specification based upon the Unified Facilities Guide Specification for Network Analysis Schedules. EVM is required on FAA capital investment projects regardless of contract type. The scheduling specification provides a standard work breakdown structure (WBS) for implementation. The standard WBS allows the EVM data to be standardized and used to improve cost estimating models for future projects.

Speaker: Brian M Evans, Principal, MCR LLC

Managing schedules on complex projects presents issues which can be resolved through metrics to determine if the schedules are contractually compliant and if the data is valid for analysis. The compliance check is a manual check. The data validation check is an automated check using a tool. Data validation is broken down into the following major groups: Activities, Milestones, and Status; Logic, Resources and Timing; and Schedule Status. Data validation provides information which can be provided to managers for analysis and decision making. The discussion will focus on how schedule metrics can improve schedule quality using automated tools.

Speaker: David Gorski, Senior Project Manager / Chief Project Scheduler, Gannett Fleming, Inc

The delivery of quality project design documents for contractor bidding is a top priority for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Achieving the yearly dollar project let goal a must. To support these two goals, manage the delivery of projects, and effectively reduce the end of year scramble to meet defined targets, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation - Highway Quality Assurance Department implemented a statewide plan to manage highway design projects. This paper presents the management plan rational, initial scope and strategy, the scope growth, the lessons being learned, and the present status of the plan.

Speaker: Pradip Mehta & Tom Papachristos

This Case Study will discuss an expert analysis of a contractor’s claim which alleged various delays, disruption, inefficiency and loss of productivity in its fabrication and construction operations due to design deficiencies and cumulative effect of various scope changes directed by an Owner.  Tom Papachristos and Pradip Mehta will discuss the underlying approach and various methodologies they undertook in evaluating the contractor’s claim which was eventually settled through a mediation process at 28% of the original claim value.

Speaker: Tom Burke, President, Orion Associates International, Inc.

Delay claims may be evaluated during a project by forecasting the future impacts of delay events or after project completion by forensically recording the actual impacts of delay events.  The forecasted approach evaluates delay impacts in advance, but may not be accurate.  The forensic approach deals with actual delays and is, therefore, more accurate, but leaves issues unresolved until completion.  Which approach should be used?   This paper suggests that a dual evaluation incorporating both approaches should be used.

Speaker: Chris Carson, Corporate Director of Project Controls for Alpha Corporation

Mediations can be quick solutions to a dispute or long drawn out processes that waste time, and yield nothing.  This session will provide background on the purpose of mediation, how to present as an expert, and how an experienced mediator facilitates dispute resolution.

The presenters have years of experience with all forms of dispute resolution, especially mediation. This session provides information that will be useful to analysts with all levels of expertise and experience.

Chris Carson and Phil Apprill will provide the expert analysis presentations, and an experienced dispute resolution Mediator with The McCammon Group will act as mediator.

Speaker: George McLaughlin, Principal, McLaughlin and McLaughlin

This looks at conditions and issues that give rise to claims and disputes associated with large and complex projects. The emphasis is on planning and scheduling-related features, issues and ways of working. While complex, the issues associated with project disputes and claims are linked by common planning/development and resolution features. Understanding the conditions that lead to (or avoid) claims can be helpful in successful project planning. Understanding these same issues from a retrospective view can help establish cause and effect. A few of the issues that will be addressed are change specifications and implementation, notice techniques, entitlement and pricing linkage, and managing exposure to the other party. The presenter has functioned as program / project manager and claims manager / analyst / testifying expert on a wide variety of projects with a recent focus on the process and power industries.

Speaker: Timothy T. Calvey, Vice President, Calvey Consulting LLC

Out-of-sequence progress occurs when activities are performed in a sequence different than they were originally planned to be performed. The reasons for out-of-sequence work are numerous and commonly occur with every schedule update. Correcting schedule logic for out-of-sequence progress can create float, change the critical path and shift delay responsibility.

Who owns the credit or debit in the schedule delay analysis? Or on the other hand, should out-of-sequence progress be ignored in a schedule analysis? This presentation will look at the out-of-sequence progress component of a delay analysis.

Speaker: Mark Groff, Senior Counsel, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP & Stephen B. Hurlbut, Managing Shareholder, Akerman Senterfitt LLP

This presentation will discuss recent federal and state court decisions addressing CPM and scheduling delay issues. The lessons learned from such cases can be an important guide to industry practitioners prosecuting or defending claims.

Speaker: Gui Ponce de Leon, CEO/Managing Principal, PMA Consultants, LLC & Darrel Field, Senior Principal, PMA Consultants, LLC & John Zann, Principal, PMA Consultants, LLC

Although adverse weather has impacted construction since before the pyramids, and when unusually severe is typically only deserving of a time extension without compensation, weather issues continue to generate their fair share of disputes.  Even if not disputed, all significant grass root construction projects face weather impact issues that the parties may wish to recognize on an ongoing basis.  Existing weather modeling methods can be cumbersome, overly technical and resource intense.  In searching for practical approaches, the authors have developed new methodologies for modeling force majeure weather that provide objective evaluation of adverse weather impacts, for forensic as well as contemporaneous applications.  Guidance for calculating normal adverse weather and force majeure weather day losses is provided, with examples to illustrate the new concepts.  The focus of this paper is on the technical aspects of normal adverse and force majeure weather as opposed to the legal aspects.

Speaker: Mehdi Dadgarian, Project Control Manager, AECOM Technology

The new $17-billion 2nd Avenue Subway project in Manhattan. Underground for its entire 8.5-mile length, the Second Avenue Subway stretches between Harlem in the north & Hanover Square in the south. Construction techniques such as tunnel boring machines (TBM), cut-and-cover, and mining will be used on the project

• This presentation will cover the enterprise system installation, the process by which the decisions were made and the phased approach to the enterprise system implementation.
  
• Method of calculating the design earned value acceptable to client
• Streamline the process of collecting and disseminating information
• Applying lessons learned for continuous process improvement.
• Requirements for contractor cost/resource loaded CPM and method of performance measurement.

Speaker: Mervyn Extravour, Team Leader, PRO-DEV Consulting

One of the essential elements of today’s management systems that endures and ensures that the needs of the stakeholders are met, without compromising the integrity of the providers is “enterprise wide integrated project management”- which orgs.  would be well advised to embrace together with the associated assets of ‘ portfolio management’.

In this regard, the great financial meltdown and ‘management fiasco’ which the world has witnessed in 2008 – 2009, and will affect future work in enterprises, would have been avoided.

This paper therefore seeks to validate the essentials of enterprise wide project management and at the same time provide a framework for future management and continuous enhancement of business and other organizations.

Speaker: Jacqueline Nevils, Senior Project Manager, Raytheon Corporation & Robert Johnson, Senior IT Project Manager, Raytheon’s Corporation

Raytheon Corporation is an industry leader in disciplined program Earned Value Management System (EVMS) performance reporting. Raytheon has expanded its strict discipline and governance standards to its internal Corporate Information Technology (IT) division. Many initiatives have now borne fruit due to the enhanced metric cadence and rigorous performance reporting. This paper will elaborate on two global, enterprise-wide internal Raytheon projects: The Estimate at Complete (EAC) Project and Product Data Management (PDM). Both examples bring excellent lessons learned regarding the dichotomy between.

Speaker: Bruce Stephan, Managing Principal, PMA Consultants, LLC & Richard Sappe, E&C Industry Strategist, Oracle

This paper and presentation will explain how to plan, implement and administer capital program management systems for large public owners, and will discuss how Oracle’s purchase of Primavera is dramatically changing the use of Primavera P6 for this purpose.

Speaker: Vladimir Liberzon, General Manager, Spider Project Team & Lubov Guzhova, Director, Spider Project Team

The project schedule model is the decision support tool only if it properly simulates the work of project resources. Implementation of the corporate project management system sets additional requirements to project modeling. These requirements include application of the corporate standards, norms, and templates to project schedule development. In this presentation we will discuss the approaches, tools, and techniques of the schedule development and optimization that are widely used in Russia and other East Europe countries, and supported by Russian software Spider Project.  Methods described in this presentation are used in many large scale programs including Winter Olympic Games 2014 preparation.

Speaker: Jyh-Sheng Chi, Managing Principal, CH Innovation

Public and private entities have been seeking or implementing enterprise project management information system (PMIS) solutions. Almost all organizations spend significant effort to ensure appropriate design, configuration, and implementation. Most likely the entire implementation life cycle consume more resources and time than expected. This paper shares a requirement driven methodology to manage PMIS implementation projects effectively. Also, this requirement centric methodology injects traceability among various project phases and connects all dots through the entire life cycle of the system implementation. Requirement driven methodology provides a solution to avoid pitfalls of the enterprise PMIS implementation projects.

Speaker: Spencer Lamoreaux, IT PMO Tools Integration Manager, Intel

Quality scheduling and resource leveling is complicated. Add to the mix a complex scheduling system such as Microsoft Project Server and most project managers do not have the skill, patience, or desire to be successful. Despite the barriers, quality schedules are critical to efficient resource utilization and schedule forecasting. But, how do you implement an advanced scheduling tool and ingrain quality schedule management into your organization’s culture? Come learn how a successful MS Project Server environment was setup for Intel’s 6,000 person IT organization.

Speaker: Wesley Gillette, Senior Product Manager, Oracle

Not all projects are successful. A project fails when the plan is not met – either the project overruns, overspends, or underperforms. Typically this happens because either the project plan was too optimistic, or unanticipated events occur impacting the project plan. Risk Analysis can help us better understand the project plan through properly estimating schedule contingency, identifying schedule drivers, analyzing the impacts of risk against the project schedule and evaluating mitigation plans. A successful risk analysis allows us to be more confident in the project schedule. In this session, you will learn to determine confidence levels with quick and easy techniques, identify schedule drivers, determine contingency and risk response plans, and incorporate these changes into your projects.

Speaker: Raphael M Düa, FAICD, FAPE, MACS, PCP, Grad DISC, CEO & Owner Micro Planning International Asia Pacific Pty Ltd

Planners and Schedulers know if there's one component of any project which will ensure success or failure, it is the schedule. It’s the benchmark by which project’s are measured, defining all the tasks to be performed, allocating the resources required, and establishes the sequence of activities that will ensure successful delivery.

A mistake made in schedules is incorrect use of lead and lag’s. Some software does not compute the correct dates producing a phenomenon called “Lag Drag”

At the PMICOS 4th Annual Conference, the paper by James L Jenkins, et al  “Scheduling 101: A “Behind – the – Scenes” Look at Basic Schedule Calculations” clearly showed the lag drag problem.

This paper outlines the maths demonstrating how it is solved by the use of the “Ladder Technique”

Speaker: Rob Richards, Project Manager, Stottler Henke Associates, Inc

The purpose and end result of resource leveling in project management software is not always fully understood and appreciated. Resource-leveling's goal is to examine a project for over-allocations and to resolve over-allocations by delaying some tasks to eliminate the over-allocations. That is, the efficiency of how the resources are allocated is NOT a primary concern. By applying techniques of Operations Research and other fields such as Artificial Intelligence, intelligent scheduling can result in significant flow time reductions versus resource leveling. This paper demonstrates with real-world cases how different resource-leveling techniques provide different results and the significant benefits of intelligent scheduling.

Speaker: Dennis D. Lane

It takes a managed and informed effort to create a more mature organization that can look across their projects and spend time on the real project issues instead of wrestling with inconsistent terminology, coding, and reporting techniques. The focus is on success for the Administrator and company, using examples from Oracle’s Primavera P6 v7. The presenter will illustrate properly importing data to avoid creation or changes to managed or interfaced codes, resources, etc. The concepts and approach will benefit the company regardless of enterprise tool. We’ll share practical methods to monitor and manage the configuration of your PM System, to allow for integrated schedules among a multi-company team.

Speaker: Mike Mosley

Our agenda will be a working session in support of the development of the PMI Practice Standard for Scheduling – 2nd Edition. The moderators will be the members of the Standards Committee, representing all four global PMI regions. All Committee members are PMPs, there are four PMI-SP, and one PMI-RMP. This session is sponsored by PMI and will support a Committee meeting to further the Standard’s development.

Speaker: Timothy Mather, CTO, Managing Principal, PMA Consultants, LLC.

Collaboration in the project planning process is essential to optimizing the solution derived to execute the project. One of the key benefits of collaboration is the increased transparency, (symmetry of information) regarding the benefits and risks of various approaches in sequencing and executing project work. Many factors can impact the level of transparency and symmetry in project planning.  Collaboratively developing a time scaled, network diagram as a part of project planning increases symmetry and improves knowledge sharing. The Graphical Path Method (GPM®) enables a level of group participation and fully synchronous planning heretofore unobtainable.

Speaker: Gui Ponce de Leon, CEO/Managing Principal, PMA Consultants, LLC

The critical path method (CPM) is widely used as a project management tool for planning and scheduling. Basic to CPM is drawing a project network, from which project completion, total floats and the critical path are calculated. Once actual dates are introduced in a CPM network, we lose total floats left of the data date, and the critical path can no longer be calculated. The ability to determine total floats and the critical path for the as-built portion of a schedule (left of the data date) is solved by the graphical path method (GPM). This paper presents the concept of GPM forensic total float and its role in retrospective schedule analysis, whether in updating or forensic analysis. A compendium of CPM and GPM floats is provided for context.

Speaker: Joanna "Asia" Alvord, Project Controls Manager, HDR Engineering, Inc. & Lorne Duncan, Partner, Integrated Project Services

March charts (also known as time-distance charts) have been widely used in linear construction projects such as heavy civil, rail, pipelines and tunnels.  Historically these march charts have been hand drawn, prepared in Microsoft Excel or created in a drawing program such as AutoCAD™. In recent years the development of software such as TILOS™ to plan and control linear projects, with the ability to create true critical path schedules, has made this task much easier. Linear planning software connects the schedule data to the geography of the Right-of-Way (ROW), easily identifying construction sequencing, constructability issues, concurrency of work, preferred distance between the crews on the site thus assisting in the project risks identification and mitigation.

In this session, the advantages of using linear scheduling method to plan, schedule and control alignment based linear projects over, or in conjunction with, traditional CPM methodologies will be reviewed and examples provided.

Speaker: Yancy Qualls, Manager of Integrated Program Scheduling, Bell Helicopter

The application of Earned Schedule (ES) principles has greatly expanded the usefulness of Earned Value Management (EVM) in terms of schedule performance analysis. However, what do you do if you are working a project that is not being managed with EV? Or what if a project is in a critical stage of execution and you need to keep a constant watch on schedule performance, but fresh EVM data is still almost a month away? This paper will discuss ways to apply Earned Schedule principles on any schedule, regardless of the presence of EVM or resource-loaded activities.

Speaker: Dr. Dan Patterson, CEO & President, Acumen

This paper describes how the use of advanced risk metrics proved invaluable in helping to determine the root cause of schedule failure on a recent major Capex, high profile project in the US.

While project risk analysis has progressed in recent years, schedule risk analysis still suffers from the same rudimentary problem: that is, results regarding risk exposure are only as good as inputs provided. After ten years focusing on risk analytics, a new and highly successful technique for validating the risk inputs (and associated outputs) has been developed and is now a proven technique. A new concept of time-phased risk analysis (through project ribbons) is discussed that has had remarkable success in providing projects with a new insight not previously available through traditional risk reporting.

The paper concludes with a high profile user story that ultimately provided benefit for all project stakeholders.

Speaker: Lev Virine, President, Intaver Institute Inc.

Realistic project schedules should take into account the risks and uncertainties that are associated with different project activities. Modern quantitative risk analysis methodologies and tools for quantitative risk analysis significantly simplifies risk modeling, statistical calculations, and interpretation of results and no longer requires advanced knowledge of mathematics and statistics. The paper includes a review and comparison of different methodologies for quantitative risk analysis.

Speaker: Colin Cropley, Technical Director Risk Management & Project Controls, Hyder Consulting Pty Ltd

A practical methodology is presented for integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Risk Analysis. It develops realistic project schedules and estimates to minimise project failure through inadequate cost and schedule contingencies. Barriers to use of this methodology are examined. The importance of fast useable software driven by organisations with high project management maturity is discussed.

Use is illustrated from real projects. Use of the simulation software may be demonstrated – Primavera Risk AnalysisTM (PRA), RiskIntegrator2™ (RI2), a database application to manage risks and map them to tasks in PRA, and CURA™, an enterprise risk management system now able to be linked to PRA.

Speaker: James Quillian, Principal Analyst, Tecolote Research, Inc.

The paper includes case studies, how quantitative risk analysis for different industries: aerospace, pharmaceutical, entertainment, professional sports, and law enforcement. The fully interactive presentation includes the demonstration of how to identify risks perform quantitative analysis, and interpret results of analysis.

Speaker: Speaker: Michelle Colodzin, Senior Program and Project Manager, MetaVista Consulting Group

Learn how to improve project success rates and help organizations meet their goals by establishing a ‘Scheduling Center of Expertise’ (SCoE) in the PMO by leveraging the PMO’s existing knowledge, building project management and scheduling skills and expanding its role into providing project scheduling expertise by creating a centralized scheduling function. This presentation introduces a methodology to gain executive buy-in, plan, establish and grow a SCoE and shows how the SCoE can help organizations reach their goals by improving overall project success rates.

Speaker: Dave Somanchi, Owner, Construction Scheduling Experts

In Collaborative Scheduling, one expert scheduler represents all project stakeholders, the Owner, the Architect/Engineer, the Construction Manager and the Contractor to prepare project schedules. The benefits include increased trust among project partners, reduction in paper work, expedited approval of baseline schedules and monthly schedule updates, transparent decision-making process on schedule changes/delays, high quality schedules, cost savings to all team members and a healthy project atmosphere. The paper presents the Author’s experience while performing Collaborative Scheduling on a $31 million Waste Water Treatment Plant Expansion project. The presentation also discusses a suggested methodology, scheduler’s qualifications and a proposed cost distribution matrix.

Speaker: Michael Cholden Brown, Project Controls Manager, AECOM - Water

When the Owner has never seen an on-time project, how does the CM Scheduler assuage Owner anxieties, reduce surprises, show that you are working hard in its interests, meet all Milestones, and optimize the schedule, while incorporating Risks. To make best decisions of the cost/benefit of slippage and acceleration, the CM must know the Owner’s real needs- many Owners will not tell and are their own worst enemies.

How taking the Owner demands to show worse case as well as early delivery, can help the CM show Risks and Opportunities, in a deterministic P3 schedule and improve on ‘on-time’. The paper will demonstrate various approaches to validate the schedule and to show how to include the worse (not worst) case and the possible opportunities for improvement, and how to decide whether the CM or the Owner ‘owns the float’.

Speaker: Chris Carson, Corporate Director of Project Controls for Alpha Corporation & Glen Palmer, Owner, GR Palmer Consulting Services, LLC

Planning a complex project is one of the most under appreciated efforts in the construction industry today. Further, based on the authors’ experiences in the dispute resolution industry, it is often a poorly executed element of a project that leads to huge cost and time overruns due to claims. One of the main reasons for this is that many organizations do not understand the true value of a well devised plan and consequently do not spend the effort required to develop a good plan.

Speaker: Raphael Dua, Owner & CEO, Micro Planning International Asia Pacific Pty Ltd & Glen Palmer, Owner, GR Palmer Consulting Services, LLC

The success of the construction industry is essential to us all.

In recent times major failures in construction projects, and construction companies have occurred around the World.

The UK Government (the Sir Mark Latham Report and Sir John Egan Studies) says that there is a better way of developing and delivering major projects, that is Client lead projects. This is achieved through Collaborative Working Arrangements (CWA) between Client and all the stakeholders from initial concept design right through sub contractors and contractors to completion of project. Basically to remove the litigation that is so common today.

In developing proposals for improving performance the author has studied the CWA methodology The paper will describe a major project and what changes to traditional project scheduling methods were undertaken.

Speaker: Zsolt Putnoky, PrimaConsulting

Scheduling of complex, truly international projects is a complex challenge. Constellation is a methodology and a related tool created to help schedulers. It is based on the principle of delegation and on a decentralized management model, where an activity of the Leading Unit becomes a project at the Participating Unit side. It allows scheduling systems to be connected and letting each participants using their well known and established processes. It does not require heavy investment in IT infrastructures. Requires minor adjustment in scheduling processes and eliminates user error sources. As a proof of concept, Constellation is build on top of Primavera.

Speaker: Laura Williams, Senior Consultant, Project Management Methodologies (PMM)

As schedulers, we use the tools we have available to us to accurately reflect the project’s work and to perform critical path analysis. At times we may encounter ‘gotchas’ with those tools. This presentation will focus on the best practices for scheduling with Microsoft Project. What are the best ways to set start dates and due dates? What are some of the best practices to allow the scheduling tool to perform a critical path analysis that can be trusted? You will be presented with tips and tricks that will help you take advantage of MS Project’s capabilities.

Speaker: Gabriel Saenz, Global Chief of Planning & Scheduling, Shaw Energy & Chemicals

This paper intends to provide a guideline for the formal presentation of a project schedule to Executive Management for either side of the business, whether as a Contractor or as the Client. It is recognized that in today’s world of international mega project, the effort to develop a schedule is often very elaborate and can take weeks or even months to complete. Executive Management in attending to overall company business and guiding multiple project, needs to brought up to speed in the essential issues of the project in an abbreviated and focused manner.

A specific presentation content outline is offered which will not only help the Project Team to express their commitment to the plan, but demonstrate there has been a thorough and complete planning effort. As such Executive Management can then gain confidence in the soundness of the schedule as one of the core elements for effective Project Management for the undertaking at hand.

Speaker: Lee A. Peters, PE, MSCE & John Homer, PE, MSCE

Capital projects – built by people, in organizations of people, for people – are intense political environments. Revolutionize how your schedules influence projects. Use compelling schedules to lead people’s work performance. Respect the demands of project management and project schedules otherwise these challenges quickly corrupt leaders into ‘commanding, demanding and ordering’ rather than ‘communicate, coordinate and cooperate.’ Learn successful techniques to plan and schedule projects that target accomplishing work, maintaining accountability, and delivering results. Detect and disinfect bad project politics, particularly those associated with its schedule. Recognize the difference between planning and scheduling – both their dependence and independence. Clearly define strategic, tactical, operational, and task/tool levels of planning and scheduling. Know the right time and the right detail necessary for successful scheduling at each level. Employ issue management searchlights to illuminate the dark foggy corners of a project schedule. Measure the reliability of your scheduling effort – what completes when you say it will complete? Develop principles to infuse your schedules with good politics by communicating, coordinating, and cooperating. Reinforce your learning in situations taken from actual projects.

Learning Objectives

• Clean project atmospheres by forcing communication, coordination, and cooperation.
• Create project schedules to drive each level of planning and scheduling – strategic, tactical, operational, task/tool.
• Create issue management searchlights to create a squeaky clean schedule: assumptions, threats, opportunities, decisions, imperatives, definitions, information, and resolution.
• Shine light on scope, logic, durations, resources, and change
• Measure quality and reliability of scheduling
• Write and follow principles of great project politics.