Risk and Schedule Management
Risk process
Risk management is continuous: identify, analyze (qualitative then quantitative), plan responses, implement, monitor. Keep a live risk register with owner, probability, impact, trigger, response, and residual risk. Response strategies are avoid, mitigate, transfer, accept, and escalate. Transfer through insurance or subcontract terms shifts who pays; it does not eliminate the risk.
Schedule fundamentals
Critical Path Method is the backbone. Understand durations, logic ties (FS, SS, FF, SF), lags and leads, forward and backward pass, early and late dates, total versus free float, and the critical path as the longest path with zero total float. Resource leveling can extend duration by consuming float; resource smoothing does not extend it. Crashing adds resources at added cost; fast-tracking overlaps activities and raises risk. Schedule risk analysis runs Monte Carlo simulation on activity duration distributions to produce a confidence-based completion date and a contingency for weather and unknowns.
Earned value
Know PV, EV, AC; SV = EV − PV; CV = EV − AC; SPI = EV/PV; CPI = EV/AC. Percent-complete rules (units completed, cost ratio, milestone) must be defined contractually.
Traps candidates fall for
- Confusing total float with free float.
- Equating any delay with entitlement to time; only critical-path delay to completion matters, and concurrent delay complicates entitlement.
- Crashing the cheapest activity rather than the critical activity with the lowest cost slope per day.
- Ignoring near-critical paths that turn critical after a small slip.
Rule of thumb
To compress a schedule by X days, you must shorten critical-path activities totaling X days; shortening non-critical work gains nothing until its float is exhausted.