Chris,

For a start, we do not have certificates of expertise, therefore the label must be substantiated with some experience record. My clients rarely go to court, usually all issues are resolved without the need of forensic schedule analysis and therefore the experience is very limited. 

In the couple of court cases I have been involved no CPM was ever necessary, common sense was enough, without exception our lawyer told us that in order to make our case we better present the issues in a simple manner and keep the CPM schedule for better uses. Beware this does not mean CPM schedules are frequently used, perhaps is a call to keep it simple, to avoid too technical language and cumbersome presentations for which the judge is not trained.

I render engineering services, scheduling is a sideline performed almost exclusively on jobs I performed a full quantity take off prior to job bidding. Then after winning the job my services move to scheduling services and thereafter to assist in methods improvements and revision of submittals and on the purchasing of expensive items, among other duties a PM performs, that because of my 30 years experience on the field.

At times we perform some form of TIA but mostly the issues are solved between the Architect, an Owner's rep and the Contractor. Is common for the Architect not to understand schedules other than reading the bars, same goes for the Owner's rep so even TIAs are seldom used.

Fortunately our system of law adopts not only the English Code but also the Spanish Code, our courts have some sense of justice in their interpretation of the law and does not have to follow strict prior interpretations or Common Law. Puerto Rico being a US territory is subject to federal laws and many of our lawyers practice on the federal court as well as on the PR court system. Our systems though not exclusively based on the same code most US Sates are, here it is common to accept references to US jurisprudence. For purpose of the recommended practice you can assume it very similar to any other state. Just keep in mind same as in different states jurisprudence varies here it might be different.

Best regards,

Rafael 

10-4

From abbreviations of common questions and answers used on all types of radio. Profession CB’ers use Ten Codes to send their message quickly and easily.
10-4 = Message received

Carlos,

I uploaded a video you can download from the following link. It shows how to get the listing for relationships with lag not equal to 0 using the export function built in into P3 as proposed by another PP member in other thread, came out not from a single click but still a practical way.

http://rapidshare.com/files/253088202/Lag_Video.zip

Lag in hours as this was a SureTrak generated P3 file, SureTrak planning unit is always hours even when display can be set to be in days.

Best regards,
Rafael

Carlos,

Go to Data/Calendars if you do not see an hour’s column then your schedule planning units is set to days. You can also verify your planning units under File/Project Overview menu.

About the procedures for your forensic analysis I cannot be of any help, unknown waters to me, I hope I will never have to pay Mikes pension. Before going ahead with any changes in planning unit first consult with the specialists.

If your protocol requires you to change the calendar(s) and planning unit to use hours then you must follow P3 procedure to do so.

You can change the planning unit only by making a copy of your job and in the process selecting the new planning unit. The durations will not be converted but with a Global Change you can change almost all of them with a formula to change days to hours. This can be d = dx8x45/56 to adjust from a seven days workweek to a 45 hours’ work week.

http://rapidshare.com/files/241681861/Global_Change_Durations.pdf

But you are just starting to get wet; no global change field is available for lag durations, these you will have to change manually.

Best regards,
Rafael