Construction Programming - Delay Analysis

cpcm provide the client with the benefits of critical path analysis and base claim analysis on 'as-planned impacted' method of delay analysis.
The 'as planned impacted' technique operates by adding or 'impacting' delays onto the planned programme.
cpcm evaluates the effects of change/delays to the contract, incorporates activities into a computer-generated programme and then reschedules to produce a revised completion date.

Advantages and risks

The technique tends to work well when activities are largely sequential and the logic is prescriptive. For example, when constructing a high rise concrete framed building, the contractor will have little, if any, opportunity to vary the planned sequencing and therefore the results of any 'as-planned impacted' delay analysis may well reflect what actually occurred and would thereby produce a fair and reasonable conclusion.

However, it should be noted that if only employer delay events are impacted onto the baseline programme, no account will be made for the contractor's own delay (or, for that matter, any mitigation and/or acceleration measures undertaken).

It is often observed that when this form of analysis is carried out, it produces a revised completion date much later than the date of actual completion of the project. Contractors usually suggest that this is evidence of the success of their acceleration or mitigation measures but, more often than not, it is probably more likely to be evidence of the theoretical nature of the methodology.

If the links between activities are wrong, or more likely, what happens if there are a variety of ways of linking the activities - none of which are 'wrong' but all of which differ depending on the assumptions made about how the work will be resourced and carried out?

Apparently similar programmes can produce different results when a change event is added, because the links were based on different assumptions. In these circumstances it can be very difficult to say which of the two results is right and which is wrong. cpcm can agree on a baseline-linked programme.

It is important to keep in mind that the critical path can (and is likely to) change during the project. If the actual critical path does not correlate to the baseline programme upon which the analysis is based, then the results of that analysis will have little or no relationship to the actual events occurring on site at the time of the change.

Only someone with expertise in programme analysis (and in possession of all the back-up information), will be able to plan and thereafter contractually demonstrate how the analysis has been performed. If hidden mistakes (accidental or deliberate) exist in the analysis then these may have dramatic effects on the results being shown. As always with this subject, it is a case of 'handle with care'.

cpcm provides professional construction programme planners with the essential support derived from complex construction project experience.