I am working for a contractor I am considering a fundamental flaw in their approach to scheduling. I wanted to get other peoples opinion about this. They want to use two schedules. One is the approved baseline schedule and the second is an unapproved internal schedule. I consider this a fundamental flaw because the data in the two will never align. Their reasoning for using two schedules is they want to show in the baseline schedule all their contractual time used. So in the case a change order is necessary, they can possibly be compensated time and money for it. They believe showing an early finish on an approved baseline will not allow them extra time and money with a change order as the client will request them to use remaining float. The internal schedule will be used to manage the subcontractors. It will show them needing to be done earlier than necessary so in case they are late to a small degree, they are not likely to still have float in the baseline. Reading Ron Winter's baseline review (
http://www.ronwinterconsulting.com/rabaseline.htm) I see on line 45 that: "If you accept a schedule that shows an early completion date earlier than the required completion date as specified by contract, it often means that the Owner must compensate the Contractor for Owner's Delays to the project even if that delay did not cause the project to finish past the original required completion date." So my question is how would you handle this? Would you try to manage two schedules? Would try to have one schedule showing you finish earlier hoping the client approves it? Could you make one schedule and somehow get the subcontractors to finish earlier than possible?
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