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Should Construction Teams Follow the Master Schedule?
47 Plays7 days ago
Join Jason, Carlos, and returning guest Thomas Schultz as they tackle one of construction's most fundamental yet unresolved challenges: how should master schedules actually function in project delivery?
🏗️ Core Questions Explored:
- Can one schedule serve both contract reporting and day-to-day construction coordination?
- The tension between commercial requirements and construction team autonomy
- Why detailed master schedules often conflict with on-site realities
- The trade-offs between control, flexibility, and project speed
⚖️ Key Discussion Areas:
- The gap between planning teams and construction delivery
- Resource allocation and schedule ownership across project phases
- How contract structures influence scheduling approaches
- The challenge of updating versus adapting to site conditions
🎯 Timestamps: 00:00 – Introduction from South London, Clapham & Germany
05:35 – Why master schedules play multiple roles on projects
14:06 – The trust gap between planning and construction teams
28:53 – Commercial recovery vs. delivery optimization
46:06 – Should schedules be planned to Level 5 detail?
1:00:04 – Connecting everything to one schedule: promise or problem?
Check out the Off Site Newsletter: https://offsite.aphex.co/
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Transcript
Theoretical Training for P6 at Costain
00:00:00
Speaker
And when you combine that with the complexity of the tool, I did a training course on P6 at Costain. We spent two days and we were trained on screenshots of the tool because they didn't actually give us access. So it was all just theory for two days.
00:00:14
Speaker
So you've got the who reads it. I'm not even going to double click into that. and and That feels like other issues involved.
Introduction to Offsite Podcast Hosts
00:00:24
Speaker
Like if the person that ran that training is retired,
00:00:33
Speaker
Welcome back to the Offsite Podcast episode 101, Podcasting 101. I am Jason Lansini, joined once again by Carlos Cavallo and special returning co-host Thomas Schultz.
00:00:48
Speaker
How are we doing, folks? And where
Hosts' Locations & Humorous YouTube Reviews
00:00:50
Speaker
are you all today? Yeah, not too bad. Calling in from home today in South London in a town or a village called Dulwich, over the Dulwich Hamlets for any of listening.
00:01:00
Speaker
I get fed in my YouTube algorithm videos a guy that goes and reviews chicken shops. Right. And I swear, because you're on Lord, not to reveal your exact address, but is there a chicken shop on Lordship Lane where you live? Because I swear I saw review a chicken shop. like Luckily, I moved a couple of roads across about two months ago. So I'm not precisely on the road you just mentioned
Podcast Readiness After Meetings
00:01:24
Speaker
to everyone. but yeah ah Yeah, it's that high street.
00:01:27
Speaker
Which shop was it? I don't remember. not I'm not really like taking notes while I'm watching YouTube videos ah on a commute. Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, that's exactly where I am.
00:01:37
Speaker
um But no, coming off the back of six hours of back-to-back meetings. So I'm absolutely pumped for a stimulating conversation today.
Australian Migration Trends in London
00:01:47
Speaker
All right, Thomas, over to you. yeah That's Carl's side of he's done talking.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. It's enough today. Now, like all good Australians in London, falling in from Clapham. Doing Ed Proud, not down at the windmill. Don't worry. Do all Australians go to Clapham because they love Clapham or like a lack of imagination and they just go where the last guy went?
00:02:11
Speaker
50-50. Although there's ah there's a slow migration to like Angel Islington area. Wow. Heading north. Heading north. I don't think it's something like that. I don't think it's like the climate or something, Carlos. I don't think there's like a specific draw. Yeah, yeah. Green bar. Yeah, okay.
00:02:28
Speaker
Downgrading to North London. Nice. Good to
Role of Master Schedule in Construction
00:02:30
Speaker
hear. I think practically it's like you move there. ah The goal of most Australians when they move there is can I get in a house with as many people as possible so I pay as least rent as possible and therefore I go to where I know someone.
00:02:42
Speaker
yeah Were you clapping when you were here? We won't go into that. Okay. I based my location where i would have lived based on chicken shops and there wasn't actually a good one that I could, yeah, no.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, who knows? um Well, um I'm sat at a rainy converted train station in Bickenbach, Germany, and I'm the only one here and there's no one around for five minutes walking in any direction.
00:03:06
Speaker
So, different vibe than Clapham. Is that the co-working space? Well, it was, but ah we've rented out the entire... suit There's only one room with a bunch of desks. We're renting... I've got the hole i've got the whole space. Right, we've got probably one of the biggest topics. i can't believe we waited until episode 101.
Appeal and Complexity of a Single Master Schedule
00:03:26
Speaker
We've been saving it, which is what role does the master schedule play in the delivery of a construction project? So since this was put on the docket, I feel like I've had 20 conversations with different projects and teams on exactly this topic by by chance. It feels like it's a regular weekly like topic that comes up in conversations with teams and customers.
00:03:47
Speaker
And it's this idea that Schedules are doing multiple things on a project. There is a job of a commercial job that is around contract management. There is a job around, you know, forecasting how we think we're going to deliver this project. And then schedules and plans play a job in actually like orchestrating the project day to day and week to week.
00:04:10
Speaker
There is so many reasons why having one thing, one schedule for that whole thing would be attractive. And there are so many reasons why one schedule for those jobs doesn't work or maybe doesn't work right now is probably a better way to to frame it.
00:04:25
Speaker
Just starting going around the room and maybe thinking about from your perspective, why there can't be or can be one schedule, what the like ideal setup is and and why that is the case
Limitations of P6 Schedules
00:04:38
Speaker
is probably. like a good starting spot to like frame the discussion before we dive in like too far into the detail so Carlos you've probably had this conversation many many times in your life don't know if you've got like a ingrained opinion I've got lots of ingrained opinions um Yeah, I guess I have the same conversation. i think I've had the conversation twice this morning um yeah with with with different teams to try and like look at this high level before we get stuck into the details of why it should, shouldn't and is or isn't used.
00:05:13
Speaker
If I think back to when I was on projects, the P6 schedule was looked at by planners. The planners probably had a weekly review with the project manager.
00:05:25
Speaker
And then outside of that, you get the occasional agent shouting at the planner saying, when does X start? Which is normally like some form of milestone or or package or upcoming works.
00:05:37
Speaker
And that was the extent of P6 and where it went. So you've got this very, very small cohort of individuals in the grand scheme of projects that actually have access to the schedule.
00:05:49
Speaker
which kind of indirectly answers a few of the questions we're looking at below, but we'll go into the detail of
Accessibility Issues with P6 for Site Management
00:05:54
Speaker
that. And when you combine that with the complexity of the tool, I did a training course on P6 at Costone. We spent two days and we were trained on screenshots of the tool because they didn't actually give us access. So it was all just theory for two days.
00:06:08
Speaker
So you've got the who reads it. I'm not even going to double click into that. and and That feels like other issues involved. Like if the person that ran their training is retired.
00:06:21
Speaker
So we've got like the who actually sees it. We've got the how complicated it is. And there's just like the the the fit for use. It's a super kind complicated high level reporting tool. So projects can understand end dates and milestones and can price change. And there's that commercial discussion there, but it's just not appropriate to govern what happens on site each day.
00:06:42
Speaker
And site changes every day, so you can't update P6 on a daily basis. So they're the kind of three areas that it's really hard to ignore as to why it's not used for delivery.
Communication Challenges with Master Schedules
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah, so Thomas, I don't know if you've got any thoughts on this. Like I probably like summarizing ah some of what Carlos shared there's, you could you might bucket some of it into technology or the medium of how the community the master schedule exists. So, ah you know, not everyone accesses it.
00:07:11
Speaker
The way that it's communicated is hard to read ah the and it's hard to update. Therefore, it's not the right like tool to use to manage the master schedule. I'm probably...
00:07:23
Speaker
I think it'd be good to explore putting aside the software that it's in and assume that the that whatever tool we use for master schedule on a major project was the greatest user experience that could ever be imagined.
00:07:37
Speaker
Whether this that schedule could and should be fundamentally the delivery schedule and whether there is some fundamental underlying jobs that are that are being done here that ah that are at odds with each other.
00:07:48
Speaker
No, obviously jumping in there, going off what Carla said, I think the other one that, you know, that master schedule is used for is that risk, that schedule risk analysis as well. I remember when I was in the tender office, obviously, you know, clients are there doing evaluations, risk analysis on those master schedules. So that's probably the item there as well that should be included in that discussion.
00:08:11
Speaker
In terms of the building off a master schedule, I don't think that's reasonable or practical because you don't necessarily always want to show where you are at in your master schedule.
00:08:22
Speaker
You know, you might want to have a route of recovery, things like that, that you don't want
Necessity of Multiple Schedule Versions
00:08:27
Speaker
filtered up. Yeah. So do you think that... I guess everyone's probably been on projects where there's the like, there's like seven versions of the schedule. There's the contract one, there's the one that we actually are targeting, there's the the one that the construction team is targeting, there's a special one that we give to the subcontractors.
00:08:45
Speaker
ah And then there's the one where here's what it'll look like if we can get these claims through. um So there's there's plenty of projects where there are lots of versions of of schedules.
00:08:58
Speaker
And probably one thing that you mentioned was, yeah, sometimes you might not want to make certain changes on a master schedule because there's ah there's commercial implications, like you might be trying to demonstrate or substantiate a claim or something.
00:09:14
Speaker
Well, first of all, is that the right approach? And second of all, yeah, does that ah does that mean that there should be multiple versions of a schedule on a project? Yeah, I think you'll always naturally have multiple versions of a schedule.
00:09:27
Speaker
How I interpret something is probably different to how you interpret something. You know, a good example that I can think of at the top of my head is where we were interfacing with interface contractors. So our schedule, we knew that they couldn't build their section the works with enough time to actually meet that handover date.
00:09:45
Speaker
we were making sure that no matter what we were putting forward, that we were going to be ready because we knew that they weren't going to be. So there's obviously a very justifiable need have to have two different schedules there. Yeah, so there's like this gamesmanship, but let's say you zoom further out and you weren't like the contractor or in a specific team trying to to win that the little micro game.
00:10:05
Speaker
And you were, let's say, the client sat atop the whole of that project. And you were to say you were to you were to think about what you would want the the teams to be doing in terms of their scheduling.
Single Schedule for Reporting vs. Delivery
00:10:17
Speaker
I guess I'm prodding at really testing, are there what are the like jobs to be done within a schedule? We talked about one thing that's kind of like an overarching route map. If you were to think about it, it's like how we're going to get from A to B, from the start of the project to the end of the project.
00:10:33
Speaker
Gets created when we bid the project. ah Baked into it are a ton of assumptions, but also how we price the project. So that schedule is like super important because it kind of tells us if we are going to make money or lose money.
00:10:46
Speaker
It has a bunch of important jobs throughout the life of the project. And so there's an obvious want to run the project through that schedule because it's our reference point.
00:10:57
Speaker
It also is based on a ton of assumptions that almost certainly won't match reality. And then so as the project progresses, you're stuck with this ah choice, I guess, as the project team to that schedule is to have it turned to reality.
00:11:10
Speaker
in which case you are torn against this asset that is the commercial thing where we can can measure against the baseline. In practicality, you know, Carlos, we've seen this a ton where you'll have like ah ah schedule that will say, i don't know, we'll do This is a really micro example, but a master schedule it might say we do like pile caps one, two, three, four, five, six or something.
00:11:32
Speaker
And the construction team go, well, the best way to do it based on the logistics on site over the next three weeks is we'll do six and we'll do three. Then we'll come back and another team will come to two, one or whatever. Yeah. is the Should what projects be doing is just having that schedule, changing the schedule and running it through that one schedule? Or is there a need to have two of them?
Separate Schedules for Different Objectives
00:11:50
Speaker
I think there's definitely a need for two. You can't break away unless like we go full abstract and and redefine how construction projects are run from first principles. Like you need the the commercial reporting tool.
00:12:04
Speaker
You can't have like no strong idea of where the project is going mapped out to the end, which relates somehow to the contract that has been awarded.
00:12:15
Speaker
Yeah. So you need that reporting vehicle. You need that to to substantiate claims. It's really hard to imagine a world where you're not asking for more time without proving what was allowed for and what you're going to use now or need now.
00:12:28
Speaker
That reporting tool, I don't think any of us would really question the validity of running that and maintaining it. You've then got the like, as a GC, you might have the version that the client doesn't see, which is you've taken in that original schedule.
00:12:42
Speaker
You're probably doing a job to keep it relatively aligned. In your example of which order of piles do we do? You'd argue that that's too much detail for that sort of schedule anyway, and that should be for the construction team to define. That's a whole other podcast as well. there That's a whole other podcast.
00:12:58
Speaker
um But like a good planner would be like understanding outputs on the scheme, understanding what is going on and try to refine that schedule as you go to make it more and more real and likely.
00:13:12
Speaker
so that you can actually predict end dates, profit margins, cost. Because it's still the only vehicle to show your pre-link cost at the end of the job for incentives against milestones, et cetera, et cetera.
Schedules as Reporting Tools vs. Daily Management
00:13:23
Speaker
So it's really hard to not manage those still in the world of commercial claims and a narrative, but it's the, what are we doing for the next two months?
00:13:34
Speaker
That gets really difficult with the schedule for a whole bunch of different reasons. And you know you guys are both former QSs at some ah prefer for differing tenures.
00:13:45
Speaker
ah Thomas, sorry, I've just now like recast your entire career as a QS. Once a QS, always a QS, even if it was for a day. Don't you guys do that in Oz?
00:13:57
Speaker
What's that? Yeah, the QS side of things. QS for a day, yeah. you one of us You only need one day a week. You can be QS for a day and get the whole week's work done in that one day. um understanding, it begins to just understand that tension and to frame that tension of like when you're trying to use that reporting vehicle as you described, Carlos, and ah Thomas, you talked about like trying to have a route for recovery.
00:14:22
Speaker
I observe a lot of like ah reluctance to maybe reflect the reality of a construction sequence in that schedule because it might in some way damage the ability to demonstrate delay.
00:14:36
Speaker
Is that something that, yeah, be good to talk to that in your experience, say, Thomas. Yeah, it's an interesting one because I guess there's always that problem of, you know, you only get recovery, you know, if it's critical path per se in some contracts and things like that. So unless you can show that there is a delay on that critical path, you're not going to get recovery for any prelims or anything like that.
00:14:57
Speaker
Despite the fact that you might now be doing more works in parallel. So that's probably also a bit of a different discussion there about where where that lies. um But obviously, yeah, the critical path ties to your prelims, ties to your money.
00:15:11
Speaker
If you can't show that there's any kind of extension there, then you're not going to be able to recover any money from your client or whatever the underlying reason is. The project is messy. There's a million things happening at the same time in the same period, in the same day, in the same hour that one team is trying to substantiate a delay to critical path because of some shit change.
00:15:30
Speaker
There's another part of the team that's trying to rip time out of the schedule by doing some form of optimization. And that those ah if you put them both in the same schedule up, you open yourself up to like commercial problems if you're not careful about how you do that.
00:15:44
Speaker
So irrespective of like recovery, which is claiming time and money, if you even if you had that schedule to like win a tender and then you just start running without using that schedule and updating that schedule, you have no idea when you're finishing You have no idea if there's any like serious knock-on effects of resequencing certain tasks.
00:16:05
Speaker
You have no idea if the output that you're generating now is going to change the schedule in the future. So I wouldn't discount it to purely a reporting tool. It's still the only vehicle that says we're going to finish the next day.
00:16:18
Speaker
And this is where our milestones set. That's a whole other podcast about whether we'll finish on that date. Yeah. ah Yeah, yeah. but that i know that's a But if you remove that, we've got nothing. So yeah, how that's done and and and the the the the way that we operate that schedule to predict head dates is another conversation, but you can't not have anything.
Trust Issues Between Teams
00:16:39
Speaker
unless you're a private job with a bottomless budget and no one gives a shit, just keep building and we're happy. The other one that you come across is obviously your payments are tied to your schedule as well.
00:16:50
Speaker
ah think I think remember there was a great one when they were building Sydney Light Rail. where they did 50 meter section of rail outside of a pub. And that's the only rail they did within sort of a kilometer just to get their payment release, their upfront payment, you know, that milestone. So they had this 50 meter section of rail stuck in the ground and then nothing for kilometers either side of it. It didn't touch it for another two years.
00:17:13
Speaker
Yeah, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome kind of thing. yeah That's exactly what that they were going for when when they like structured that contract. Not to say that contractors give themselves a bad name, but like yeah. that's So like if we pull that thread, right? We've got one of the...
00:17:32
Speaker
conversations that will come up a lot when we're talking to projects about especially large, more complicated projects around how they do manage their schedule from this like reporting tracking vehicle to the maybe this coordination tool or system is project controls and planning teams rightfully are worried about, should I be giving a green light to the construction team to have a totally different, not a totally different, but like a different schedule?
00:18:01
Speaker
is that Is that like a failure on me as like the planning team or the project control team? Shouldn't they be following what's in this schedule? You've rightly caveated complex schemes because there is a world where you see these schedules running a project, a small scheme, like a couple of linear tasks, like yeah it could work. The danger of um like day one, right? Construction team, you're building the job, off you go is I do, it kind of goes back to the commercial piece, because if you go completely off tangent, like how are you getting recovery? Like you're in a whole world of messiness that there's no like, um line of sight to what we should have done.
00:18:39
Speaker
But also if you're not keeping the schedule in sync or have some sort of alignment, you could have an exponential knock on effects to stuff in the future through decisions in the short term.
00:18:50
Speaker
There's that scale of like how much freedom do we give? Because some things aren't just that we're going to do that part before that one because it makes more sense and access to, well, actually, if you do that, you're going to lose a month in six months because that has a ah serious effect on a a knock on effect, like and a knock on activity. And that's why logic exists. And that's why everything else is in the schedule. So that that there's a pre-thought sequence of tasks that And whether that sequence of tasks is right, that is the other conversation.
00:19:18
Speaker
yeah You still need that as that point and that yeah North Star that's keeping you on track to like an end date or a milestone that we can actually hit. So yeah you kind of have to have the guardrails on. Otherwise, it's just chaos.
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah. to Like Thomas, what do you what do you reckon? Like if you're a if you're a project control, if you were to switch again from QS where that's your extensive background ah is... I'm sorry, I'm taking the piss.
00:19:45
Speaker
And to switch planning or project controls. Yeah. I feel like sometimes I've even felt and in talking to teams, if the construction team in any way deviate from the schedule, it's like a failure of the like scheduling or project control. They sometimes
Project Complexity and Scheduling Accuracy
00:19:59
Speaker
feel like it's like a failure ah because it's not matching the schedule and things will get out of control.
00:20:05
Speaker
but think it depends on what is changing a little bit. So obviously, if you're going for, if your resequencing works, ah for betterment, then, you know, what's the, what's the issue with that? So, you know, you've got a milestone saying, yep, as long as we've got this amount of track poured by this date, then they will run it in a slightly better sequence because they're down on the ground. They know the conditions, they know what they can get out of it.
00:20:30
Speaker
If they can resequence the works for betterment, then, you know, what's the issue there, I guess. However, if they're resequencing, you know, major, we're going to do column A instead of column B, they might run into that issue where, oh, that does have a flow on effect further down the line.
00:20:46
Speaker
that's probably where I'd probably have a look at what the opportunity is. Is it betterment project improvement or is it rescheduled because of an unknown change? But sometimes on large projects, you don't know. And so, you know, let's say you're designing the system of how your project is going to operate.
00:21:01
Speaker
Like right at the start, you're like pre-construction, contract's been awarded. Carlos is the construction director and Thomas is the project controls director.
00:21:12
Speaker
And thinking about how you set the approach up. Yeah, Thomas, are you arguing for, well, there's one schedule i need to be able to update and know where this is at? What's the, yeah, what are the trade-offs between your...
00:21:24
Speaker
Mine would be the two schedule approach, have milestones, let site teams put in, you know, short term change for project improvement, project betterment, you know, let them build out to a milestone is what I'd be arguing for.
00:21:37
Speaker
And then arguing for like more scheduling resource to manage the update then. Yeah, exactly. ah Like planners need more resource. Let's say you're the, well, like take your sidecast. Yeah, i I really would like to double click on this.
00:21:51
Speaker
I don't know do you feel that tension or that concern from project controls planning leads of the the schedule that we're running being a like a risk to the project?
00:22:01
Speaker
Yes, but this is probably a bit of a harsh view. Many planning and project controls teams are listening and it's probably a lack of a real world experience of mine being in that sort of role. But I can imagine a lot of it being the sort of anxious fear around deviating from the schedule.
00:22:22
Speaker
because of what that means for what you then need to do? Because contracts have mechanisms to change sequence and value engineer and provide improvements and do things that basically improve the program or reduce the cost.
00:22:35
Speaker
Is it a fair statement to say, staying on the straight and narrow and delivering the schedule is kind of the lazy way to deliver a project? You can do the other way, but there's a load of work behind doing it. And there's trade offs and there's there's what if scenarios to understand the impact on the program.
Project Managers' Role in Schedules
00:22:50
Speaker
There's forms and documents you how to produce to the clients who explain why you're re-sequencing and changing the program. So there's an argument to say, yeah, there's an argument to say it's it's like, I can't be up, i like, let's just go to option. I can't be fucked to do this. So let's just do the program.
00:23:09
Speaker
But yeah, that's there's a few assumptions in there, but I can imagine that is part of it. And then there's all sorts of things like the experience of the team and having gone through that before and what's the likelihood that the client will accept all these changes and we've already started. And there's that whole piece of every client wants to save money and time. So they're going to be all ears if you can prove it.
00:23:28
Speaker
yeah that's like I think that's a really like super good point, which is like, is the goal of when we set this like schedule management system up for our major project, is the goal to make the update of the master schedule easy and as seamless as possible, which is a like valid goal, or is the real goal to try and deliver the project as fast as possible? Yeah, that is the minimum expectation. You will not deliver later than this. And if you do, you're going to lose money.
00:23:54
Speaker
if you If you do something quicker and like all bets are all bets are the wrong phrase, but like go for it. But you still need to tie the up in the background, because if that plan doesn't go well or something does change, then you need that audit trail. Otherwise, you're really in a difficult spot.
00:24:10
Speaker
And and the the you know the reality of the project is both are true at the same time, probably, which is like you might be doing some stuff quicker. There's also some stuff that's going slower. Plus, there's like client driven change all at the same time.
00:24:21
Speaker
yeahp you're probably going to end up late, the vast majority of them to end up later. yeah So let's you kind of have to go into the assumption of this whole, if you're you're in the mindset of the project controls manager or planning manager, you're probably assuming you're going to run somewhat late due to some combination of factors of your problems and change and stuff.
Challenges of Maintaining a Unified Schedule
00:24:40
Speaker
ye Your job is orientated about recovery of that and substantiating that and tracking of that. I want to be able to get an update as quickly as possible so I can do that job. Yeah.
00:24:51
Speaker
And yeah, it's like a lower risk appetite. We know we're getting recovery on this program. So let's deliver this program. And deviating from that, for some might ring bells, for some might be like, awesome, let's go make more money.
00:25:02
Speaker
But there's some work to do. Yeah. And the earlier you can identify issues and risks, the more you can do to mitigate them, right? That's a pretty fundamental thing I think we've all seen on sites at least that, you know, you've sit there, you've ignored a problem until it's too late and you can't actually do anything about it. So I think that early updating is super handy.
00:25:20
Speaker
Do you think that at the core of this is maybe like a trust problem between say a project controls team and a construction and delivery team? What I mean by that, if I was to frame it, is there's a lot of ah people that will say and a lot of literature says that actually the way to, if we think about the job being deliver the project as quickly as possible,
00:25:39
Speaker
What you want to do is empower the last planner or the people closest to the project to be able to plan and think about how they can deliver that as quickly as possible, to get buy-in from them to deliver as quickly as possible, you drive accountability from them to deliver as quickly as possible.
00:25:52
Speaker
And that involves giving them some space to build that plan and some ownership to run that process that might result in a plan or a schedule that is somewhat different to what was laid out in the master schedule.
00:26:06
Speaker
ah Do you think that if I put you know my planning project controls director hat on again, Carlos, being nervous about giving that space, you think there's like a trust gap there that is like the root of it?
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think um like even my view, like engineers are just out to deliver their package as quickly as they can. So the only person really thinking about how those packages are interlinked and and what that really means is the PM who's already at capacity with way too much information.
00:26:34
Speaker
And then a good project, you've got ah like there was, we always had a split planning team, like the like construction planner and then the the reporting and client planner and the reporting client plan is normally the project controls focused one.
00:26:47
Speaker
The planner is normally sat hip to hip with the PM and is trying to pull and remember all of this planning related information. So it can stay on top of the, in the air of the PM that won't work because, or yeah, that will work and that's fine because.
00:27:03
Speaker
I'd imagine the the client side are always thinking, our engineers are just all fucking cowboys and they're just going for their own package and all they care about is their own milestones. And then yeah it's but it's super reliant on a very strong PM who can spin a thousand plates. And it's what most PMs do and are good at. That supporting planner who's the sort of, right, I'm going to try and soak in all this information, but filter out the the time related stuff.
00:27:26
Speaker
So I could be doing the background checks and the thought but between maybe the slightly longer sequence, two, three, four months down the line. But I think that's a well-oiled machine and that's probably why others are nervous. And some people think that all the checks they would do aren't being done
Engineers' Impact on Scheduling
00:27:42
Speaker
unless they can see it. So you can see why there might be a ah nervousness because that person isn't going to go and check every little thing.
00:27:50
Speaker
they might Like if I just push you to even think about, like you turn up on, you've just, ah you're at Contractor X, you've just won a large infrastructure project, you're the head of planning or project controls for the project, jack and you're having the conversation with it with the construction director or project director, thinking about how that kind of system will run.
00:28:13
Speaker
If you can orientate to like the goal is deliver the project as quickly as possible, because I think they'll as we discovered there's there's also the how do we make the update as easy as possible, which can somewhat be at odds with each other.
00:28:25
Speaker
Inside of the how do we deliver the project as quickly as possible, do you need to like have some level of like trust Yeah, what's the, what stops you going, yeah, run run your plan and I'll track a series of milestones, you know, and I'll have a team that will help me collect the update as as messy as that might be.
00:28:43
Speaker
I think historically, yeah they're kind of, they feel like they're in this tough situation because you're relatively blind. So there weren't mechanism to understand like real time progress or production rates or outputs or like a measure on site. There isn't a physical walk, photos and diaries and diaries are pretty loose the best of times.
00:29:06
Speaker
So if you're sat there thinking we do have a schedule that works. It feels like the team are doing something else and I've got no real visibility around if the thing they're saying they're doing is actually happening.
00:29:19
Speaker
You could see why that's in a comfortable position to be in and you might, you'll default back to your posture that you know can be done, which is the schedule that you create and and update. So I think it's that lack of insight as to what's actually going on, which creates that that culture or culture is the wrong word, perception. Yeah. Thomas, now now transforming you back into the the construction manager engineer ah rather than QAS. To what degree do you think that the like us as engineers probably make that problem worse by, i don't want to say intentionally not updating planners on stuff, but there is definitely a vi a divide that but i I would put my hand up and say I've been guilty of propagating back in the day when I was on projects. Oh, yeah.
00:30:05
Speaker
And yeah, to what degree do the construction team need to realize that the more that they can bring the planning team into what they're doing, the more so the more freedom and space they might earn? 100%. think I'm going to also put my hand up and say i was probably pretty bad at
Balancing Delivery Optimization and Schedule Maintenance
00:30:21
Speaker
this.
00:30:21
Speaker
ah You know, I was always being chased for what are the updates to the plan. We always had a plan on site. You know, we always had a three, four week look ahead. But actually, i guess indicating that back to the plan is I will put my hand up and say I was pretty bad at it.
00:30:34
Speaker
So yeah, I definitely think there probably is a lot of value to be added there and getting them on board into the loop a lot faster. Obviously, yeah, the more the more information that you give them, the more trust.
00:30:46
Speaker
I think I trust just also develops over time as well. you know do you have a strong PM? All that kind of stuff. I think if you have a strong PM, a strong team, planners will more likely be to sit back and go, oh, they know what they're doing.
00:30:58
Speaker
Let's let them do what they need to do. The other thing that like comes up if we shift gear a little bit is there is a there's like this attractive um outcome that you can kind of if you squint see a little bit where we have this one schedule ah that has attached to it like our resources, our costs, um maybe it's attached to a ah model of the project and um we are, we've got some system on the project where we're collecting progress on some cadence that is related back to that schedule again. and you end up with this ah idealized model of the world where all of the objects on a project are somewhat connected back to that schedule.
00:31:46
Speaker
And in fact, like from the software vendor perspective, ah most of the software vendors are, i was gonna say guilty, but that not guilty, it might be a valid outcome. Sorry, that gave away too much opinion. But um that that a lot of systems are building this kind of like you connect all these objects together which from a software architecture perspective is interesting, things being related is interesting and powerful from a data analysis perspective.
00:32:15
Speaker
Are we saying that that schedule, if you need two schedules, what what what are we connecting to what here? I guess if you you know you if you draw a picture in your head of this schedule with all of these things connected to them,
00:32:27
Speaker
Well, if the schedule we're talking about is the thing that is our reporting tool, is our bid schedule, is where we measure cost and has all the... That's the one that's got the resources and the costs attached to it.
00:32:40
Speaker
If that doesn't reflect what we're doing on site, yeah, what's the future of... you know what do we if we for cast the the mind forward, what... You can always compare what you're doing on site back to that master schedule. Let's let's use cost and time, for example. You've got a value graph. You've got you know the initial how much you thought you were going to spend to deliver that amount
Future of Scheduling with Interconnected Systems
00:33:02
Speaker
of scope. If all of a sudden you have to bring in six times the amount of excavators or whatever, obviously your production, your cost per production is going to go right down, but you can still compare it back to that master schedule at the end of the day. Yeah, you won't be performing well, or maybe it's the other way that you're doing it more efficiently.
00:33:17
Speaker
So you can always compare back, it's that baseline. You have to manually compare it as that is, I guess, the problem. people people the The idea of it, the attractive ideal is that everything's connected.
00:33:28
Speaker
And so that when I make these changes, I can systemically or programmatically understand But that relies on the assumption that the schedule doesn't change. Other than dates, right?
00:33:38
Speaker
ah But the actual activities themselves aren't changing. Why can't the activities change? if you've got if you're doing cost per se, if you're trying to compare your spend to do 200 meters of height, if you're comparing your baseline costs against your schedule and your costs change, why not just do it that way? Compare your costs.
00:33:56
Speaker
Well, in in order for that thing to work, let's say you have a series of activities in the schedule yeah and you recast the schedule so that some of them are done in different orders.
00:34:07
Speaker
Maybe certain things are grouped together, certain things are broken apart. You end up in this spot where, ah well, first of all, like we talked about before, if I want to go and make that set of updates, I've got some risks around recovery from the schedule and being able to measure the change. Yep. So that would say maybe don't do it or there would be some pressure not to do it.
00:34:27
Speaker
There's also just like an overhead to the project in order to make those sets of changes that is a ah burden. That overhead gets even higher if it links to the original set of activities where model objects,
00:34:39
Speaker
were costs, were resources, maybe were production records. So suddenly the more things that are linked to this original schedule, the more difficult it is to make changes, then you know the necessary changes to the schedule.
00:34:55
Speaker
It's hard because obviously the type of project could really drive this answer, but the object is still the object to the end of the day. So whether you it's a series of piles or it's reinforced concrete walls or columns or installing floor and skirtings or whatever it is.
00:35:11
Speaker
yeah The volume is still the volume. Unless you're changing the design, that is the volume. Yeah. Re-sequencing the works doesn't change the quantities. It doesn't change a lot of those factors. Yes, if something was in three years and is now in one, it might be cheaper because there's no inflation on the material or something like like that.
00:35:29
Speaker
So let's just remove this client reporting tool. If you just had your contract schedule and that's that's where you are and that's linked to a model and that's linked to everything else that we're talking about.
Real-world Complexities vs. Ideal Schedules
00:35:38
Speaker
If you're resequencing and that's changing the the sequence that you can view in the model, which is what a lot of teams use models for.
00:35:45
Speaker
You should still have a sequence that is built in ah an old order that makes sense. There's no roof before columns because that wouldn't be a valid change. So the model would point that out pretty quickly if if it's building from the top down.
00:35:57
Speaker
Why would the quantities and cost change anything dramatically? Because your prelims are detached from that. It's another check and balance really and a way to view the schedule, which isn't viewing P6, which is not what anyone wants to spend their time doing.
00:36:11
Speaker
but But if we go back to one of the principles we talked about before, which is ah with the goal being, if you were to take this goal being deliver the project as quickly as possible, do, i guess do you guys fundamentally agree that one of the tools to deliver the project as quickly as possible is this like,
00:36:29
Speaker
and not to like say last planner, but this kind of ah the construction team thinking through how they could deliver their scope as quickly as possible from some sort of ah first principles thought process that drives buy in from supply chain and the construction team and accountability.
00:36:49
Speaker
Because if you if you believe that that helps drive the project to be as little bit as quickly as possible. You end up with just a, maybe the objects are everything that's in the schedules fundamentally same, but there's they're not technically linked.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, agreed. um But you will run into a different set of problems. And I suppose a lot of that is based around form of contract, but it's really hard to bring in a subcontractor and say, here's your program because they priced, they've but they've got the same problem that that the GC has with the client, which is, well, I didn't price that. So I'm going to build it how I plan to build it. And if not, you're going to pay me more and give me more time. So there's there's forms of contracts that can get rid of that, like option E it's just a resourcing exercise and you can just, you can do whatever you want at that point. Sorry for anyone listening, to any C option E is like cost reimbursable.
00:37:36
Speaker
Even option C to an extent, you're not paid on your program, you're paid on your your cost. And at the end, there's an exercise to say, have you overspent or underspent? And let's split the difference typically. So these contracts are already starting to allow for flexibility.
00:37:50
Speaker
You're still going to have a shit time in the project controls team if the the team are going off and doing something different, because it'll be really hard to answer questions and you'll probably fear of coming across incompetent. Specifically back to your point, which is like construction team owning the schedule in the short term.
00:38:05
Speaker
They are there, they're building the job, they understand site conditions, they know what the subcontractors are saying, and they're there and on site. So that view must be stronger than anyone that's running a schedule. because And that's no disrespect to them, they built a schedule before we knew any of these facts and conditions.
00:38:20
Speaker
So the idea that your collaborative planning, drawing the experience, Building plans in real times and thinking, right, how do we just get to week four in the quickest period of time? Feels like a manageable and reasonable thing to do. You're not trying to, right, let's plan out the next two years because that would be silly team thing to try to do ah with a construction team.
00:38:40
Speaker
But I do think there's a space where the commercial setup should be different because if you go for the ultimate collaboration, you're part of our team. So we're just going to pay you, just do what we say. doesn't really incentivize teams to work fast and efficient.
00:38:52
Speaker
You're just going to be the ones banging the drum. I think there should be a different set of contracts, like incentivized based models where you're rewarded for performance. So you, but that changes the game entirely. didn't think this is where that answer was going to end up.
00:39:07
Speaker
Yeah, but it's it's really hard because you can't just, you can't detach delivery from payment. yeah No one's going to even try to deliver a job if you're not going to earn a profit.
00:39:17
Speaker
And the only way to earn a profit is to beat the schedule and the schedule has to exist to win the contract in the first place. So we we can't escape from that, but there's a whole bunch of ways we can manage the next three or four weeks because there's no major resequencing in in a three to four week period.
Ownership and Flexibility in Schedule Management
00:39:32
Speaker
You might have the example that you had, which is a sequence of piles, but it's not going to govern something major that's meant to be happening in six months time. Yeah. So when the when you see a team that go, well, we're going to run this job from because you see ah you see a lot of teams do that. Well, we're going to run this job from this one schedule. We're going to plan in intricate detail, like almost sometimes proudly saying that our that our master schedule is down to a level five in detail. ah which is going to make it really like easy to do the update ah because we don't need to do any other form of ah you know way of running the job.
00:40:10
Speaker
Is that, you know, bluntly, is that like a tail wagging dog thing? Is that like orientated around the the goal of making that update and the data be connected at the sacrifice of like trying to get the job delivered as quickly as possible?
00:40:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's the that's the planning team. Just like we know best, here's the schedule, deliver exactly what we've told you to do down to the detail. And then that makes their life really easy, but it's also like ah this indirect, we know better than the construction team type mentality.
00:40:39
Speaker
And we see a big scale of customers going to like somewhere between level three and five. Level three allows a bit more freedom because they're normally like package based, more summary bars, milestones, things like that. yeah So it's saying to the construction team, look, you just need to complete this room by the end of October.
00:40:55
Speaker
Off you go. Like why even have package managers and engineers to that extent if you're telling everyone what to do every day? You just need project managers or site managers and labor if you're going to be saying like every shift, this is exactly what you're going to do We've already pre-planned it, so there's no thought required because that's a lot of what the engineer is there to do. And it's how quickly can we build this thing that we're building?
00:41:15
Speaker
think the other issue there is how do you adapt to change? You know, you pre-planned out to that and degree, any kind of client change that comes through, say you want different finishings on something, unknown site conditions, how do you adapt to that change if you've got this master schedule that's pre-planned down to the individual day. Yeah. And you're not flexing that muscle, right? Because you're you're rarely making these decisions. So when issues come up, you're to be like, oh, fuck, the schedule's wrong.
00:41:40
Speaker
Yeah. What do we do tomorrow? But if I was to like take the steel man of that side and ah say that, yes, this idea of having one schedule that's connected to a bunch of things, we could pre-plan it out in perfect detail.
00:41:54
Speaker
Yes, we'll have some things that are wrong, but we'll just have a lot of resources to constantly adjust it on on the project. ah one of the Let's say we take the argument for that. the um The point you made right at the start, Carlos, was one of the biggest problems is,
00:42:11
Speaker
and and tied to this idea of ah ownership and buy-in from the construction team might be a communication problem is actually the gap that should be closed here if we were to argue for this one schedule is you should be able to plan this in great detail just have a bunch of resources that go and update that schedule and the real job is to somehow communicate that that great detail to the folks on the project so they can They don't have to think through it again. It's already thought through.
00:42:41
Speaker
is is there ah Is there just a ah tooling gap for communicating that that is the the problem? So you're saying like a what if so say they come up against... Would another fear theoretical way to run the project be to buy into this one schedule?
00:42:55
Speaker
We're going to plan it to level five detail. Yep. by devil's advocate, right? You know, plan this thing to level five detail. I'm going to have a bunch of planners across different sections of the project. So that we'll will not have any limit on the resource of updating that thing.
00:43:09
Speaker
They'll come to every daily meeting maybe and do an update immediately from there. ah The way that we get buy-in from the construction team is that we have some some better tooling about communicating to each part of the team what their next two weeks or one week or three weeks looks like in in whatever way is possible. Is the gap a communication of that level five perfectly planned master schedule?
00:43:31
Speaker
Is that the gap or is or is yeah is is just fundamentally there should be two schedules? I think they like the the concept or theory, you can see why that would work.
00:43:42
Speaker
and like We have projects where they would have this level five schedule. They're putting it into a tool that actually the construction team can use and they're monitoring progress. So there's there's not much of a planning effort.
00:43:53
Speaker
it's It's super detailed. but it's let's wrap it up in a format that teams can actually use to communicate every day and then we're going to understand how we're getting on which is our
Need for Adaptability in Detailed Scheduling
00:44:01
Speaker
progress update so you can see why that's working or can work i think it under appreciates the volume of change and decisions that are made every day on site it's never exactly as per the schedule as soon as you cascade that plan down five minutes later it's <unk> not in the bin but it's it's different to what it was at the time that you produced it so there's a world where it could be relatively well-defined and detailed, but it has to be open to those little tweaks and changes each day because it's never going to be smooth every shift.
00:44:29
Speaker
Like there's no construction project in the world that will say we've had the perfect week. Everything that we pre-planned happened to the T. Yeah, there's a scale and it it could be close to that perfect world, but it could never be like 100% perfect.
00:44:43
Speaker
Yeah, that that's ah that's a good point. like It is an appealing model of what it could look like. And then you remember what it's like on the project where you perfectly, you've probably done this as well, Thomas, you perfectly plan out the four-week look ahead on a Friday afternoon with the like all of the team in the room.
00:45:04
Speaker
And then like four minutes after you walk out of the meeting, someone gets a phone call. It's like, actually, that plans out the window. that why Yeah, yeah. So memorable. And then you won't even update the plan. You'll wait till next week when it's completely changed. yeah Yes. that The other one there is, you know, if you've got planners dictating down to that level of detail, what everyone's going to do day to day, you may as well get rid of your PMs and all that kind of stuff because...
00:45:30
Speaker
m z The schedule belongs to the PM. Let's not forget that. It's the PM schedule and plan is updated for them. yeah So it's still the PM's plan. We shouldn't forget that. Is it? Should be. does It doesn't feel like it sometimes.
00:45:43
Speaker
I think under NEC, the quantity surveyor and the planner work for the project manager. Contractually. But the planner doesn't just build a program. like the The actual...
00:45:54
Speaker
The internal program, that is 100% the project manager dictating sequence and the plan is there adding the detail. Talking in ja Jason's theoretical scenario here where we have unlimited planning resource and they're on-site updating every day with any kind of change to to through we'll put what we do on our project carlos is we get like a hundred uh like graduates out of like they're just students and we put them all through your pdf based p6 tutorial that you went through and they're all become experts to go and do the do the updates uh why can't that work why why can't we run the job like that
00:46:35
Speaker
The volume of change, the real world environment, like it just can't work that way. It has to change. And if it's going to change, you need to be updating it real time. And as you said, you're going to need shitloads of schedulers to be able to keep on top of that volume of change if it's owned by the planning team.
00:46:50
Speaker
That alone was mean you're not going to make any money on the job.
Integrating Schedules with Project Data
00:46:53
Speaker
Also say being, you can't measure because you've got the, if the thing, check if the thing's fundamental, I just go back to this point. Like, I just don't think you can measure effectively week on week or month on month or period on period.
00:47:05
Speaker
And trying to substantiate delay is, would be an absolute mess. Yeah. Yeah. it's horrible. But also do you think with a complex scheme, let's say you actually tried to go level five detail,
00:47:17
Speaker
Are you removing all of your opportunity to actually make money? Because if you go to that level of detail, then you enforce that level of detail. You've got no wiggle room to really beat the program. Because if you do, you are beating the program schedule's wrong and you are still doing those quicken-off and elephant updates.
00:47:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think in in many ways in that you described it as kind of like a safe approach. That safe approach almost guarantees that you're likely to come on or late.
00:47:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not really driving it to come earlier. yeah You're not challenging the construction team to go on beats and dates. yeah Because that's where all the juices to squeeze is like, here's a date.
00:47:55
Speaker
However we get there, we've got to like we've got to get there as quickly as possible. And you're relying on the 50 hours you spent on the program at tender to being the ultimate sequence, which is like, that's a punchy thought.
00:48:07
Speaker
You can spend years on a job and still not have every idea in the world. And they're doing a quick tender. done that many times, yeah. Spend on the job and realize that was the wrong way to do yeah the out of it.
00:48:19
Speaker
the The ultimate is to give the ownership to the construction team, to take real ownership of the look ahead plan, and then just get loads of QSs and you make tons of money. What are they going to do? What do they there? Recovery. Recovery. Coffees and such. They're more expensive than engineers.
00:48:34
Speaker
ah Yeah, for good reason. You can't measure. You haven't got the vehicle to to to actually communicate what's happening each day. and if it's this structured, definite plan, don't ask questions.
00:48:47
Speaker
You're not going to beat it. You're not going to, there's no opportunity. You're kind of sucking the life out the team by just giving them a task list each day. one One other take that is worth exploring before we run out of time is like, I had this conversation last night with ah with a commercial team. So if we all put our QS hats on,
00:49:05
Speaker
This idea of everything being connected back to the schedule ah was discussed from the lens of like how much better that would make recovery, substantiating claims because we could have planned resource or planned production that we plan to get to the schedule than the actual we could have tied to the the thing.
00:49:28
Speaker
It's kind of world where your yeah your actual production, your plan production, your diaries, kind of everything tied back to that overall master schedule would make a big impact in ah in how we substantiate or yeah substantiate claims. so Yeah, it's huge. it's ah It's like cradle to grave data.
00:49:52
Speaker
You got the contract task that you said you deliver. You get your construction program, which references the contract task. yeah And then you've got a diary which references effectively both layers above.
00:50:04
Speaker
That data set is massive.
Balancing Delivery Goals with Scheduling Practices
00:50:06
Speaker
I'll try not to like indirectly pitch our products, but like No, actually, I don't think it's the opposite. Well, no, but that like our product is going to have the the the the real schedule, not the original one. So it's almost, I'm almost thinking- But if you're into running the top down approach to planning, which is when anyone listening teams import the schedule and break it down, you have got that.
00:50:28
Speaker
the P6 activity ID or ASTOR activity ID that sits for task still has the history of every schedule it's associated with. So in theory, that is in existence. Yeah, well, let let's maybe... We'll ignore that for now. Yeah, put put product aside.
00:50:43
Speaker
Going back to this idea of like challenge to hit a date, Yeah, because I think the model that you're describing in your head, just to be clear for for anyone listening, is you're thinking like you've got a level three master schedule. You can take that into your short term plan. and You can build out some detail and try and beat a bunch of dates, which I think is a ah valid model of the world.
00:51:02
Speaker
Going back to the the theoretical Jason scenario where you've got a level five master schedule and everything's attached back to that thing. Because it attached back to your, I think a lot of people think thing that people struggle with is, yeah, you probably, you're going to limited somewhat if the thing you're attached back to is a level three activity.
00:51:20
Speaker
Yeah, there's a it's a bit of muddy water then at that point because you've got something that's relatively broad or vague attached to something very specific. yeah Do you think a lot of the level three to level five debate also depends on the sector, the project, the skill set of the team?
00:51:36
Speaker
Because you you'll speak to a lot construction teams. You'll speak to a lot of construction teams that like our job is not to plan. We get given a plan and we deliver that plan. And that's a valid way that a lot of building projects are run.
00:51:48
Speaker
So you need to be pushing to level five. Otherwise, like what happens after that point? Where civil engineers and infrastructure schemes are very much used to building plans and thinking through that process from first principles, what am i going to do for the next four weeks to hit that milestone?
00:52:05
Speaker
There's a type of team that would govern that, not just like theoretically, what is the best type question. and then I don't know, Thomas, we talked before. Yeah, help go, man. There's also the size of project that obviously ties into that as well. Like, you know, if you're doing a house, that's quite different to the level of detail that you want for a you know, multi-billion construction project. Really, the number of interfaces and all that kind of stuff. It obviously becomes a lot easier to manage once you take those interfaces out of the schedule.
00:52:36
Speaker
and you have to tie in with others or you can have heaps and heaps of work groups all trying to work in the same area. It's just about risk, I guess, and managing the risk on the project at the end of the day. Yeah, and so much of that detail, like what I hate talking about the levels of the schedule because it's like a snooze fest, but um the At that level, that lower, that really detailed is so much about like different trades or different subcontractors or different teams coordinating and interfacing, ah which you just possibly, you cannot possibly know going in.
00:53:07
Speaker
the The thing that's interesting in in many conversations is yeah It does feel like if this problem was easy to be solved, it would have been solved. um But it's amazing how many people are like first principles solving it on every project over and over again and still never like it's like ah it's like chasing the yeah it's the white thing that you chase. Like you chase someone the white whale. There we go.
00:53:29
Speaker
Yeah. Do you think also there's a, I'm not sure this is considered when, when schedules are created. So like in a perfect world where you knew this full system and you had
Risks and Rewards of Schedule Management Practices
00:53:40
Speaker
quite a deep understanding of like, not just building and maintaining these contract schedules as the planning team, how the construction art team would operate, what method they're going to use for short-term planning and what that looks like.
00:53:50
Speaker
Because that can start to govern how you craft milestones and how regular milestones are and what type of milestones do we have? And is that linked to payments? Because then you can give the team the right set of milestones to aim for. Not one every six months, not one every three days.
00:54:04
Speaker
I think that that culture and way of working needs to go back to the contract schedule so they're more fit for this method of working. At the moment, I think it's just a classic schedule. And they've got sectional completions, they've got handovers, they've got things like that.
00:54:18
Speaker
I don't think that is really governed by how are we actually going to deliver the job and what do the team needs to plan. Yeah, I think your your point actually echoes the scenario I was i was framing earlier on, which was like, imagine you're the project ah controls manager at the start of the project. How do you think about the delivery system for this this project?
00:54:41
Speaker
Because, yeah, if you if you took that approach, you wanted to ah give space for and challenge the construction team to try and come in as early as possible, you probably think about like level of detail that we should realis realistically go to.
00:54:55
Speaker
Having a series of milestones maybe inside of different WBS areas for like this being finished, that being finished, that's how we track that back. But you you might have to, as a result of that, be realistic about this one connected magic schedule that will automatically do your claims for you and automatically everything together.
00:55:20
Speaker
um Because I think that people have like, there's like special interest groups on projects that are like trying to get to certain outcomes that maybe aren't aligned with just get the job delivered as quickly as possible.
00:55:30
Speaker
That makes it tricky. Like said, if it was an easy problem to solve, it'd be solved already. Any final thoughts around the horn? Carlos? Yeah, no, interesting discussion. Definitely. yeah totally agree.
00:55:41
Speaker
Someone would have sold it if it was easy. And there's a lot of factors at play. But i think I think the key thing that I'd like to see more is this appreciation of how the team will actually be run, being reflected back to contract schedules and not just having a contract schedule that will win a job and satisfy a client.
00:55:59
Speaker
So there's something we can help influence. That'd be a fun one. Righto. Big controversial statements. Projects are complicated. There's very various ways to tackle it. Thomas. ah Carlos obviously isn't winning any more jobs.
00:56:11
Speaker
You know, he's more important than actually, you know, winning jobs. That's good to see. No, I think it's all about risk management at the end of the day when it comes down to master schedule versus project schedules.
00:56:21
Speaker
I'm all for the engineer being able to change insight teams, being able to change and adapt and, you know, get the project betterment at the end of the day. I think they They know the detail, they know the issues more than anyone else.
00:56:33
Speaker
So more freedom to the construction teams. Yeah, I think I'm ah not far from you, Thomas. Like even reflecting on my own experience on a project for for quite a period of time, I don't think that I could have had, even at the end of the job, got to on, rewound time back to the start and properly plan how that job could have been completed.
00:56:54
Speaker
So the task of the person that is building that schedule ex ante, so beforehand, is it impos is an impossibility. They're building a schedule that is how we could theoretically possibly complete this project, but will definitely not be the way that we complete it.
00:57:10
Speaker
The sooner we embrace that idea and that the way that we deliver, the job to be done is to deliver the project as quickly as possible. that we can organize systems that help construction teams around that.
00:57:22
Speaker
Whereas I think a lot of them being sold this kind of one connected technology led idea that is, i think, rooted in some ideal that that first schedule is somehow representing what's actually going to happen.
00:57:36
Speaker
But it's Do think our view will change if one of us had actually built a P6 schedule and reported against it? I have. I don't know. I have. Yes, I have. Just me. Sorry, inside voice.
00:57:48
Speaker
was going to say, Jay. Cool. I've got loads. Do you people want that omnibus approach just for ease? Like, you know, just for doing claims, for tracking, you know, recovery, all that kind of stuff. Do you reckon that's their intention there rather than building projects faster?
00:58:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think that there are lots of things... ah Supporting the project delivery is very hard and complicated, especially when you feel somewhat disconnected from the people running the project. So if you're in the commercial team, if you're in the safety team, all these support functions around the project feel like they're kind of looking through a blurry window into the project.
00:58:26
Speaker
Often they'll try to design systems that give them better clarity as to what's happening because as as a safety person or as a commercial person, I have to somehow build a claim that gets us recovery on this thing.
00:58:38
Speaker
And I don't quite know why Thomas made the decision or what he did and whatever. That then leads the next question. Like, that's my job to do as a commercial person on the project, for example, or a project controls person on the project. So I have these jobs, which is to try and support the construction team by getting recovery or substantiating claims or tracking production.
00:58:59
Speaker
So I'm trying to support the team by doing it, but because I don't have good data or much structure as to how the team or what they're planning to do or why what they did, I then start inventing this system about how I could do that, that fundamentally is maybe mismatched with the ultimate goal, which is they still need to run the job as quickly as possible.
00:59:21
Speaker
So you can see how people in good faith get there, but it's really important to keep an eye on, I think, what the real job is, which is just to live the project as safely and quickly as possible, which is hard because of how complicated it is.
00:59:33
Speaker
The prophet. like Yeah, but ah that one as well. Yeah. Yeah, cool. Super interesting discussion. Got brought up a bunch of thoughts for me ah personally that have given me some things to think about. And yeah, like I said, if it if it was easy, ah everyone would have solved it already.
00:59:52
Speaker
Kars, you want read us out? and By the way, Thomas, thanks for joining. Really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks for having me. Yeah, no, thanks, Thomas. Thanks, Jase. And thank you very much, everyone, for tuning into today's show.
01:00:03
Speaker
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