When do you start the scheduling process? Absolutely as early as possible. If it is a large project, you will start the scheduling process before you receive capital authorization. Schedule impacts costs, even if everything goes right. There are many ways to do the same tasks that are impactful, good or bad, on the schedule. Even if everything clicks absolutely perfectly, there will be a shorter way to do a project making certain choices that is optimal to another way.

When I was a young engineer working in a converting plant that worked only five days per week, I had this driven home to me. We were going to make a change in a certain piece of machinery on Friday night after the last shift of the week. We thought it was minor. However, we had not carefully scheduled it and accounted for every step. We had not double checked our parts list. Three simple bolts, unobtainable after midnight Friday in this rural location, prevented us from doing any of the project. Monday morning we looked foolish and all involved had black marks against our names. And, the next Friday night we got to do the whole thing over again (of course, I made sure we had a box of those stupid bolts--I was prepared to lose or twist off about twenty-five bolts and still have a successful project).

A few years later, not so many miles away, I was involved in a very large papermachine rebuild. The construction contract, despite my protestations, had been let as a firm lump sum. Three months before the shutdown, the contractor mobilized. The contractor's scheduler showed up with the entire schedule on two sheets of drawing paper (this was still before computerized scheduling). I was horrified at the shallowness of his work and raised an alarm with anyone who had a remote chance of listening. To no avail. And I was correct. The scheduled downtime was a disaster, even though the contractor faced a punitive penalty for every day he was late.

I have learned scheduling is high on the list of the important issues. I hope you have, too.