Angel,

Remember for whom is the schedule, most experienced PM’s are avid users of lag as this keep continuity of work among different crews by means of overlapping activities, this is how they think their planning. Not all management decisions are 100% driven by logic but frequently because a matter of convenience. Yes scheduling is not an exact science as some forensic analyst pretends it to be. If an exact science then all schedulers would end up with the same schedule for a given job, same activity count, same relationships and would use the same software (the difference would be the name and supplier). If you deprive them of all lag and complicate the schedule too much you might end being the enemy of all, you might end being a group breaker instead of a team-maker.

Scheduling is not all about an ideal plan, but a managing tool where communication is at highest priority, if you go with a 10,000 activities schedule just to display some isolated resource usage at the expense of practical scale when 600 activities could do it as well then your schedule is good for nothing. Better sacrifice some theoretical precision in favor of a useful communication tool. Keep the balance, some use of lag might keep the sanity of the group.

After you get rid of all lag and go to the meeting with your PM let me know how your experience was.

Best Regards,
Rafael

Dear Angel,

Copy your project into another name, remove all the Lag and understand exactly how the activities are proceeding, use FS relationships, add/delete necessary activities and change durations so that the Plan of Execution is approved by the Construction Team.

With kind regards,

Samer