Lesson 1: Schedule Reviews
Schedule reviews are a critical part of governance and project delivery. Whether reviewing your own team's schedule for internal approval or examining a contractor's programme during delivery, a structured, professional approach is essential. This lesson covers the documentation that supports schedule review, how to conduct a review of another party's schedule, and the key questions that every review should answer.
Schedule Documentation
Basis of Schedule (BoS)
A Basis of Schedule document provides an overview of the project and the planning and scheduling methodologies used. It is a critical governance document that allows reviewers, approvers, and stakeholders to understand how the schedule was built and the assumptions behind it. A BoS should include:
- Project description & scope
- Documents relied upon (design docs, specifications, reports, surveys, contracts, technical requirements)
- Project owner's Schedule Management Plan
- Schedule strategy
- Construction methodology
- Key productivity information & resources
- Working calendars
- Activity duration calculations for key activities
- Schedule Risk Analysis report
- Explanation of critical path
- Constraints used in the schedule
- Resource histograms
- Schedule quality checks
- Key milestones, completion dates, separable portions
- Staging or phase drawings
- Time Chainage Diagram (if relevant)
- Summary schedule output
- Detailed schedule output
- Critical path
- Near-critical paths
Schedule Management Plan
The Schedule Management Plan is a collection of processes, approaches, templates, and tools that comprise the project's execution strategy and objectives as reflected in the project schedule. It defines:
- How the schedule will be developed, updated, and progressed
- How schedule information will be communicated to various levels of management
- References to guidelines (e.g. a guideline for Time Chainage Diagram preparation) covering formatting, software, and preparation requirements
The Schedule Management Plan should be unique to each project. A generic, one-size-fits-all plan adds little value. It should specify the chosen CPM software, reporting cadence, baseline management approach, and how changes to the critical path will be communicated.
Reviewing Schedules by Others
Schedule reviews require detailed analysis, careful investigation, and close interaction with the project team. The reviewer's role is not that of policing or auditing — rather, it is uncovering and communicating the hidden stories about the status and achievability of the project schedule, and then working closely with the project team to help solve them.
Schedule reviews typically occur in:
- The latter stages of the Procurement Phase — reviewing bid schedules submitted by tenderers
- During the Delivery Phase — reviewing contractors' delivery schedules at regular update intervals
What Schedule Reviews Communicate
Is the schedule accurate and robust?
How is the schedule changing over time and how is this being managed?
How is the project tracking? Are deliverables being completed as planned?
Is the schedule compliant with the relevant contract documents?
Is the schedule (and project) likely to be completed on time?
Client planning teams should adopt a "One Team" approach. This means spending time at the Contractor's office, conducting joint site inspections, and positioning yourself as a second pair of eyes rather than an auditor. Outputs of the review should strike a balance between carefully quantified data and meaningful narrative information — data alone is not useful; it must be organised into information to become understood.
Key Review Questions
These are the critical questions that a schedule reviewer should ask and answer:
Is the critical path logical and does it make sense?
Is there a parallel critical path that needs to be monitored?
What are the float paths and near-critical paths?
Do activities have open ends — nil predecessors or nil successors?
Are there activities with excessive amounts of total float? A well-developed network should have non-critical activities with a minimum amount of float.
Can the critical path be shortened — by removing unnecessary restraints, overlapping activities, increasing resources, or adopting an alternative methodology?
Watch for misplaced critical paths: Does the critical path pass through finishes, landscaping, or external works? On most projects this would be incorrect — it is unlikely that painting or external landscaping is a critical path activity.
For a city high-rise building: does the critical path pass through the Lift Motor Room or electrical substation? Lifts, lift motor rooms, and permanent power are all generally critical on high-rise projects.
Have procurement, design, and approval lead times been properly linked to construction activities?
Do completion activities have sufficient time allowance for local authority inspections and commissioning?
Are constraints applied correctly, or can they be removed?
Are there redundant or duplicate relationships? Can activities be overlapped or bypassed?
Does the total indicated time match the committed or specified contract time?
Schedule Quality — The DCMA 14-Point Assessment
The Defence Contract Management Agency (DCMA) 14-Point Assessment (14PA) is a well-established collection of measures intended to assess the technical structure of a schedule, as well as the contractor's ability to plan and execute work. While originally developed for US Government defence contracts, it has been widely adopted as a benchmark for schedule quality across many industries.
The DCMA 14PA thresholds are not compliance triggers — they are a starting point for objective analysis. The DCMA does not evaluate methodology, logic common sense, or how the project will actually be performed. It should be used as a guideline rather than a rigid standard, and may not suit all projects or all jurisdictions.
The 14 assessment points are:
No more than 5% of remaining tasks should be missing predecessor or successor logic.
No more than 5% of logic links should contain leads (negative lag). Leads often indicate incorrect scheduling logic.
No more than 5% of logic links should contain lags. Excessive lags can hide missing activities or float.
No more than 5% of relationships should be non-FS (i.e. SS, FF, or SF types), which are generally discouraged unless specifically required.
No more than 5% of remaining tasks should have hard constraints, which can override network logic and distort float calculations.
No more than 5% of activities should have excessive total float (typically defined as >44 working days). High float can indicate missing logic.
No tasks should have negative float. Negative float indicates the schedule is already behind its committed dates — a critical warning.
No more than 5% of activities should have excessively long durations (typically >44 working days). Long tasks should be broken into measurable steps.
No actual start or finish dates should exist in the future relative to the status date, or actual dates prior to the project start.
Activities should be resource-loaded. No more than 5% of remaining tasks should be missing resource assignments.
No more than 5% of tasks should have been forecasted to start or finish before the status date but remain incomplete.
The schedule should pass a critical path integrity test — removing a key milestone should delay the project finish date.
Target ≥ 1.0. Measures how realistic the program completion date is based on remaining critical path duration and available float. Covered in detail in Lesson 2.
Target ≥ 1.0. Measures how well the program has performed relative to the baseline plan — a count-based execution metric. Covered in detail in Lesson 2.
There are numerous commercial applications that replicate the DCMA 14PA framework. Oracle Primavera P6 v22+ has similar functionality built in. Remember: these tools are time savers and provide data — but they do not evaluate methodology, logic, common sense, or how the project will be performed. They should always be used in combination with expert professional review.
Lesson 1 Quiz — Schedule Reviews, Quality & the DCMA 14PA
Select the best answer for each question.
Q1. The DCMA 14-Point Assessment is primarily used for:
Q2. A project schedule that adheres to the DCMA 14-Point Assessment is more likely to:
Q3. Which DCMA point focuses on the overall logic and network connectivity within the schedule?
Q4. A high percentage of activities with total float exceeding a specific threshold would be flagged under which DCMA point?
Q5. The DCMA 14-Point Assessment emphasises the importance of:
Discussion Questions
Q6. Briefly explain the concept of "critical path" and its relationship to the DCMA 14-Point Assessment. Why does the DCMA include a Critical Path Test (point 12)?
Q7. Describe two benefits of using the DCMA 14-Point Assessment when reviewing a contractor's schedule.
Q8. A project manager is reviewing a bid schedule. The schedule uses a mix of working days and calendar days, has several activities with total float exceeding 20 days, and some activities have no successors. Identify three DCMA 14-Point concerns and explain how each could affect the schedule's reliability.