Mike,

Good scheduling practice call for all out-of-sequence be corrected and explained, too many occurrences definitively makes you wonder about the validity of the schedule.

If this ocurrence is to be repeated in the future, the scheduler should adjust logic of other activities that are expected to be eventually impacted in a similar way and should explain this in the narrative, at times it will reduce predicted contract duration and at times will increase the predicted job duration. Yes I know, in theory, but here it is a contractual requirement to make the adjustments, though not always enforced.

Best regards,
Rafael

Mike,

If you have out-of-sequence working it does not necessarily means it is a planning error, it is common when you plan to avoid too many people working at the same time on the same place and then during the course of the job you find out it is convenient to reduce the waiting time. Life and construction works are complicated, pretending to model such with only FS relationships is a utopia.

The contractor is free to make his plans wether you like it or not some assumptions are arbitrary.

Best regards,
Rafael

OUT-OF-SEQUENCE IS GOOD VERY GOOD

It means you are starting some activity ahead of scheduled logic and in order to do so some previous rule was broken, it means a change in the logic rules, and the Owner is in his right to be informed while the Contractor keeps the means and methods. The forensic analyst cannot accept you can change course and be dynamic in response to what is actually happening. If out-of-schedule occurence is good then do it, don’t delay the start of an activity because originally it was not planned to happen in this way.

Hey many analyst pretend to make a case based on the initial Baseline Schedule, come on.

Best regards,
Rafael

Anoon,

It is a Finish to Start relationship as shown in the small screen capture of the links view just below the screen capture of the Gantt; of course because of space a lot of columns displaying links properties are not shown. If on a 2 activities schedule link lines are confusing imagine links between activities spanning several pages, impossible. This is why I usually toggle off link lines display and go to the links view where all logic is tabulated and can be sorter or filtered as you need; to follow logic on hundreds of activities using Gantt and even PERT diagrams is impractical.

Is broken means that the link is out of sequence. This display tell you specifically which link is broken, especially useful when multiple links exists, even might happen that all links be out of sequence.

The sample is kind of uncommon but an overlap at the end of the predecessor with the start of the successor can be more common.

Best regards
Rafael

Anoon,

Whether we like it or not all planning activities are driven by strict logic, in true planning many decisions are arbitrary, the most common is the value of lag. Many times we plan to wait some arbitrary time to start the next activity rolling it up just hides the true arbitrary nature. Most of our out-of-sequence occurrences happen to fall within this category, we planned to wait 5 days and latter we opted for 3 days, a solution Asta did not automate.

That a schedule is 100% supposed to be logic driven is a myth the forensic analyst cannot accept. Can you schedule for Acts of God events? Even logic is dynamic.

About FS eliminating all out-of-sequence is wrong, just look at the following two activities schedule, FS only logic means out-of-sequence will be only on FS links while without this restriction it can happen at any other type of link that can be specifically identified by your software allowing you to filter for it for your use and reporting.



Best regards,
Rafael

Out-of-sequence is a problem to be solved by a revision of the logic, useful when the faulty logic still have impact on the schedule.

There are many solutions available the two most common are:
1-     Adjusting planned “lag”.
2-     Splitting the activity and re arranging logic which can be in different ways.
But the solutions must represent true plan and should be justified within the submitted update narrative.

There is software called Powerproject that provides a programmed application of the second option, the problem is you can make it to be automatic as if the only solution, and this is a wrong assumption. I would challenge Asta to keep this solution but to be applied manually to individual ocurrence when the scheduler determines this represent true plan, I would challenge them to add the first option to the tool set and perhaps a few other, this can become a functionality for others to follow and perhaps schedulers will start following good practice and start solving the issues on out-of-sequence in due time.

500 out-of-sequence occurrences, too many, agree something must be wrong.

About mimicking resource dependencies by creating static logic links is wrong, true resource dependencies are dynamic and are constantly changing. These static links will prevent the software to un-level the schedule and perform true resource leveling. This is so that some of our specs explicitly prohibit the use of these links.

Dear Mike,

Allow me to add one small comment since they do not have an approved schedule.

The previous work has to be agreed upon mutually. The balance works will form your new schedule.

With kind regards,

Samer

Hi Mike,

"the Plan is wrong" - for me this is a question mark (?)

How can you say that the Plan is wrong? You have your own Plan, and I guess everyone has its own Plan.

So how can you say that my Plan is wrong?

I supposed this makes Planning becomes complicated, because of the differences in "logic(s)" and maybe beliefs, culture, and even feelings (as they said).

So what if, you’ll be using only one reference for your logic driven schedule, what would that be?

1. practical activity sequencing (considering unlimited resources - or tailored resources);

2. or resource driven schedule (considering limited resources)?

Best regards

"Out of Sequence Activities" - a result of executing the works without following the logic as planned.

If you have more that 500 activities out-of-sequenced, then that means that the execution team never followed your plan, or maybe they don’t have a copy of your plan, or they simply have their own plan (which is completely different from yours).

1. What are the activities that most probably can become out-of-sequence?

2. Or on which stage of a project, activities are inclined to become out-of-sequence? (considering an EPC project).

3. Is an ideal schedule need to be a logic driven schedule?

4. Is there any schedule that is not logic driven?

5. What is most important, or what would be the reference?

Logic driven schedule or Resource driven schedule (or this has to work in parallel?)