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Considering Baseline schedule

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Riad Bleibel
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I am working on a roads/infrastructure project the contractor submitted his preliminary schedule 39 days after getting NTP and the date of the project actual starting date schedule wasn’t in line with the contract requirements. 4 months later after period of ping-pong communication the contractor was able to submit a “Partialy Completed schedule” but kept the activities network untouched as of his early days submittal, in other words he didn’t make any revision to activities start date, duration etc…. during this time many things have been changed for example a CP activity supposed to start 3 months ago didn’t start yet therefore project milstones will be delayed, new site conditions arisen. I had an argument with the contractor that this program can’t be valid with the current project status and after the elapsing of 25% of the contract duration. My question can this schedule be considered as a baseline schedule after this long delay without any revision that is considering the new site conditions ?

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Tomas Rivera
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Ray:

The way a deal with these situations is as follows.
First, I choose to start all over and define the original baseline based on the original contract documents and original conditions. I place my mind back in time when the project has not started yet. My main point of reference is the contract. So, the initial baseline has to represent what the contract says. Among other things, the contract usually does not say anything about the project being in progress. It describes the agreement among the parties of how one is going to build the project and the other how is going to pay for that, in very simple terms. Notice the future tense used, nothing has happened yet.
After you agree on the baseline, then you use a copy of the baseline to update progress regularly and use the baseline as a reference for control.
If there are changes from the initial contractual conditions, then an approved change order needs to be issued. Then the initial baseline needs to be revised according to the approved change order and used as the current baseline.
Anything that deviates from the current baseline is the responsibility of the contractor, who needs to implement a recovery plan at their cost.
I hope this helps.

Tomas Rivera
David Watters
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Yeah, you can still consider it a base line. My planning engineers are in a similar pickle. Large project, time fleeing in front of you eyes at a horrible pace, targets being missed BUT ... and this is the really big one ... they haven’t engaged us (the client) with a really robust Contract Variation Order . Therefore, the baseline remains as is until the project managers get their fingers out and put pen to paper.
Anoon Iimos
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I consider Baselines to use Fixed Units and Durations, therefore the dates are to be fixed. Baseline Schedules represent the original plan (maybe achieved or not).
Current Schedules will represent the actual conditions. It’s up to you if you want to consider Re-baselining your Schedule.