How-to guide
The 14-point assessment, first set out by the US Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), is the most widely used test of whether a programme is well built: is every activity linked, are there leads and long lags, too many hard constraints, too much float, activities too long to manage? Planners, clients and claims consultants use it to review programmes before they are accepted. Metre2 Programme Studio Pro runs all 14 checks against the usual thresholds, shows the activities behind each and writes a Word report.
Open Analyse > 14-point. The result opens in the bottom panel: how many checks passed, failed and could not be assessed, at the programme's data date and against its baseline.
Each check has what it measures, the result and the target: logic (open ends), leads, lags, relationship types (finish-to-start), hard constraints, high float and high duration (over 44 days), negative float, invalid dates, resources, missed tasks, the critical path test, the critical path length index (CPLI) and the baseline execution index (BEI).
Click a check to select the activities behind it, so you can look at them in the table and Gantt chart. Here 5.7% of relationships have a positive lag, against a target of 5%. A fail is a question to answer, not always a fault: a lag for concrete curing is fine, a lag standing in for missing activities is not.
Choose Save to Word for the full assessment to send to the client or keep with the programme submission.
Logic, leads, lags, relationship types, hard constraints, high float, negative float, high duration, invalid dates, resources, missed tasks, the critical path test, the critical path length index and the baseline execution index. They were developed by the US Defense Contract Management Agency to assess the quality of project schedules.
For example: no more than 5% of open activities missing a predecessor or successor, no leads, no more than 5% of relationships with lags, at least 90% finish-to-start, no more than 5% hard constraints, high float and high duration over 44 working days for no more than 5%, and a CPLI and BEI of at least 0.95.
No. The checks are indicators: a failure is something to explain or fix. Many good construction programmes fail one or two for sound reasons, such as curing lags or a long lead-in item.
Programme Studio is free to open and view programmes of any size and to build or edit programmes of up to 50 activities. Pro adds this and every other planning tool, with no activity limit, for £29.99 a month or £249 a year. The 7-day free trial needs a Metre2 account but no payment details.
