Ladies and Gents

Can you offer your opinions please. I am currently working on a project where our contractor refuses to measure his progress against his early curve and measures it against the ’MEAN" curve which lies between his early and late curve. He has managed to persuade his management and subsequantly they have persuaded my management that this is an Oil & Gas Industry Norm. I am currently working in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia and there are a lot of politics involved.

I should point out that I have been in the OIl & Gas Industry for over 30 years and I have never come across this and I have difficulty getting my head round it.

On top of this they have to provide a contract master schedule for us to agree and put in the contract, but this CMS will show Early Dates. By their own admission they say that although their schedule is based on early dates, they want to progress against the Mean dates as in their opinion their Early Curve is not achieveable and by using this to monitor their progress they are planning to fail. I have the opposite opinion and my feelings are that it is necessary to try to achieve the Early Curve, even though as the project progresses it may become aparrent that the Early Curve may not be achieveable, it is still necessary to aim for the optimistic. In my opinion by using the Mean curve then we are aiming to fail, esoecially as they will also be using this curve to forecast their manning levels which means in effect that they do not intend to resource the project as necessary.
Another point is that by refusing to use their early curve for monitoring, as they feel it is unachieveable, this also means that their schedule which is based on early dates is also unachieveable and therefore should be rejected.

As stated I have been in this game for over 30 years and I have never come across this and I do not believe that it is an industry norm in the OIl & Gas Industry (maybe in Malaysia but not anywhere else), what I believe is that this is a smokescreen to make the contractor look good. However I consider myself to be open minded about things so the question is has anyone else come across this system, or is anybody currently usign this method and can you convince me of its benefits.

All comments welcome

Thanks