How To Perform As-Planned Delay Analysis On A Construction Schedule

When there are delays on a construction project and a delay claim has been issued, it’s vital to determine who caused the delays and what happens next.

Forensic Delay Schedule Analysis is broad area of expertise in project controls whereby a set of techniques are used to analyze a schedule and figure out who is at fault, whether a Time Extension should be granted and if there’s monetary compensation owing because of the delay.

Between a Contractor and the project’s Owner, there must be an agreement as to who caused the schedule delay and whether it can be categorized as one of these delay types:

• Excusable / Non-Excusable
• Non-Excusable
• Critical / non-Critical
• Compensable
• Concurrent

To reach agreement, we need a forensic scheduling expert to perform an analysis on the project’s CPM schedule.

Impacted As-Planned Delay Analysis

There are various ways to perform a delay analysis on a CPM schedule. The Impacted As-Planned method is one of the most straightforward analysis techniques.

We will start with the As-Planned schedule; this is typically your last approved baseline or the project schedule as it was planned to be executed.

The Impacted As-Planned technique is called an additive technique because you will be adding delays to the As-Planned schedule to determine the impacts of those delays.

Why do you add delays to the As-Planned?

Think of it this way. It’s like you are saying;

“Before I started ANY execution on the project, if I had known about these delays in advance, what would the impact have been to the project?”

This type of analysis is often done after-the-fact, after the project is completed to determine how delays affected the outcome of the project.

When to perform an As-Planned Analysis

1. Before the project starts, if you wish to predict or forecast the effects of potential delays on the schedule. It could be part of a risk assessment.
2. If the schedule hasn’t been properly updated during execution or is inadequate, you might be limited to using the As-Planned methodology, rather than another contemporaneous methodology.
3. After a change or delay has occurred, after-the-fact, to determine how an Owner or Contractor delay affected the outcome of the project.

Here are the steps to perform the Impact As-Planned Analysis:

1. Start with your As-Planned schedule, which is typically your baseline schedule.
2. Identify the Critical Path and note the project’s finish date.
3. Identify a delay event and its duration. Insert an activity into your schedule that represents the delay event and link it appropriately with relationship logic.
4. Run CPM scheduling and note the impact to the project’s Critical Path and finish date.
5. Insert any further delay events as activities into your schedule, one at a time. Run CPM scheduling after each insertion and note the impacts to the project.

Want to see Impacted As-Planned in action?

Watch the video excerpt from our Delay Detective – Forensic Schedule Analysis course. In the video, Dr. de la Garza will explain the procedure and concepts behind using the Impacted As-Planned technique to assess impacts on a construction schedule.

Disadvantages of the Impacted As-Planned delay analysis methodology

There are a number of analysis methodologies that be used in a forensic delay analysis. The Impacted As-Planned method was widely used in early days of CPM scheduling, but as we’ve become more sophisticated in our scheduling, As-Planned isn’t used today as it once was, for these reasons:

• Impacted As-Planned doesn’t take into account As-Built information
• Impacted As-Planned ignores the fact that critical path(s) can change as a schedule is progressed

However, in my opinion, the Impacted As-Planned method is simple to understand and it does provide a good starting point for schedulers who are interested in growing their knowledge of Forensic Delay Analysis. It also provides a good basis for learning other more sophisticated methods such as Time-Impact Analysis.

Interested in learning other Forensic Delay Techniques?