Tracking planned vs actual progress is essential for project success. Finishing a project on time requires many moving parts to come together perfectly. By comparing current performance with the original plan, you can spot potential issues that might cause delays or budget overruns. Analyzing progress and performance data allows you to predict these problems and make the necessary adjustments to keep your project on track.
Planned Schedule
The planned schedule, often called the baseline schedule, represents the original timeline agreed upon for project completion. It details when each task or activity should start and finish and includes milestones, task durations, and resource allocations.
The schedule is created after considering the scope of work, available resources, and various other constraints. Once set and approved, the baseline schedule shouldn’t change. However, due to significant scope changes, it might be necessary to “re-baseline” the schedule in many instances.
Actual Progress
The actual aspect of construction scheduling refers to the project’s real-time progress–or the earned schedule. It records when tasks or activities actually started and finished.
Any deviations from the planned schedule, whether through delays or ahead-of-schedule completions, are captured here. The actual data will change as the project progresses. As tasks finish or delays occur, this data is updated to reflect the project’s current status.
Comparison and Analysis
Comparing the planned schedule with the actual progress, project teams gain the insight they need to do the following.
- Identify if the project is on track, ahead, or behind schedule.
- Forecast potential delays and determine their impact on project completion.
- Allocate resources more effectively based on current needs.
- Make informed decisions about potential schedule compression (such as overtime or additional resources) to get things back on track.
- Communicate project status with all stakeholders, including other team members, subcontractors, and project owners/representatives.
There are myriad resources available on the internet about how to compute the variance between the planned schedule and actual progress. The goal here is to understand why these variances occur in the first place.
Suppose your planned vs actual progress varies widely on your construction projects. In that case, tracking the causes and refining your scheduling process can help to minimize variance moving forward.
The Consequences of Inadequate Scheduling
Insufficient scheduling leads to significant disparities between the planned project timeline and the actual delivery date. This causes budget overruns, subpar work quality, and potential legal disputes. The problem is exacerbated by various factors, with inefficient scheduling being a primary culprit, as indicated by industry reports and studies.
Studies show inadequate planning and scheduling are responsible for delays in 30% to 50% of projects. This is especially true when combined with factors like poor supervision and communication.
- A Project Management Institute survey of over 40,000 global Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification holders in construction revealed that 72% frequently faced project delays.
- In a 2022 Cornerstone Projects survey, 28% of respondents noted that over 50% of construction projects now experience delays. This is a stark increase from 15% in 2016.
Explaining the “Change of Plans”
Ineffective scheduling derives from a variety of sources. While there are likely more than what is listed here, these are the most frequently cited:
- Scheduling Skills: Too often, project schedulers are spread too thin. Many manage a portfolio of projects, others have never step foot on a job site. This issue lends itself to details being missed, insufficient planning, and a plethora of other risks.
- Substandard Data: Garbage in, garbage out. That mantra applies directly to the creation of a construction project schedule. When the data used from the schedule is incorrect, outdated, or incomplete, the plan is doomed from the start.
- Optimistic Estimations: Overly optimistic projections and timeframes arise for various reasons, such as underestimating the complexity of tasks, not adequately accounting for potential risks, or pressure to present aggressive timelines to win bids.
- Lack of Detailed Planning: A schedule without thorough planning may miss key tasks or dependencies, leading to conflicts and delays down the line.
- Lack of Regular Monitoring and Updates: A schedule is not a one-time document. It needs to be regularly reviewed and updated based on the project’s progress as well as any unforeseen events.
Planned vs Actual Progress: Visualized & Automated:
Knowing how well you keep up with the original plan can take time and effort. However, doing planned vs. actual analysis can be done using something you already have– your schedule data.
- Red Line = late date planned (baseline)
- Blue Line = actual progress
- Solid Green Line = early date planned (baseline)
- Dashed Green Line = current scheduled completion
- Dashed Blue Line = predictive completion
Visualizing performance with early and late dates provides a clearer picture of the project’s progress compared to plotting earned value. This approach aids in real-time tracking and enhances the accuracy of future planning and resource allocation.
Understanding Planned vs Actual Progress with Early and Late Start Dates
Early and late dates help schedule and reschedule activities to ensure the project stays on track. They also provide meaningful information when comparing planned vs. actual progress.
- Early Start Date (ES): The earliest point in time that an activity can begin.
- Early Finish Date (EF): The earliest point in time that an activity can be completed.
- Late Start Date (LS): The latest point in time that an activity can start without delaying the project’s overall completion date.
- Late Finish Date (LF): The latest point in time an activity can finish without delaying the project’s end date.
These dates are used to calculate an activity’s total float or slack, which indicates the wiggle room available for scheduling that activity without affecting the project’s completion date.
Let’s Look At an Example
Looking at this schedule, the project should be 40% done on day ten based on early dates.
- 20 days + 20 days + 10 days = 50 days
- On day 10, 20 out of 50 days of work should be complete, or 40%.
With Float
However, with the available float, the project could only be 20% complete on day 10, completing a total of 10 out of 50 days of work without any critical delays.
Late Dates
Therefore, using the latest start date, the activity can, theoretically, be pushed out by ten days, assuming these activities can be completed within their allotted durations.
Explaining SmartPM’s Planned vs Actual Percent Complete Chart
In the chart below, the green line represents early dates – i.e., if every activity was completed within the “best-case scenario” of the baseline. On the other hand, the red line equates to the lowest acceptable rate of baseline progress while still meeting deadlines.
Pro Tip: Striking a balance between early planning and achievable productivity is key for the end date.
Hitting the Target
The actual progress, shown by the blue line, remains within the target range between the early planned date (green line) and the late planned date (red line).
This suggests that with the right prioritization of activities, the project is on track to be completed on schedule, as productivity aligns with the set target.
Missing the Target
When the actual progress curve falls outside the shaded target range, it means the project is not achieving the necessary productivity to stay on schedule, even after all float is consumed. In this case, the project teams will need to greatly accelerate to get back on track.
Future acceleration is highlighted by the predictive and scheduled completion lines:
- Predictive Completion: Forecasts how the project will finish based on historical productivity data, providing an estimate of future performance.
- Scheduled Completion: Shows the projected timelines for the project as indicated by the schedule, reflecting expected future outcomes based on current plans.
When the scheduled completion date has a steeper slope than the predicted completion date, as shown in the image above, it indicates that the projected effort required to complete the project on schedule is higher. Given historical productivity data, maintaining the current schedule might not be feasible.
SmartPM’s analysis combines historical data and future plans to create predictive models, showing how the project will progress if the current performance trajectory is maintained. This predictive tool helps forecast project completion, understand the current status, and make informed decisions about team efficiency, productivity, and resource needs. By identifying potential spikes in performance and deviations from the planned schedule, it provides a way to gauge the reliability of the schedule.
The Value of Planned vs Actual Analysis
Simply by plotting the earned value curves in the schedule against what is actually happening, you can reflect on durations with levels of risk, over-optimism bias, and planning fallacy. Furthermore, by watching how your project’s planned vs. actual curve changes at every update, you can detect problems early and use this information to mitigate them.
Project delays, both preventable and unforeseen, are a fact of construction life. However, a platform like SmartPM can significantly minimize their impact by helping create an initial schedule that is accurate, realistic, and achievable. Further, it can keep projects on the straight and narrow regardless of what problems may arise.
