Using an As-Built Scheduling Exercise

Introduction

Scheduling, as part of project planning and management, is recognized by construction programs as a core competency. It is a basic skill set expected by employers. All fifty-eight American Council of Construction Education accredited construction programs have a dedicated class or part of a class teaching scheduling principles (ACCE, 2000). One of the more difficult challenges to overcome in teaching the planning and scheduling of construction to college students is their lack of knowledge about the construction process.

A common approach is to deliver basic scheduling principles and then move quickly to creating a schedule based on a set of plans and specifications. This requires students to be able to visualize the construction processes. To do this they need to understand methods and sequencing that are not defined by the construction documents and typically are not yet part of their experience.

This article discusses using a Flash application containing images accessed by calendar date to develop an “as-built” schedule for construction of a Johnnie’s Express Charcoal Broiler restaurant in Norman, OK. The images document the complete construction, from start to finish, of the building and site. This exercise was used in the 2005 University of Oklahoma (OU) Construction Science (CNS) CNS 3813 – Construction Planning and Scheduling class. At the end of the class students were surveyed about their use of the application. It was hoped that this non-traditional approach to developing a schedule would help students better understand construction materials and methods used for this type of project.

The Flash Application

The Flash application used in the exercise was created by OU graduate student Tawan Songpiriyakij in the summer of 2004 as part of a directed reading class. A primary objective of his effort was to learn more about materials, methods and construction sequencing by actually observing the process each day. The Johnnie’s Express project was chosen based on proximity and the May through September time frame for construction. The short time frame was ideal for viewing the project from start to finish. As part of the class deliverable Songpiriyakij created the Flash interface containing the organized dated digital photos of the construction. The application also includes a diary noting crews and equipment on site when the images were taken. Organizing and accessing images by calendar date would show the sequential progression of construction and materials and methods used. The selection of images would be determined by the activities that were being performed at the time of observation. The Flash application was designed as a template so that text and images could be easily replaced for similar future projects that could pictorially document another type of construction.

It should be noted that Songpiriyakij obtained permission to photograph the project from a somewhat reluctant project manager. He visited and photographed the project most week days from site clearing until restaurant employee training. He got to know the superintendent and many of the craftsmen. From them he learned more about how the building was being constructed and why the work was conducted in the manner and sequence that it was. A very valuable part of the experience was being able to see delays and their influences on the overall construction process. Although Songpiriyakij’s knowledge of construction and fluency in English were evolving, his skills with digital technologies were outstanding. The resulting Flash application is an elegant, calendar oriented view of the construction of a fairly typical fast food restaurant. Figure 1: Application Home Page shows a view of the completed restaurant. The home page picture window shows a slide show of images depicting the stages of construction.

Selecting the “Activity Description” heading on the home page shown in Figure 1 brings up the page shown in Figure 2 which is the core of the application. The user can select the month from the row above the top photo and the day from the calendar at the top left. Each linked day has a description of current project activity, multiple photographs and details about the crews and equipment on-site. Text details appear in the box at the bottom left when the cursor is on the related “Detail” icon (Crews and Activities or Construction Equipment).

Figure 3 shows the Construction Equipment Detail space used for text definitions about some aspect of the construction shown in the images.

As shown in Figure 4 clicking on a thumbnail image with the mouse will activate a new window containing a larger version of the image with a caption.

Songpiriyakij’s English was not polished and his understanding of materials and construction techniques was developing. Plans to edit the text were skipped because users seemed to identify with Songpiriyakij as a “peer observer” rather than as an authority. Instead of assuming everything in the application was factual and passively accepting what was written, they challenged his assumptions and scrutinized the photos to make their own conclusions as to what was occurring.

To complete the project information, a password protected as-built schedule was made available behind a selection on the main menu. Users had to gain access to the as-built schedule by obtaining the password from the authors.

The Johnnie’s Express Scheduling Exercise

Several approaches have been used to teach scheduling in the Construction Planning and Scheduling class. One approach has been to focus on technical aspects of planning and scheduling, including logic sequences, calculations and situations. Another approach has been to start with reading and analyzing completed schedules, including related exercises requiring students to answer questions about the schedules. A third approach has been to use date-stamped photos collected by author Bill McManus to create an “as built” schedule documenting construction of a church addition project. The photos have been used by the author and colleagues several times as the basis for scheduling exercises. These photos can be accessed at http://cns.ou.edu/Bill/photos_sss_project_photos.html. 

Regardless of the teaching approach, students are then required to schedule a project used in their previous estimating class. Typically they know the plans and specifications well, but struggle to define and sequence activities. Schedules often result in more activities for parts of the construction with which they were familiar, such as batter board construction, than activities less understood, such as mechanical systems. Activity relationships are often arbitrary.

Based on the authors’ experience and the evolution of McManus’ previous effort it was recognized that the Johnnie’s Express application could be used similarly as the church addition photos. In the spring of 2005 the following assignment was given to the CNS scheduling class. The assignment was the sixth of seven class assignments and the first of two assignments requiring complete schedule development.

The object of the exercise was for two member teams to create an as-built schedule of the construction of Johnnie's Express based on the application. Learning objectives included:

The exercise included the following steps:

1. Open the Johnnie's Express web site and explore it.

2. Restore jetem.stx (an estimating spreadsheet) and use it as a template. Notice the Uniformat II Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) codes. You should assign each activity one of these codes. If you click Format - Organize and then select Work Breakdown, WBS codes will be automatically assigned to an activity based on where you insert it into the WBS.

3. Based on this documentation, create a precedence diagram communicating the activities, precedence relationships and durations. Use two screens side by side, with SureTrak in one and Johnnie's in the other to create the diagram. Do not enter actual start or finish dates. Think in terms of using this data to build a new schedule to build another Johnnies Express at another location in the future with May 16, 2005 as the start date.

4. Format the activity boxes to show ID, Description and Duration.

5. Create and print a report showing the precedence diagram in landscape mode on 11x17 pages.

6. Create a Bar Chart, organized by WBS, showing ID, Description, Duration, Float, Early Start and Early Finish. This should be in portrait mode on 11x17 pages.

7. Format title blocks to show Your Names and other appropriate information.

8. Review the report in Print Preview and edit as necessary.

9. Turn in two printed reports with your names in the title.

Groups had two weeks to complete the assignment. The majority of the work was done during the lab periods. The most common observed approach was to go through the application making a list of construction activities and noting the date they were first and last observed. If the resulting duration seemed unreasonable, it was modified. The activities were then entered into SureTrak in Pert mode. Predecessors were identified by observing activities recently completed and evaluating what would have to be complete for them to occur. It was often noted that many activities could have been started earlier than they actually were. This discussion provided and excellent basis for discussion on the use of float. Most groups completed the exercise satisfactorily.

Survey Results

At the end of the semester students were asked to complete a survey to assess the efficacy of each of the exercises done during the scheduling class. Table 1 lists assigned exercises and a brief description. The seven exercises were entered in the order in which they were assigned. In general they got more time consuming and more difficult as the semester progressed.

Using a scale of 1(least) – 5 (most) students were asked to rate each exercise on “how much you learned” by doing it. Table 2: Amount Learned (AL) Results shows the results of the thirty-six students responding to the question. It is worth noting that students in general learned more in each exercise than they did in the previous one; even though there was by necessity a high level of redundancy. Please note that the assignments are listed in chronological order.

Using a scale of 1(least) – 5 (most) students were asked to rate each exercise on “how much time you spent” doing it. Table 3: Time Spent Results shows the results of the thirty-six students responding to the question.

The student’s opinion of the amount of time they spent on each exercise progressed chronologically with the exception of the “Crash the bridge” exercise. This matched the author’s expectations and correlates the time spent with the amount learned.

The results from the two questions were combined by calculating the ratio of amount learned to time spent to evaluate the efficiency of the exercises. Table 4: Ratios of Amount Learned to Time Spent shows these results.

Even though the first exercise “Bean counting” was the lowest ranked in amount learned and in time spent, it was rated considerably more efficient than any of the other exercises. The Johnnie’s Express exercise was slightly more efficient than the final project.

Students were not asked to rank the exercises from best to worst, however based on the author’s observation and comments from students, they enjoyed the Johnnies Express exercise more than the others. The authors expected it to be the one where they learned the most; however the final project came out slightly higher in “amount learned”. This may be due to the natural progression of learning and value of reiteration.

The authors also surveyed the thirty-six students about their approach to the last two exercises, Johnnie’s Express and the final project. The final project was a $3,000,000 church in Oklahoma City. OK. It was considerably larger than the Johnnie’s project, but similar in complexity. Students had created a detailed estimate from the final plans and specifications for this project the previous semester. Figure 5: Southwest Church of Christ (SWCOC) shows an elevation of the finished church.

The authors’ expectations were that the students would approach the two projects differently. It was expected that students would approach the Johnnie’s chronologically, based on observation. It was expected that students would approach the SWCOC using their estimate prepared previously and organized by Masterformat. The survey did not show the expected difference. One reason might have been confusion due to the fifth question for the SWCOC incorrectly identifying the WBS as Uniformat.

Table 5: Approach to SWCOC Exercise shows results based on the students’ approach to the SWCOC exercise. Table 6: Approach to Johnnie’s Express Exercise shows results based on the students’ approach to the Johnnie’s exercise and the difference between the two approaches. The biggest differences shown in the “J-F” (Johnnie’s – Final project) column were that it was easier to identify activities in the Johnnie’s exercise and was easier to determine the relationships between activities in the SWCOC exercise.

Conclusion and Challenge

Based on the limited feedback discussed in this article, the authors feel that this “as-built” approach to teaching scheduling can be effective and enjoyable to students. The Flash application is a simple, visual and interactive way to present information about the construction process, materials and methods that is usually only gained through experience.

However the authors surmise that to really learn how to build from looking at pictures or video the student should be required to make a precedence diagram identifying the component operations and their relationships to each other. Building an “as-built” schedule is an ideal way to use the application.

The authors are making the Johnnie’s Express application available to colleagues, http://cns.ou.edu/jcb/main.html, with the hopes that they will find it useful, offer feedback to make the format more useful and use the source code to create photo documentations of other building types to share with ASC members. The authors’ goal is to eventually have applications depicting wood frame, steel frame, pre-cast, cast in place, tilt-up, and masonry buildings available to students and colleagues.

References

American Council on Construction Education, 2004. Document 103: Standards and criteria for accreditation of postsecondary construction education degree programs. http://www.acce-hq.org/formspage093004.html . Accessed December 29, 2005

McManus, Bill. (1998). Chronological Photos of St. Stephen’s Church Expansion. http://cns.ou.edu/Bill/photos_sss_project_photos.html. Accessed December 29, 2005

Songpiriyakij, Tawan. (2004). Johnnies Express: Chronological Construction Photos.  http://cns.ou.edu/jcb/main.html. Accessed December 29, 2005