10 Reasons Why It’s So Hard to Find Good Construction Schedulers
This article was originally published on LinkedIn
By Derek Graham
The Condundrum of the Planning Industry
There are two types of schedulers: think of them as the theoretician and the practician. The former may be an IT savant who wouldn’t know the business end of a backhoe, whereas the practician who has years in the field can only use front-end programs, such as MS Project.
There is a dire need for a third type of construction scheduler: one who is both the theoretician and the practician.
The Practitioner
Harry is a 55 year-old construction project manager working for a small company without a full or part-time scheduler, who, as part of his project management duties, prepares preliminary schedules that are typically required when a bid is tendered, or within thirty-days of contract award or NTP. He came up through the ranks working the tools for twenty-years, before he joined management. He is a master of project coordination, and is known to drive his jobs aggressively.
However, whenever Harry is asked to prepare more than a preliminary schedule, he invariably gets lost in the program, its nuances and higher functions, and these schedules lack coherence and project logic. Sometimes his schedules are accepted, sometimes not; however, acceptance is seldom an indication of his schedules’ integrity.
While Harry is a great PM, he is no scheduler. Why is he preparing schedules then? As his company is downsizing, they have bundled responsibilities across job titles.
The Theoretician
Sally is a crack IT expert, who can generate complex and voluminous relational databases for multi-billion dollar products. She can create such schedules across many business sectors without specific knowledge of their means-and-methods. One day, Sally receives a few volumes of a complex railroad tunnel and signaling project.
Do you suppose she will be able to determine all the activities and their relationships without major input from the construction team? Sally is no one-stop resource.
What if Harry met Sally? Wouldn’t that be a great team? It would, but would you want to pay two to do the job of one? You wouldn’t, but in today’s market, you may not have a choice.
Here are the Top 10 Reasons why it is so difficult to find good construction schedulers:
- The construction industry is notoriously frugal when it comes to investing in software and training.
- Construction scheduling positions are notoriously underpaid, unless they are at the top of the heap, which is about $140K/ann. The average salary for a scheduler in NYC is about $100,000, and as low as $45,000 elsewhere.
- Construction scheduling positions are not in great supply.
- Contractors don’t place enough importance on their schedules and scheduling departments because…
- Owners don’t either.
- Few schedulers have dual expertise in IT and construction means-and-methods.
- Few contractors understand the necessity of dual expertise.
- Many schedulers with field experience don’t have a grasp on all the trades that comprise a complex project — from concrete foundation to systems integration.
- Complex schedules require a higher order of IT competence, which is rarely found in the construction industry. Therefore, such work is outsourced, often to a database expert in a third-world country. Nothing wrong with going global, but that doesn’t encourage growth locally, especially with the wage rates of such countries.
- Finally, and this is a question: how many of you ever started out as, or aspired to be, a construction scheduler?
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-reasons-why-its-so-hard-find-good-construction-derek-graham
My name is George Nwogu, an Engineer, Project Manager/Planner/Control and Trainer from Nigeria. I’m currently a PM Consultant and Project Planner at Bizville Project Management
Services from Bizville Project Management are:
- Project Management Training
- Strategic PMO Solutions
- Project Handling and Contract
- Property Sales and Construction Supplies
Follow us on Social Media:
