Hello everyone, my name is Jennifer Buermann. I am currently a Project Controls Manager for STV Construction Incorporated. I'm working on a project currently that's $4 billion. It's for redevelopment of the new LaGuardia Airport in Queens here in New York City. My background is pretty multifaceted in this business. I actually started out as an owner's representative. So I learned the business pretty thoroughly from the owner's side of things, but then decided it was time to take it out into the field, and get my education there. So I've worked as a superintendent, a project manager, a scheduler, and then as a project controls manager here at STV. So what I'd like to talk a little bit about today is the role of the scheduler in construction management. Now this is not going to be a technical discussion because I think we have other venues where you learn how to use the technology associated with project scheduling. But I'd like to talk about what the project scheduler actually does, and some of the more humane skills that they need to have in order to be effective as a scheduler in construction. Now, what I find most interesting about working as a scheduler, is that you're essentially living in three dimensions of time all at once. You're working in the future, you're working in the present, and you're also working in the past, as your project gets going and as work starts being put in place on the construction project. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what the scheduler does at each of those stages in the project, and how they all intersect. Now when we're talking entirely about the future, we're talking about the time before the project has even started. When we're either proposing on behalf of our company to maybe win the job, or when we have the job and we're planning the project. So, the essential question that we're trying to answer at this stage, which is on the bottom of the slide here, is how will the project meet its established goals. Now how do we know what the established goals are? Most likely we have a contract with a client that has some sort of schedule associated with it, some sort of date that we need to finish the project by. If not, then forseeably we probably have other goals for our own company, if we're on the contractor side of how quickly we think we can get the job done. We all know that time is money. So, in most cases you're looking to get the job done as quickly as possible, of course while you're maintaining safe work practices, and while you're completing quality work. So what are some of the things we're thinking about when we're in the project planning stage? We're thinking of course primarily as I just said, about deadlines and contractual obligations. What do we have to do on this project to meet the terms of our contract? Then we're going to think about all of the elements that go into the project that are going to drive the schedule forward. Contract procurement, are we subcontracting a large portion of the work? Is this something where we're going to have to plan for a certain amount of time in order to buy out the job, to engage subcontractors to help us with the work? We need to think about design. The project may be designed already and handed to us as such. But in many cases nowadays, we're working on design built projects, where the design is part of the project, or perhaps we've got partially designed documents that are only 50% complete, 75% complete. So we need to put together a time frame for when we're going to have complete construction drawings that we can build the project from. We need to put together some time for submittals and approvals of shop drawings once we have a completed design. That often takes longer than you can imagine. So it's very important to forecast that time into your schedule. So you need to know something at that stage about what are you actually buying? What materials do you need? What resources do you need to purchase the job? Is it equipment, it could be large mechanical or electrical equipment. It could be interior furnishings and the finishes, things like that. Then of course, all of those things take some time to fabricate and deliver. So the scheduler I needs to know something about, how long those things are going to take. We need to know about resource availability. Are we going to have the man power and the resources that we need in our area or wherever we're building the project, in order to get the project done? And again, all those things are happening before we've even thought about putting a shovel in the ground. Those are all your pre-construction activities. And again, they together may take as much time as the actual construction on the project. So it's very important to consider those as part of your plan schedule and make sure you don't neglect them. Then we start planning the actual construction of the project. We're going to think about site logistics. Where is it? Is it in New York City where you have very little lay down area? Very little space to configure the project. So you have to make scheduled arrangements in order to get the materials to the project in a timely manner, without having a lot of space to set them down and store them. Then we get into our construction sequencing phase. Which is where we just plan how are we going to do the job. Now I think you can probably see that I'm talking about a lot of things that the scheduler is doing. Most likely in the absence of any help from a superintendent, a project manager, or anyone else that's going to be actually building the job. So the scheduler is often the person who knows the most about the job, soonest. And they're the person that then needs to go ahead and transfer all that knowledge that they've gained, through putting together the initial schedule over to the field staff when they become involved. Now, if you're lucky, as a scheduler, you do have more of a group effort. You have some input from the folks that are going to be building the job. But in my experience, in many cases you don't. You just have a stack of drawings. You have some idea about the site and and about what the constraints of the project actually are, but you really need to have that background in building that solid yourself as a scheduler, in order to start putting together the schedule. Now, we can possibly do some course loading on the schedule. That's not something that's always required, but that brings an extra dimension of data into our scheduling. That allows us to do some pretty solid forecasting on how quickly we think we're going to be both spending money, and how quickly we're going to be able to bill our client as we put work in place. And last but not the least of course, we want to think again about the financial concerns associated with the deadlines and contractual obligations that we put in place at the start of the project. We want to know, do we have liquidated damages or any penalty, should we fail to meet the project deadlines? Or conversely and more happily, do we have any bonuses for early completion? Is there a motivation to perhaps as the contractor, sink additional money into the project to finish it sooner, because we know it's going to pay off in the form of an early completion bonus? So again, we're asking how will the project meet the established goals for it, wherever they maybe coming from?
