Quality evaluation on of contractor’s schedule for building renovation

In building and construction projects, the phase schedule developed by the contractor for the bidding phase, or after the contract award, has to be evaluated by owner’s consultant for schedule approval. After approval, the phase schedule becomes the baseline for project control process and therefore it becomes very important to both owner and contractor to ensure that contract obligations will be respected. The baseline schedule developed by the contractor is frequently used by project supervisors or construction managers to justify (or deny) a request of time extensions, or to evaluate process efficiency and the possibility of late completion, and therefore can have major consequences in project cost management.
In the owner’s perspective, three are the main requirements to be fulfilled in a baseline schedule. Firstly, the construction total duration, i.e. contract time requirements about milestones and project completion. Secondly, baseline schedule entails the promised average process production rate that should fulfill contract requirements for progress payments. Thirdly, the construction safety coordination requirement, i.e. the compliance of the schedule with the safety – oriented project schedule developed by the safety coordinator (under the health and safety EU directive). In addition to this, the review of the phase schedule should give evidence of the quality of the schedule itself, i.e. give proof of its validness.
In the research behind this paper, a Schedule Health Assessment procedure has been proposed for the evaluation of the schedule quality, and it is suggested to adopt the Schedule Health Assessment approach for the contractor’s schedule review and approval. A case study of a renovation building project has been analyzed to test the proposed procedure and the possibility of using it for contractor’s schedule approval in design-bid-build or design – build projects.