Logic-i

In the first part of an article to be posted over coming weeks, Ashley Trodden, senior planner at Logic-i, examines the positive impact integrity checks have on the overall success of project schedules, those most commonly used and the benefits they provide.

Project scheduling is a critical part of successful project management, involving planning and co-ordination, together with creating a timeline enabling the effective management of tasks and activities.

Even the most meticulously planned schedule is vulnerable to errors, inconsistencies, and unrealistic timelines – which is where integrity checks can be deployed as a quality control mechanism, ensuring a project schedule is logical, reliable and achievable.

Here, we explore what integrity checks are, those most commonly used, and explain why they are crucial to successful planning and project management.

Used to validate the structure, logic, and feasibility of a schedule, integrity checks identify errors, gaps, or inconsistencies and must continue throughout a project’s lifecycle, or whenever a schedule is produced or revised.

A good example of integrity checks is the Defence Contract Management Agency’s (DCMA) 14 point Schedule Assessment, a set of metrics and guidelines developed to evaluate the health and quality of project schedules within the defence industry.

There are a vast range of integrity checks, but the most common used are:

• Logic checks: These ensure logical relationships between tasks are correctly defined. It’s good practice when scheduling a project to ensure each task has at least one predecessor and one successor, other than the first and last activity
• Lags & Leads: Lags are periods of delay between tasks, for example after pouring concrete (predecessor), time is required for it to set (lag time) before building on it (successor).

Meanwhile lead time, sometimes referred to as negative lag, allows the successor to start before the predecessor task finishes, effectively overlapping tasks to accelerate the schedule

The number of lags and leads within a schedule is a good indication of its quality and reliability and how easy it will be to manage as the schedule is updated.

• Relationships: The most important relationship type is Finish-to-Start (FS) which dictates that the predecessor task must be completed before the successor task begins. It’s good practice when producing a schedule to ensure the majority of relationships used are FS relationships, as they are easier to monitor and control.

Other types of relationships are Start-to-Start (SS), Finish-to-Finish (FF) and Start-to-Finish (SF).

Part 2 of this three part article on integrity checks follows next week