Developing Standard Logic for a Detailed Engineering Project Schedule in the Process Industry

Abstract

A good schedule is critical to the successful execution of any project. This is especially true in the process industry, where construction schedule overruns can be costly to the client due to lost production capability. Developing a standard schedule to be used as template on detail engineering projects, not only increases the quality of the project schedules, but provides a standardized method of executing projects, which allows means to measure and track performance to improve efficiency on projects.

The process of developing a project schedule can be broken down into two steps; project planning and project scheduling. The focus of this report is on the project planning phase of schedule development. The results from an Interactive Project Planning Meeting (IPPM) for a standard detailed engineering project in the process industry will be used to develop scheduling logic for use in developing detail engineering project schedules. However, because the IPPM does not clearly distinguish relationships between tasks, precedence diagrams will be used to outline these relationships, while the IPPM results will be used to fill in activity durations and lag times. Once the scheduling logic is developed, it will be input into a scheduling software program, so that it may be used as a template for preparing new detail engineering project schedules. In addition, recommendations will be made on the formats required for standard report templates for the various stakeholders of a project.