Schedules, Programmes, Programs, Timelines, Gantt Charts
Call them what you want.
They are one of the most vial parts of any tender
But are so often not done properly
How many of the projects you work on have some form of change or some form of delay?
I would hazard a guess at most of them
Without a schedule how do you demonstrate delay, or impact, or consequential delay?
Bear in mind around 50% or more of your costs are time related. Its pretty fucking important!
Ive just seen a project with an Extension of Time claim which doubled the original project duration. Luckily for the client, the contractor’s schedule wasn’t worth the paper it was wrote on.
No logic links, incorrectly sequenced activities, not enough detail, activities missing…the list goes on
So they couldn’t demonstrate the “cause and effect”
I mean this is fundamental stuff, if you’re pricing any project you should be pulling together a schedule
In this instance they lost out on tens of thousands of pounds at final account as the entire Extension was dismissed
It would have cost a fraction of this to get one set up at tender stage. Plus, they could have used it to monitor performance onsite rather than just guessing.