Construction Management Blog

This may seem like a very obvious thing to do, but I have been involved in several projects where baselines have either been delayed in approval, neglected, or work has commenced contrary to the baseline.  When I say "work has commenced contrary to the baseline," I don't mean minor changes. I am referring to major logic changes and out of sequence occurrences that render the schedule only as tool to show what you have done (assuming somebody routinely updates the status of the schedule). If the baseline is neglected or delayed then you may have nothing to compare against for measuring performance, forecasting, analyzing time phase budget spending, etc. (again this is very obvious). The importance of obtaining an approved baseline early in the project is most likely not as appreciated in the early stages of a project schedule as opposed to times when there are claims, progress concerns or risks of missing milestones. An approved baseline early on should provide you with the data you need to protect against blindly overcoming those mentioned negative project occurrences.