Baseline Schedule, Client’s Responsibility

22 Nov Baseline Schedule, Client’s Responsibility

Generally, on any Project’s contract, there is a clause for Baseline Schedule development, submission and approval (acceptance) by the Client. What items should be checked by a client? Some of the items are as follows:

• Contractual dates
• Client’s deliverable/interfaces dates
• Client’s turn around duration
• Integrity of the Schedule e.g. Calendars, Settings, WBS, compliance with CPM, resource/cost loading, etc.
• Activity ID, Activity Name and Codes
• Covered Scope of work

The Client rejects the Schedule when they find issues. Then the contractor incorporates the client’s comment in the schedule and re-submits it! Can a client comment on the following items:

• Duration of the activities? Yes, for some activities e.g. turnaround time, procurement lead time, etc.!
• Sequence of activities? Yes, if there are agreed execution plans, constructability, accessibility or safety concerns!
• No of resources? Yes, if there is a contractual agreement on the No. of resources or resource loading was done incorrectly.
• Based on the Planned S-Curve shape? Yes, if the Curve shows heavily front or back loaded, flattens on some periods, moves almost vertically on some periods, etc

After some back and forth and incorporating the comments the schedule gets approved (accepted) as Baseline. During execution, if either side picks up some serious issues on the Schedule, what will be the clients responsibility? Some of the issues could be as follows:

• One or more contractual date(s) were captured incorrectly

• Client’s turnaround duration is incorrect

• Some portion of the scope of work (deliverable) is missing
• Some sequence of the activities is incorrect
• Settings are incorrect
• Resource/ cost loading is incorrect
• Duration of some of the activities are not adequate to complete the activity scope of work
• Some safety concern has not been considered
• Constructability and / or accessibility of some activities have not been considered!

There are two answers for the above question:

1. Client does not take any responsibility. Therefore, the contractor has to deal with all the issues and continue with incorrect schedule!
2. Client does take some responsibility and might grant the re-baselining!

Finally, if the client does not take any responsibility then why the schedule should be reviewed and accepted (approved) by him?