Since becoming involved in performing forensic schedule and cost analysis and providing expert witness testimony in the various forms of international dispute resolution the industry and its tools have evolved.
Case law and the continuing development of standards of practice have had significant impact on which tools of craft are currently in favor and which have rightfully become perceived to be fundamentally flawed as the process of reaching commonality within the dispute resolution environment continues.
One of the obstacles to this goal has and continues to be concurrence on terminology and nomenclature. Many of the terms commonly used to define and describe the analytic process of forensic analysis are perceived and invoked differently throughout the global community. Even within the various national communities, it has been difficult to reach consensus on simple definitions of the vast range of terminology common to the industry. Several years ago, when working with PMI College of Scheduling to develop its first paper on Scheduling Standards of Practice, the effort to catalog and define terminology was narrowed due to the difficulty of reaching a simple consensus on definition.
As an active member of the international forensic community and an adviser to ProjectControlsOnline.com I continue to strive with many others towards improving the system and bettering the global construction industry. In this spirit, your participation in this blog is openly solicited and welcomed. In the months ahead various forensic methodologies will be introduced as separate topics to this forum in order to focus the discussion and create an environment in which the particulars of a methodology can be debated between professionals along with perceived pros and cons.
To demonstrate my point and to start the ball rolling my first request is to ask our subscribers to list and briefly define the various forensic schedule analysis methodologies you are familiar with. Please keep your response as concise as possible. These responses will be put forth in upcoming blogs as individual topics to be developed and discussed independently.
Bear in mind that there are two separate underlying basic methods of analysis, these being Observational and Modeled;
The observational method consists of analyzing the schedule by examining a schedule, by itself or in comparison with another, without the analyst making any changes to the schedule to simulate a certain scenario.
Contemporaneous period analysis and as-built vs. as-planned are common examples that fall under the observational basic method.
Unlike the observational method, the modeled method calls for intervention by the analyst beyond mere observation. In preparing a modeled analysis the analyst inserts or extracts activities representing delay events from a CPM network and compares the calculated results of the 'before' and 'after' states.
Common examples of the modeled method are the collapsed as-built, windows analysis and the impacted as-planned.
