AACE Source Validation Protocol

Member for

21 years 8 months

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 

Member for

19 years 7 months

Rafael:

I noticed in this thread that you indicated that you have no experience in forensic analysis, based on your comment, "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."
 

As you know, I am working on response to your concerns about the AACEi Forensic Schedule Analysis Recommended Practice, and it occurs to me that it would be useful for me to better understand your background in the forensic analysis side of the project controls industry.  Can you elaborate on that statement (underlined above)?

Thanks,

Chris

Member for

16 years 4 months

Thanks for the forewarn about the ODBC drivers. I will try the import/export protocols this weekend.



10-4

Member for

16 years 4 months

Good, It worked after a little playing here and there. Very, very good. Thanks for that one, Rafael.

Member for

21 years 8 months

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


Member for

21 years 8 months

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

Member for

16 years 4 months

Thanks for the replies.

For now, the contractor has decided to keep the calendar included in the project, since implementing mike’s solution, although sounds very reasonable, would take much time, and that’s precissely what we’re lacking most: time.



The lags in in the re-calendarized project could be quickly updated if there were some way to make a filter which showed lags different than zero ... and there we go, again!



By the way ... I’m noticing that this i’m doing is no easy job and is big responsibility. I found scheduling the natural and most easy solution for time managing, and that’s why got commited with this work although i’m not very experienced. Now that Rafael mentions Mike’s pension, I’m wondering ... How much $$$ is my work worth? I’m being paid MXN 9400 (USD 712) a month.

Member for

21 years 8 months

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


Member for

19 years 10 months

Hi Carlos



If the "baseline" programme is set to 7 days a week but the working conditions were 5 days a week then the baseline programme is wrong and must be adapted to suit the true conditions.



I came across this situation last year - in P3 too - and I did this:



1. Save the file under another name.

2. Set the calendar to a 5 day week plus all normal holidays.

3. Reschedule - this will give a later date.

4. Reduce all durations until the durations equal the 7 day week end date - (as near as possible)

5. Reschedule after each adjustment to review the effect.

6. Final reschedule and fine adjustment after all changes.



You now have a baseline that replicates actual conditions.



If this is being used for an EoT submission keep a detailed record of what you have done at each stage so your work can be replicated by a third party.



In fact it may be necessary to save a new file after each change.



Best regards



Mike Testro