CPM is Just a List!!! Takt is a Recipe!

A CPM Schedule Is a List of Ingredients, Not a Recipe

Here’s the deal. I have tried to be patient about CPM for quite some time, and it is not working. There is so much stubbornness about it that at some point patience stops being useful. Let me tell you a story, and then give you the analogy that explains the whole problem.

The 231 Page Plan

I was on a project, not as a consultant, just talking with them about their operations and giving advice. They were not following the schedule. Nobody knew what they were supposed to be doing from a schedule standpoint. There were no visuals and no clear information out in the field. It was a very large project.

I was talking about the beauties of Takt construction and Takt planning and how it could fix that, when the schedulers came into the room. They said, before you offer the Takt production system or Takt training, why don’t you just look at the schedule we already have.

I will admit I probably handled this wrong and picked a fight. I said, why would I want to see your schedule? I know it is not working. If it was, I would see it out in the field.

They said, we have a really good plan, we just need to show it to you. So I said, show me right now, you have five seconds. They said it would take longer than that, because they had a Synchro video and a whole presentation, and a lot of context they would want to explain.

I said, then you do not have a plan. I offered five minutes instead. Same answer. They would need to show me the video and sit me down. So I said, if you cannot show me the plan right now, if it is not on the wall right now, if your teams are not showing where people are supposed to be right now, then you do not have a plan.

They said, let me email it to you. Guess how many pages. Say the number out loud, wherever you are. Two hundred and thirty one pages.

I went through it and told them it was the most beautiful, well organized, descriptive schedule I had ever seen, and that I did not understand any of it. I had no idea what was going on, where people were supposed to be, or where they were going. They told me the Synchro video explains how to read it. I asked whether the workers have access to the Synchro video. No. The foremen? No.

So nobody can see your plan. They said they would spend the next three weeks educating people on how to look at it. Fine. In three weeks, they would be calling me to come help solve the problem.

And here is the other thing. Even if you put that Synchro video on a YouTube channel, which takes forever to make, I know because I have made them myself, it is static and locked in time. It is not current the day you publish it.

Ingredients or Recipe

Here is the analogy. What is easier to create, a list of ingredients or a recipe?

Think about a cake, not something simple, something like you would see on a baking competition show. I could find out what is in it by guessing or with a quick internet search. But that is not how you make a cake. It is all about the recipe. The recipe deals with timing, temperature, method, approach, the sequence of operations, and how long you let something prove. A recipe is so much harder.

You need a list of ingredients to have a recipe. But you do not need a recipe to have a list of ingredients.

A CPM schedule is just a list of ingredients. That is it. Somebody went through page by page and asked what the steps are. Anyone can do that. Then we logic tie them together in sequence. That is it.

What Else Is Actually in a Schedule

If you are wondering what else there is to look at, the fact that we do not all know is disappointing, because there is so much more to scheduling than meets the eye. I did not know about these things before I started learning about scheduling either, so I do not fault you if this is new. Creating a simple schedule is not just activities in sequence.

• Zoning, including how many zones you have and the leveling of those zones so each has the same amount of work.
• Takt time, meaning when trades move from zone to zone and area to area.
• Work packaging, meaning how you package the work to go into the schedule and level the energy given to those leveled zones.
• The sequence, the labor counts within the crews, and the trade processes streamlined to fit perfectly within that sequence.
• Zone configuration to make sure you are running around constraints.
• Throughput, since you will not go as fast as you can if you do not know how many zones you should have and what your ideal square footage is, based on Little’s law.
• Labor productivity, reducing variation, focusing on one process flow instead of batching, creating standard work, adjusting the site configuration to run through the schedule more seamlessly, and any other unforeseen conditions.

It is all part of system design.

What Flow Actually Requires

Flow only happens when trades are working the same long term plan, going the same direction, moving in the same sequence, providing the same amount of value to each zone, doing the same amount of work in each zone, going the same speed, the same distance apart, receiving all needed resources to perform the work on time, being on the same team, working toward the same short interval plan, given the same level of respect and input as the general contractor, and flowing without stops and starts.

Ask yourself this. Will a list of activities put together in a sequence get them going the same direction, the same sequence, the same amount of value in each work package, doing the same work in each zone, going the same speed, the same distance apart, being on the same team?

No. You need Takt, Last Planner, and Scrum for all of that.

Who Is the Difficulty Falling On

So, when somebody says they know how to schedule because they do CPM, what they know how to do is put together a list of ingredients. Congratulations, because not a lot of people even know how to do that. But only a true master chef knows how to turn that into a recipe. When do we do it? How many zones? What is our Takt time? How will we work package it? How will we level the crews and the zones? How will we address the constraints? We do not know the recipe until we know those things.

Now consider both sides of the difficulty.

• If you are a chef following a list of ingredients, it is harder. If you are following a recipe, it is easier.
• If you are the person writing it down, a list of ingredients is easier to write. A recipe is harder.

That is the heart of the problem. We have scheduling professionals writing lists of ingredients, CPM schedules, because it is easier for them. It does not take the same skill. They can make it look pretty. And it makes the work harder on the people in the field who have to follow it and translate it into a recipe themselves.

Then there are other professionals who say, I will learn CPM, Takt, Last Planner, and Scrum, and I will write a recipe. That recipe is harder on me, because it takes more words, more description, and more thought. It takes longer to design a Takt plan and an actual production system schedule. But it is easier on the people out in the field, the people we respect and care for so much. I will do it anyway.

What I Am Asking Owners to Stop

I sometimes wonder whether I should calm down and be quiet about this. Let me be the bad guy. Everyone can say Jason was the one who always badmouthed CPM. Fine.

For owners, we have to stop.

• Stop ramming these schedules down contractors’ throats.
• Stop preventing contractors from getting time extensions just because something is not on the critical path.
• Stop stealing float from the contractor.
• Stop dictating that contractors use CPM on your projects, which locks them into practices that prevent flow.
• Stop hiring CPM and P6 experts as the leaders of your scheduling departments.

Critical path is not a way to measure the success of anything. It always changes. It is a projection. It does not tell you whether your project is behind schedule.

On that last point, let me be fair about why it matters. Whatever I know is going to be the basis for what I do. I am a superintendent used to building by zones and working with the craft, so whatever system I come up with is based around building in the field by zones and helping craft persons implement. If you hire someone trained in CPM and P6, that is going to be their solution for everything. It will not come from research or new wisdom. They will say, I already know this, let’s implement it. CPM and P6 are not inherently evil, but if you keep hiring that way, that is all you will ever get, and we perpetuate the same contracts and the same scheduling system.

I Switched the First Time I Saw Something Better

How did so many smart people in construction decide to tolerate this? Listen to me. I was sent to the trainings. I read the CPM books. I was sent to a scheduling seminar. I was taught the program. I have made dozens and dozens of them.

And the first time I saw the Hensel Phelps SIPS schedule from the Pentagon renovation, I knew it was better. I grabbed it and said I am going to implement it. I switched immediately, because I knew.

What is everyone else’s excuse? We cannot just take something we have learned and trust that it is the way it is supposed to be. Think a little bit. Dig into it.

It does not make sense to schedule a bunch of sequences and tie them activity to activity. Imagine walking into a Toyota plant and being asked to schedule it. You go into each pod, schedule it, then logic tie them pod to pod and activity to activity, put one sequence in a pod and another conveyor line on a different sequence, tie those individual activities to each other, and announce the critical path. They would ask what you were doing. They do not need a critical path. They need the production rate of each line, and those lines need to flow in a sequence according to Takt time and pull.

Where This Leaves Us

I even had somebody tell me recently that they could not let me use Takt logic inside the CPM schedule because it would not display correctly. Let me translate that. I cannot allow workers, trades, and crews to flow through the project zone by zone, because it does not match the prescriptive CPM format the owner requires in the contract. That nearly made me lose it.

A CPM schedule is an ingredient list, a list of activities logic tied together, laid out in a confusing format. A Takt plan is a highly visible, understandable, readable, logical, mathematical, scientific, simple recipe for how to finish a project on time the right way.

If CPM is going to exist at all, it should only exist for finding the critical path between phases, not activities.

We have got to stop the insanity. Do the job. Learn what you are supposed to learn. Dig into it. I cannot read the books for you and I cannot do the research for you. Stop worrying about your own significance and security, because it is hurting other people.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

So here is the challenge. Ask someone to show you your project’s plan right now, with no video and no presentation. If they cannot show it to you on the wall, and your teams cannot show where people are supposed to be, you do not have a plan.

Jason Schroeder said it plainly: “Only a true master chef will know how to put that into a recipe.”

On we go.

FAQ

What is the difference between a list of ingredients and a recipe in scheduling?

A list of ingredients is the activities, logic tied together in sequence, which is what a CPM schedule provides. A recipe covers timing, temperature, method, approach, and the sequence of operations, which in construction means zoning, Takt time, work packaging, crew leveling, constraints, and throughput.

Why does a 231 page schedule fail even when it is well organized?

Because nobody in the field can see the plan or understand where they are supposed to be. If the plan requires a video and a sit-down presentation to interpret, and the workers and foremen do not have access to either, then the plan is not visible to the people who have to follow it.

What else goes into a schedule beyond activities and sequence?

Zoning and zone leveling, Takt time, work packaging, labor counts, trade processes, zone configuration around constraints, throughput and number of zones based on Little’s law, labor productivity, reducing variation, one process flow instead of batching, standard work, and site configuration.

Does Jason see any remaining use for CPM?

If CPM is going to exist at all, he says it should only be used for finding the critical path between phases, not between activities.