PMAer Ahmed Garamoon, PE, Manager, is a project management and project controls professional with extensive construction experience. He has specific on-site expertise in managing mega projects, such as construction materials processing plants, power plants, rail, roads, ports, and real estate developments on projects worldwide. Mr. Garamoon has an excellent understanding of schedule control, cost control, and cost estimating. He has served as site supervisor and he has managed quality control on multiple projects. Mr. Garamoon is skilled in MS Products, Primavera P6, AutoCAD, SAP Design, and CRM software.  

What is a lookahead schedule?  

A lookahead schedule is a dynamic tool applied across various project levels, from one to four. The granularity of detail varies with the schedule complexity. Contractors employ lookahead schedules to synchronize imminent tasks. The term “near term” encompasses periods ranging from two weeks to several months, adapting to project scope and intricacy.

Commonly, lookahead schedules streamline construction projects, harmonizing activities spanning the preceding week, current week, and subsequent one to three weeks.

Example in Action: Streamlining Procurement

To illustrate, consider a case where PMA was tasked with optimizing a client’s procurement operations. With two to seven months of procurement activities, the lookahead window was extended to twelve months to accommodate these elongated processes.

What’s Included in a Lookahead Schedule?  

Lookahead schedules encapsulate granular aspects too specific for the project’s main construction schedule. They provide intricate insights into:

• Daily labor requirements, categorized by trade.
• Equipment and material needs for each day.
• Detailed specifications of major milestones.. 

Notable elements on a lookahead schedule, not typically present on a project schedule, encompass: 

• Distinct work items, organized crew-wise.
• Timings of material deliveries.
• Subcontractor particulars, often replacing generic terms with precise positioning.  

Mitigating Challenges with Lookahead Schedules  

Often, optimism clouds stakeholders’ perspectives, leading to unrealistic projections. By delving deeper into activities, optimism bias is counteracted. Material constraints, dependencies, and potential hurdles are highlighted, ensuring a pragmatic outlook. This empowers project stakeholders, such as CMs, contractors, and trades, to troubleshoot, adapt, and prevent schedule overruns.

These efforts cultivate precise activity duration estimates. Detailed analysis of concealed activity constraints bolsters the overall dependability of lookahead schedules. Moreover, these schedules attribute responsibilities, instilling accountability, and bolstering project alignment.

Crafting and Sharing Lookahead Schedules

Basic lookahead schedules can be constructed using Excel, suitable for simpler projects lacking intricate logic. Advanced contractors extract lookahead data from scheduling software like Microsoft Project, Primavera P6, and NetPoint for more intricate undertakings. Complex scenarios, where activities are broken down and resources allocated, find a suitable ally in NetPoint.

Sometimes when the lookahead preparation entails breaking down general activities into smaller ones, while allocating the associated resources, NetPoint is a perfect tool to simulate more than one scenario based on the availability of resources and work restrictions. Usually, these lookaheads are prepared in a live session with the client where we can move activities around based on discussions and see the outcome on the spot.

How are lookahead schedules used in lean construction?  

Lean construction practitioners advocate previewing work one to six weeks ahead. This approach facilitates dialogue with trades, unveiling potential impediments before scheduled activities commence. Proactive problem-solving during the early stages curbs setbacks.  

Impact of BIM and 360 Video on Lookahead Schedules  

While 360 cameras have diminished the gap between work completion and information accessibility, seamless real-time tracking and integration with scheduling software and BIM models are yet to be fully realized. Advancements continue to refine the integration of technology with lookahead scheduling.

By delivering a more succinct and engaging version of your content, we aim to enhance reader engagement and reduce the bounce rate for your article on lookahead schedules.

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Project Master Schedule & Schedule Control
The development and maintenance of detailed project master schedules in P6 for all phases of the project are critical for delivering construction projects. Schedule management starts well before construction begins in the planning process. All aspects of the design and bidding phase must be planned to avoid delays in beginning construction. This requires experienced planners and schedulers to lead the development, evaluation, and maintenance of design and construction schedules.

The Planning Process
In the planning process, the project manager is looking at the big picture prior to having all the details. The project manager considers all the obstacles with the goal of getting project buy-in in the early stages when funding may be an issue. A more detailed schedule can be created after the planning when the full set of documents is available.

Example 46-page P6 schedule

At the onset of the project, the planning process requires overall general knowledge of the scope, phasing requirements, and the deadlines for contracts, drawings, and the involvement of subject matter experts. Working from the owner’s side, planners and schedulers talk to those who can help move the project, especially if they have done it before. As a planner, getting the required level of detail from all the stakeholders is sometimes a challenge. For example, it may be difficult to pull the information you need from all of the crews working on the project. The more involved the stakeholders, the better the preparation and transition into the schedule will be.

Project managers appreciate alternative tools like NetPoint for planning, then turn to P6 for actually scheduling and tracking the progress on the project. P6 also works well when dealing with multiple projects or programs. When planning the project and creating the initial schedule, it’s important to be able to see the results on one page or screen. With this priority in mind, PMA developed NetPoint to use in interactive planning sessions and to communicate the schedule to project teams.

Case Study: Mitigating Schedule Risk Using NetPoint
Learn how NetPoint was used to better analyze, understand, and share the delay sources for risk assessment of a complex $1.2 billion transit project that was behind schedule with three years’ work remaining.

Engaging all mindsets
There are multiple ways to smooth the mindful transition from planning to scheduling. Many people relate better to easy-to-understand graphics. Non-schedulers may be overwhelmed by schedules in P6 due to the level of detail. Presentation requires multiple pages and screens to view the full project, making it difficult to perform the calculated process of creating the schedule in P6 in front of a room. NetPoint helps pull people into the discussion and clearly shows the “this needs to be done before that can ever start” relationships in a graphically impactful and abbreviated format. The critical path is clearly revealed via the Graphical Path Method. Using both P6 and NetPoint helps create presentation conditions that are engaging for all mindsets.

Example one page NetPoint schedule

Suggestions for aiding in the communication between Planner/Scheduler and Project Team

1. Maximize communication with Both Primavera P6 and NetPoint built-in functionality
   An effective communication tool in both P6 and NetPoint is the ability to attach a picture to an activity. This aids in communicating items of interest to the project team that better enables their understanding of the project We have also found attached pictures to be very helpful in demonstrating actual unforeseen conditions which may be a barrier to timely completion for the whole project team.
2. Meaningful activity IDs and codes
   Meaningful activity IDs and activity or project code assignments are essential and correlate with how schedulers will organize, filter, and sort the data. The IDs must be smart enough to contain vital information such as the building site, and area.
3. Informative activity description
   When schedulers look at the WBS, they have to know where the activities are occurring. Schedulers consider this beforehand, but also assign IDs and codes as they go along. They also customize the codes to get information more easily in whatever environment they find themselves.
4. Systematic categorizing of activities
   In a large-scale environment, with say, 30 schedulers, it is important to create keys to the activity codes and names so all of the schedulers know what each refers to. P6 also enables the scheduler to sort in multiple modalities. For example, there may be excavation going on in 10 different places in the project, and these may be sorted by building, by area, or by the excavation activity.

Exchanging Information Between NetPoint and Primavera P6
Project managers can initially create a project plan and build Level 1 or 2 schedules in NetPoint. The benefits of using NetPoint for the planning sessions include collaborative planning, interactive and real-time interface, intuitive logic display, planned dates, and self-healing data during schedule changes. The schedule created in NetPoint during your planning sessions can subsequently be imported into P6.

Baseline schedules
Project schedulers often say that they live and die by their baseline schedule. The true baseline is recognized as the original agreed-upon document to which schedulers plan; other baseline reference schedules are used to track progress. Baselines are typically created at the point during the project when you need a benchmark to compare future progress against or you need to perform what-if scenarios. A best practice is to baseline the initial schedule so you can measure performance as the project progresses through time. In Primavera, it is easy to create, assign, and maintain a baseline schedule. Baseline schedule functionality in P6 also includes the notes feature on the WBS activity and other visual aids.

Creating the baseline schedule.
The baseline is created by mapping the scope of work as expressed by the design documents and interactive planning sessions to estimate schedule activities. These activities are then assigned durations and logic ties, and external and internal restraints among the project activities are identified. Targets and milestones against which to measure progress are then developed. Schedule coding is established to facilitate the breakdown of the work into different views or layouts. This coding allows the creation of multi-level reports and information that can be tailored to provide various levels of management with the degree of detail needed. It also provides the needed single point of accountability for each element.

How NetPoint aids Primavera in creating these conditions
Adding NetPoint to P6 functionality allows project schedulers to immediately see the critical path and receive instant feedback on where their project may be going off track. NetPoint adds its visualized schedules and fully interactive planning to the schedulers’ toolkit so that project managers can make realistic plans.

NetPoint also provides a critical path model by graphically depicting network activities, displaying float, leveling resources, and much more. NetPoint has transformed the practice of full wall planning sessions by providing an interactive and graphic platform for collaborative planning. It provides the ability to link activities graphically and illustrate critical dependencies on a time scale yet keep the network model easy to understand. Therefore the plan is simple to edit and the group can collaboratively explore what-if scenarios. All data is refreshed in real-time, showing the actual effects of network changes and their impact.

Finally, although you can do comparisons to the baseline schedule in P6, you can also use NetPoint in this process. NetPoint is great if you want to compare schedule variance and do a side-by-side schedule comparison. You can visually isolate the critical path to show the difference between two schedule updates. The ability to compare two updates within one document helps the project team and other stakeholders to quickly address any problems.

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John Hill, PE
John has extensive experience providing senior engineering support services, including related project management assignments. His expertise includes project control, specifically scheduling; project management; construction coordination; contract administration; and civil engineering. Mr. Hill has extensive experience with Primavera P6 scheduling software and previous versions and other scheduling software.

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Shane Wilhelmsen, PMP, PMI-RMP, PMI-SP
Shane is a project controls professional whose responsibilities include development of contract time determination schedules based on design plans & specifications during the project development process. Responsibilities for active construction projects include facilitating and actively participating in biweekly project meetings, working with contractors and suppliers to resolve project issues, monitoring progress against the overall project plan through CPM and delay log analysis, analyzing and reporting on project metrics, preparing both detailed technical reports and high-level executive summaries, escalating potential risks, and offering informed recommendations.

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Case Study: Tissue Paper Manufacturing Plant

I was recently hired by an engineering firm to provide schedule management, budget management, earned value tracking, and commissioning schedule development for a $400M tissue paper manufacturing plant.

Why a summary schedule?
The project had multiple design and construction contracts and 200+ systems to commission. This translated into a 46-page P6 commissioning schedule that was simply too big to manage and effectively communicate with the project team.

When commissioning begins and you need to track progress on a day-to-day basis, you need a detailed P6 schedule to monitor the work. Unlike construction schedules, a commissioning schedule is planned by the hour and not by the day. Every hour counts when you are trying to get a tissue paper manufacturing machine up and running! With this degree of detail, it becomes challenging to depict the workflow and understand the plan the team has in mind.

If you do not understand the plan, you cannot understand the issues. People often become overwhelmed when looking at a P6 schedule so they do not talk about it. By design, P6 may have multiple activities linked on different pages and it is difficult to discern from a printout. When I was invited to a 4-hour meeting scheduled with all stakeholders to review the commissioning schedule and discuss strategies to improve the completion date, I knew a 46-page schedule would not work.

What makes a good summary schedule?
I set forth to present the information in the simplest way possible so that everybody understood the issues in minimum time. I used NetPoint, a real-time, planning and scheduling application, to summarize the entire 46-page schedule into one page. The team needed to know: What was the problem? Why is this happening? How do we resolve this?

The steps I used to summarize the schedule included:

1. Identify
   • Identify the critical path in the project and summarize it in NetPoint.
   • Define the near-critical path in the project and summarize it in NetPoint. This path will vary from project-to-project depending on its duration, size, update frequency & schedule sensitivity.
   • Include important activities in the summary with the intent to gain the audiences’ trust. Important activities for stakeholders could be major milestones, primary interfaces, high duration activities, significant scope items, or activities that were problematic in previous projects.
2.  Condense
   • Activities from P6 can be condensed in NetPoint as depicted in the examples below:

• • Understand your audience and to what level you need to summarize.

3. Simplify

• • Simplify condensed activities. This is often a trial and error process. Try a different grouping approach, color-coding, fade non-critical activities, criticality, further condensation, or a waterfall approach to convey the story. The objective of this step is to:
    • Not overwhelm your audience
    • Convey the message in minimal time
    • Provide the ability to follow logic

Current View

Different Grouping Approach

Color Coding Approach

Fade Non-critical Activities Approach

Criticality Approach

Further Condense Approach

Results

By showing the project team the plan at a summary level, I am reinforcing the plan. Is this what we are really doing? If it is correct, we can talk and fix the issues in real time. It creates a dialogue for the whole team who need to understand how they interface in order to work together.

The summary schedule was able to show that commissioning was starting late and reminded the team to check and confirm all the prerequisites required to start the work. It also helped the team understand that the vendor was now requesting additional time for certain systems. Moreover, the team understood the construction contractors’ sequencing of completing the systems was not in line with the commissioning plan. The 4-hour meeting, with all 20 key people, was finished in 40 minutes. All parties had a clear understanding and a usable project plan.

Why did I choose NetPoint?

I needed a platform to communicate the problems and NetPoint allowed me to show a picture from a very high level. The graphical interface is nowhere close to the tabular format that P6 and Microsoft Project provides. In a nutshell, NetPoint provides a canvas for you to draw the network logic. There are no columns to match up, and you can see the actual flow of the work. Similar to Activity Network diagrams of the past, NetPoint brings the focus back to a network view that is easy for everyone to understand. Using NetPoint, I showed them the picture and they gave me the answers. We developed solutions and solved problems together in real time.

Reniz Moosa, PMP, is a project controls professional with significant experience in providing planning and scheduling services for mid-cap and mega projects. He is skilled in applying project controls principles to build, update, and track complex construction projects from project initiation to closeout. For more information about NetPoint, please contact info@pmatechnologies.com.

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PMA’s John Hill gives step-by-step instructions on how to identify the longest paths in Primavera P6.

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