Conducting a schedule update review without a clear roadmap of what to look for can be a recipe for confusion, especially in commercial construction. Besides having a regular updating frequency, what analytics should you be mindful of? With thousands of data points changing between updates, how do you narrow your focus on the performance metrics most useful for keeping yourself and your team on track? Answer: A scheduling SOP made specifically for update reviews. Read on to learn 10 things you should include in your scheduling SOP for update reviews.
Why You Should Have a Scheduling SOP for Update Reviews
An SOP, or Standard Operating Procedure, outlines how something is done to achieve the desired output, i.e., why something is done. Think about it. The purpose of setting up any process is to get some kind of output. Documenting or standardizing that process is what allows the output to be repeatable.
“To improve work, you first must have a ‘standard’ to start from.” – Lean Construction Institute
Having a scheduling SOP for update reviews provides more consistency and accuracy across your project management team. For example, let’s say you have five team members conducting these reviews, each without a standardized process. This lack of uniformity results in five different approaches to the same task.
The main risk factor here is inconsistency. Without a documented approach, you may be unable to identify real variances or risks in your project. This inconsistency can lead to critical issues being overlooked or misinterpreted, affecting the project’s progress and success.
Creating Consistency with a Scheduling SOP for Update Reviews
Documenting procedures is foundational to refining operations and achieving consistency. It can also serve as a great resource for remembering how to do things and for training employees.
“Non-value-added steps can make processes overly complex, making it difficult and/or time-consuming to perform them and teach them to others.”
Note that an effective SOP should be detailed enough to guide team members through each step of the process, but not so lengthy that it becomes cumbersome to use. Focus on clarity and practicality, providing enough information to avoid confusion and ensure consistency.
10 Key Elements for Your Scheduling SOP for Update Reviews
1. Define Schedule Updating Frequency
It is well known that schedules should be updated regularly. While updates are typically a monthly contractual obligation, we recommend weekly, if possible—two weeks at most.
This is because if you update weekly, the most you can be delayed by is a week. If you wait to update monthly, you can be delayed by over a month based on delays and their impacts, i.e., “the laws of critical paths.”. Plus, the volume of activities that happen on a weekly basis is far less than what takes place in a month, meaning less hassle in entering progress, detecting impacts, and developing mitigation strategies.
“Because of the laws of critical paths, the more frequently you update the schedule, the less likely your project is to be delayed and the easier it is to course-correct. Moreover, it helps identify performance patterns across everyone involved in the project.”
– Michael Pink, CEO of SmartPM
Regardless of your project’s required update frequency, you must define your expectations. For example, you could say something along the lines of the following:
- Schedule Updating Frequency: Schedule updates are expected to happen weekly. Whenever an update is received, sync it to SmartPM. If a project has not been synced in over 14 days, its current data date will turn red, indicating that an updated schedule is a week past due.
Note that the language here is strong – “are expected to” instead of “should” – giving clear guidelines for your teams to follow. Even though weekly updates might not always be feasible due to the nature of building construction, setting the standard is half the battle.
2. Use Your Scheduling SOP to Set Expectations
Clearly defining the responsibilities of each role involved in the update review process helps ensure everyone knows their specific duties and effectively focuses their efforts. These responsibilities can vary depending on numerous factors, such as company structure and project size.
For this example, let’s assume some of the roles involved in this process are Project Managers, Schedulers, and Project Executives:
- Roles and Responsibilities:
- Executive Oversight: Review reports, lead update review meetings, provide insight and approvals, and make necessary adjustments.
- Scheduler: Analyze the updated schedule, develop potential mitigation strategies, highlight key risks, and maintain quality data throughout the project.
- Project Manager: Prepare the updated schedule, coordinate between teams to ensure updates are feasible, accurately reflect progress, and secure team buy-in.
Defining roles directly in your scheduling SOP for update reviews ensures everyone understands their responsibility to the process, preventing tasks from being overlooked and driving accountability. For example, if a variance is identified, the team knows who is responsible for analyzing it and who should communicate it to stakeholders.
3. Schedule Quality Grade™ Requirements
Schedule quality analysis should be done at every update to ensure your schedule accurately reflects progress on site. A tool like SmartPM’s schedule quality checker gamifies schedule quality by assigning each update a “grade” based on the level of best practices incorporated. This approach is a proven method of maintaining quality schedule data across company profiles. Below is an example clause for your scheduling SOP for update reviews:
- Schedule Quality Grade: Every schedule file must maintain at least a B- score or better. There should be no critical “red” indexes in the schedule quality report. If the schedule falls below a B-, identify and resolve the issues to meet the minimum grade.
Maintaining schedule quality throughout the project lifecycle gives reliable data for analysis, making it critical to include a schedule quality requirement in your scheduling SOP for update reviews.
4. Analyze Delays and Recovery Efforts
After confirming quality progress data, analyze the performance of the last update period, keying in on progress for different areas of your project: trades, milestones, and the project holistically. It’s important to not only identify these delays but also understand why they are happening in the first place.
This can be done by looking at variances as well as critical and near-critical path delays. SmartPM automatically calculates these variances and places them in a delay table, making it possible for users to study delays and recovery at every update. An example description to include in your SOP for schedule update reviews could read as follows:
- Analyze Delay and Recovery: Analyze critical and near-critical delays in the delay table. Look at critical path delay, identify who caused the delay, and determine if future acceleration is achievable or has happened. Only accept a delay after talking to the entire project team.
If you’re not studying delay and recovery from update to update, you might not know what’s happening until it’s too late. Using tools like SmartPM gives you the ability to understand specifically which activities are critically delaying your job and how recovery efforts affect your project and different milestones.
5. Analyze Activities That Should Have Started and Should Have Finished
Analyzing the activities that “should have started” and “should have finished” at each update allows project teams to study variance in more detail. SmartPM’s automated Should Start/Should Finish report lists all activities that should have made some progress between updates, their start dates, finish dates, progress, float values, and the variance between them.
Here is an example of a scheduling SOP clause explaining what to do with the report:
- Should Start / Should Finish Report: Analyze the Should Start / Should Finish Report and key in on critical and near-critical activities. Take note of variances and if delays are recurring with certain areas, trades, or milestones. Implement action plans within the schedule for critical delays.
Keying in on critical path activities at each update allows you to narrow your focus down to what was most important in the schedule during the update period.
6. Gauge Performance with Your Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
The Schedule Performance Index (SPI) shows a ratio of activities completed compared to the original plan. Over 1.00 means your performance is better than expected. Under 1.0 means your performance is behind and concerning. Establish an ideal performance index—preferably historical data—and reiterate it in your SOP for schedule update reviews. For example:
- Schedule Performance Index (SPI): Check if SPI is above 0.90 or trending in the right direction. Indicate and note if SPI is trending downward or is lower than the last update period.
PRO TIP: It’s important to note that improving your SPI isn’t usually fixed by cleaning up the schedule (via quality). Developing effective and feasible acceleration strategies to improve SPI typically takes more planning (increase in manpower, expedited materials, more cashflow, etc.)
7. View the Project’s Activity Hit Rate
The Activity Hit Rate measures the percentage of activities that started and finished in each window update. A low activity hit rate could signal scheduling or execution issues. A high activity hit rate signals good performance and schedule accuracy. Here is an example clause for your SOP for schedule update reviews:
- Activity Hit Rate: Check the Activity Hit Rate and analyze the percentage and trend. Take note if it is below 80% and investigate further if it is trending downward.
Analyzing the Activity Hit Rate alongside the Should Start/Should Finish report helps identify patterns and assess the feasibility of your schedule’s workload. For example, if you update weekly and your hit rate consistently falls below 80%, it suggests that your schedule updates may be inaccurate, indicating a need to reevaluate and adjust the schedule.
8. Analyze the Schedule Compression Index
Schedule Compression Index is the amount of effort remaining in the current schedule compared to the baseline. It indicates the effort required on an average day to meet the scheduled completion date compared to the baseline schedule. The higher the compression index is, the more tasks are left to the finish line, and the higher the risk of failure to meet the end date.
Including a clause in your SOP for schedule update reviews helps keep this risk at the top of your team’s minds, which is instrumental in keeping your schedule realistic. Here’s an example:
- Schedule Compression Index: Determine your Schedule Compression Index and check if it is under 20% or trending in the right direction. Take note if the compression index is higher than 20% and note the percentage increase from the last period.
Staying on top of your compression index is valuable for several reasons. Your compression index might be 0% if your schedule is allowed to slip on the end date. Alternatively, it might be really high if you lose progress and keep re-sequencing and accelerating to hit your completion date, compressing the remaining work. Whatever it may be, when it is at its highest, problems arise. Every delay, be it material delivery or workforce-related, begins to stack up – indicating an unfeasible end date.
9. Gauge Forecasted Completion Date (if over 50% of the project is completed)
Forecasts are great for determining how to improve your project. They offer more visibility into future timelines based on historical performance and future resources. The further along your project is, the more accurate the historical performance data in determining the average production rate for the whole project. If productivity remains the same, you can use this rate to predict a project’s future outcome.
For example, if a project has historically had high levels of compression and a low SPI, it would be at a higher risk for failure. This information could then be used to calculate what the project outcome would “most likely” be based on its current conditions. Here’s an example of how to word this for your scheduling SOP for update reviews:
- Forecasted Completion Date (if over 50% of the project is completed): Compare your Forecasted Completion Date with your Current End date and analyze the difference. If this date is far beyond your current end date, analyze the schedule’s recovery efforts and develop potential scenarios to improve SPI.
Understanding forecasted completion dates enables project teams to make proactive decisions to increase productivity or manpower to avoid delays as they happen. If acceleration measures are implemented successfully, the Schedule Performance Index (SPI) will improve, resulting in a more favorable forecasted end date due to enhanced performance.
10. Document Your Findings in a Report
Once you have analyzed your schedule for changes and feasibility, it is just as important to document all this information, including all delays, variances, impacts, changes, and recovery plans. This helps protect you against surprises with full transparency into the history of your project outlined in a consistent fashion.
With custom reporting features, you can create company-wide reports that include all metrics in your scheduling SOP for update reviews. The bonus is that the custom nature of these reports allows you to include additional details beyond what is typically outlined in your scheduling SOP for update reviews.
For example, your SOP might simply say:
- Run Update Review Report: Once your schedule has been updated and analyzed, run the Update Review report and ensure all delays, variances, impacts, changes, and recovery plans are documented and shared with relevant stakeholders.
Then, the standardized report used for your schedule update review meetings could include more information on what each metric means and how they are interrelated, as well as offer strategies for data interpretation.
The image above is an example of a card for a custom report that could be sent to a project team at each update. This page shows the number of schedule changes between the previous and current updates, broken down into various categories on the left. On the right (see image below), it explains why these changes might have occurred and provides instructions on what to investigate next.
The main value of aligning the information in your scheduling SOP for update reviews with your reports is visibility. By doing so, you are giving your project teams consistent and timely access to actionable information while providing them with resources and training material as needed.
Adding Controls to Your Existing Processes with a Scheduling SOP for Update Reviews
Obviously, setting filters and comparing one version of a Gantt chart to another can help in understanding variances in progress between updates. However, automating schedule analysis for every update, from beginning to end, goes one step further, helping you identify trends and focus on mitigating risks rather than simply identifying them.
That’s where SmartPM comes in. It sits on top of your existing scheduling software and analyzes the data, automates schedule analysis, and displays your project’s leading performance indicators at a glance.
Case Study: NGC Group, Inc.
Now, let’s dive into a real-world example to see how this works in practice. When NGC Group rolled out SmartPM, they wanted to ensure their team could leverage the platform’s insights right from the start. They organized weekly training sessions, breaking down the platform’s capabilities into manageable segments, and developed SOPs for each training session.
“There’s a lot of data in SmartPM, which can be overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re looking for. I want people to lean into it and have the resources available to quickly answer questions without becoming overwhelmed by all the platform’s capabilities. The SOPs focus our teams on where they need to be. They also provide a buildable model that allows our team to unlock more features of the platform as they start to master others.”
– Taylor Shapland, Project Executive at NGC Group, Inc.
The primary message in all scheduling SOPs related to SmartPM is simply to stay on top of the data – and the schedule. After becoming familiar with all the important metrics to their projects, NGC Group started recording the same information from their scheduling SOPs into their status reports.
“With the custom reporting feature, every time a schedule is synced, everyone – me, the senior project managers, the entire team – can get the same report with the data most important to us and go from there.”
– Taylor Shapland, Project Executive at NGC Group, Inc.
And it’s working! In just four months, NGC Group saw a drastic improvement in its scheduling practices, with quality grades improving by four letter grades and health by 12% across all projects.
Systematize Your Scheduling SOP with SmartPM
Setting up a step-by-step routine with a scheduling SOP for update reviews helps you understand what is happening now and what comes next on your project. While there are a number of additional items to include in your scheduling SOP for update reviews, the basic idea of having your teams understand and analyze the same set of interrelated metrics is a proven technique for achieving schedule control.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you systematize your scheduling process, request a demo, and we’d be happy to help you.
