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3 Week Lookahead schedule?

15 replies [Last post]
Almas Ahmed
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Joined: 14 Feb 2010
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Hi all,

Need your suggestions on:

Does 3 weeks lookahead schedule is tobe produced every week??

Replies

ashraf alawady
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dear all,

 

three weeks lookahead schedule is a tool extracted from the master progrem in order to semplify the way of presentaion for the status of the project at certain period and monitor the progress and take the corrective actios to mitigate the possible delay -if any.

the three weeksahead should be updated i weekly basis .

Gautam Kumtakar
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Almas,

 

This is the same situation i came across, we had to make a plan for 4weeks and rolling plan for each week. The plan for 4 weeks is the look ahead schedule. Now if seen on the positive side the 4 weeks lookahead schedule is beter way to monitor the progress. Any way the updation shall be done every week but the look ahead schedule should not be changed till 4 weeks else the purpose is lost. The 4 weeks lookahead schedule is a derivative of  Master schedule, which is contractually bound. What is suggest is to make a 3 weeks plan as decided by your management and updated it weekly. At the end of 3 weeks an analyisi of planned vs actuals to be done and further plans to be done as per the Master schedule.

Do let me know if the above explaination is convincing.

Regards

jeoffrey reyes
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Posts: 214
Hi Almas,

My understanding with your query is that you want to prepare a 3-week lookahead but you don’t know how to do it. As what Anoon said, he suggested to consider the "3-week lookahead schedule" as a two steps forward and one step backward, to see your previous week’s progress and the work to be done in the upcoming two weeks. Are you are doing a bi-weekly progress update or report?

Same with you, i’m doing this 3-week lookahead that our client requires on a bi-weekly progress report. hope it help.

cheers,
Abhiyan Arvind Sheth
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Joined: 23 May 2010
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Almas,

It’s better to produce 03 week lookahead every week as you shall be updating the progress every week (i presume you schedule/update the progress every week as we do), the primavera logic calculates the duration with forward pass & backward pass which finally concludes with the criticality of any/many activity/activities.

Let us take it different way.. If you are not producing the 03 week lookahead every week, means either there isn’t any progress or your schedule/actual is as per the planned or might there be no changes/variations with the actual & planned % completion.

On the other hand, if you schedule/update every week, there will definitely be the changes as are the actuals plugged-in, the related activities will be reflected with the changes, so would there be the change in the duration, & float which must be affecting many level of the WBSs.

E.g. If you are with 03 week lookahead (for an EPCC project), & say with first week, you do have engineering deliverables delayed for 05 days, in that case all the related activities will be reflected with the subsequent delay.

So i prefer, you shall have the 03 week lookahead produced everyweek as the activities in the last week’s ’03 week lookahead’ for this week won’t be the same (if you have plugged-in/applied the actials) & need to reproduce the look ahead as there could be any punching, squeezing of activities which will lead to affect the duration & hence the related activities in all the related WBSs.

Let me know your view.
Samer Zawaydeh
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Dear Sonal,

It depends on the size of your project. If you want to print out a three weeks window every week, it can be done.

Sometime, we issue reports on a daily basis, if the project is critical and you have a large number of people working on it.

With kind regards,

Samer
Sonal Shah
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hi,

yes three weeks schedule need to be updtaed and issued on a weekly basis then only the status of the activites will be known to peple involved.
R. Catalan
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Dear Almas,

Typical project schedule specifications requires that progress meetings shall be done every two-weeks so the need for 2 WLA is important for schedule dicussions. In the same specs., it also indicates that the Client/Engineer can call for a weekly meeting when required. Until then it become a weekly meeting due to its importance in discussing and concluding project issues.

For the 3 WLA schedule requirements, my interpretation to it is that it is short-interval schedule and will show the actual progress achieved the previous week as well as the detailed activities scheduled for the next two weeks.

Its better to see a short-interval report that shows both (1-week current progress and 2-week lookahead).

Hope the above helps.

Best regards,

R. Catalan
Gary Whitehead
User offline. Last seen 4 years 43 weeks ago. Offline
Often, people will need more than 1 week’s notice to organise deliveries / permits / labour / plant / shutdowns / temporary works / supervision / etc required to complete a particular activity.

Also, if the project team is only spoon-fed one week’s worth of programme at a time, they will never be able to help the planner spot potential issues with the schedule or smarter sequences.

The frequency of update has no bearing on how far lookahead programmes should look, other than that you should always look at least as far as the next update.
mukunda y
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I think 3 weeks look ahead schedule makes sense...it is important as it indicates upcoming activities going to do. It is udeful for conataractor as well as to the client
Samer Zawaydeh
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Dear Almas,

You need to know what they need the meeting. Then you can provide them with the answers they need from the Schedule.

If the people want to meet with you everyweek, and they want updates, then they are worried about something. If you see that their depand is not logical because the information is not changing, then you can tell your project manager, and he/she can take the necessary action.

Management has to determine what is the periodic information needed and when it should be submitted. If you have a crisis situation and information is needed more frequently, then you need to provide that also.

With kind regards,

Samer
Anoon Iimos
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A 3-Week lookahead schedule will not be applicable for a one-week or two-week jobs, but for jobs that will run for years, as Trevor said, it’s not a big deal.

I suggest you consider the "3-week lookahead schedule" as a two steps forward and one step backward, or just do a two-week lookahead.
Almas Ahmed
User offline. Last seen 13 years 42 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Feb 2010
Posts: 17
Hi Robey,

I believe that Lookahed is prepared to see which activities tobe accomplished in the next 1 or 2 or 3 weeks.

If a schedule is updated weekly then a One Week lookahead is required to see which activities are to be accomplished in the following week.

In the same case if the schedule is updated monthly basis a 3 WLA will he worthy.

My question is what sense it makes to have a 3 WLA on the weekly meeting table when the schedule too is updated on the weekly basis.

suppose a meeting is called to discuss a 3WLA (which means which activities tobe accmplished in next 3 weeks).Again in the next weekly meeting again the new 3WLA is asked..how far it is ryt to get a new 3WLA every week.
Trevor Rabey
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The amount of time that you want to look ahead is in no way related to the frequency of the updates.
Why should it be?
You might have a weekly update, and as well you may have a need for a 1 WLA and a 2 WLA and a 3 WLA.
An X WLA is no big deal. In MSP you just run the date range filter and choose the dates.
Almas Ahmed
User offline. Last seen 13 years 42 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Feb 2010
Posts: 17
Thanks for your suggestion samer,

schedule is updated on weekly basis.Then what is the need of generating a 3 week lookahead??.
I understand, If the schedule is updated on monhly basis a 3 week lookahead will have some meaning.The 3WLA will show the activities to be accomplished in the following month.

But if the schedule is updated weekly, then what is the requirement of generating a 3WLA every week.Instead I can have weekly lookahead.Please correct me.

Any one came across this situation???


Samer Zawaydeh
User offline. Last seen 5 years 4 weeks ago. Offline
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Dear Almas,

This is a reporting mechanism. The best thing to do is to agree on the required reporting with your client at the start of the project.

If you have a weekly meeting and a monthly report, then I would recommend that you use your Monthly report for January for all your meetings in February. Your monthly report will have the updated schedule and it must show all the works that will be done in February. This way, you do not have to keep printing and updating :)

Make a good report and use it. Hope that this works for you.

With kind regards,

Samer