Planning & Scheduling at Fusion for Energy - CEA

Planning & Scheduling at Fusion for EnergyM. Ferrari, V. Gracia

F4E Planning & Scheduling Team

ETN_QPM Workshop on SchedulingJuly 12‐13, 2011, CEA, Cadarache

ETN_QPM Workshop on Scheduling, July 12‐13, 2011, CEA, Cadarache

• Planning & Scheduling at F4E P&S best practices in F4E in defining,

consolidating and managing Detailed Schedules and related Procurement Arrangement Summary Schedules for ITER

Content

• F4E working for improving the ITER Project Schedule System New ITER project schedule system based on

Detailed Schedules and on resulting Strategic Management Plan ‐What F4E agrees about the new system


Planning & Scheduling at F4E


Planning & Scheduling at F4E

• F4E structure, P&S resources at F4E• F4E schedules

• Development & approval• Integration

• Within F4E• Within overall ITER Project• With F4E suppliers

• Management of interfaces• Suppliers

• Relation with suppliers in terms of P&S• From preparation to execution of contract

• P&S Guidelines for suppliers• Management of supplier schedules


F4E structure


F4E framework

F4E

IO EC

Suppliers

ScopeSchedule BudgetPA, ITA WP

Contracts, Grants


P&S Resources & Tools at F4E

• F4E structure focused on Project Teams (PT) as part of the EU‐ITER Department

• Engineers, TROs, planning, procurement and QA officers assigned to each PT

• Planning officers:• Engineers/physicists with advanced knowledge in project management • Those working in the PT: management of the F4E supplier schedules, consolidation and monthly update of the Detailed WBS Schedules (DWS) to be submitted to IO

• Those part of the F4E Project Office: coordinating and supervising the P&S work in the PTs, manage all P&S tasks involving all F4E, manage schedule integration, keeping coordination with IO for P&S activities, develop and maintain F4E P&S processes, procedures and best practices related

• Tools:• P&S primary tool used in F4E is Oracle Primavera Project Management (P6)• Oracle Risk Analysis for supporting risk management F4E activities• Oracle Contract Management under evaluation as tool for supplier project control• Specific applications/routines for interfacing Primavera P6 with the financial tools are under development


Development & Approval of EU Schedules

• Procurement Schedules follow an evolution throughout the project lifecycle

• Development phase:• Input from industrial studies and experts’ know‐how, as well as from ITER‐specific gained planning knowledge (carrying out the steps in this phase for components which are similar from a project management point of view)

• Schedules with the lowest level of detail in the schedule lifetime

• Plan phase:• Planning evolves to represent the formal procurement relationship with IO by means of a Procurement Arrangement (PA)

• Inputs come from IO and F4E: technical and legal aspects, assure technical competences, a monitoring plan and the global integration within the overall ITER project

• Execution phase:• F4E starts its interaction with the supplier, which will execute the work agreed with IO• F4E‐managed schedule will include both the project control parameters to interface with IO and those for the ones with the supplier

• Inputs provided by the Technical Responsible Officers from IO and F4E, by the monitoring plan applied to the supplier and by the contract control plan.



• During the three phases the schedule evolves in terms of maturity, granularity, interfaces and information content.

• A project schedule is developed for each procurement package, which may have more than one procurement arrangement, which in its turn may have many different contracts. Detailed WBS schedules (DWS) have currently been produced for the 39 EU procurement packages, where each DWS is at a different stage depending on the maturity of its inputs



• One of the communication tools used in these processes are roadmaps, which are essentially a visual summary of tasks and their relative logics.

• They enable the schedules to be shown in a graphical and user‐friendly representation, by merging the information shown in a network diagram, such as the sequence of activities, with the vital information shown in a Gantt diagram (i.e., spans of time and relative or absolute dates).

• A roadmap generator has been developed in‐house.• This application auto‐generates roadmaps and allows for different design displays to be obtained.

• The user can choose the level of granularity to display for each phase of the schedule lifecycle and for the purpose of the on‐going discussion.

• The use of this instrument has improved communication enhancing schedule productivity.


F4E Management and Use of EU DWS

The set of EU DWS schedules are used both inside and outside F4E:

• The F4E Project Office uses it to produce executive documents. The Annual Work Programme and the Project Plan are drafted and consolidated through the extraction and update of the information from the detailed WBS schedule database.

• The engineering department uses it to assure the systems technical needs and the number of contracts needed to fully cover the scope.

• Reference for contract breakdown & budget data, granting an inter‐departmental communication channel.

• The set of DWS is submitted to IO every month, after declaration of the progress (data date) and updating, and after passing a formal review & approval internal process

• Process includes, for each DWS, planning officer as author, technical responsible officers, procurement officer, P&S team leader and project manager for F4E work programme as reviewers, Project Team manager as approver.

.


Integration within the overall ITER Project • F4E schedules subject to several integration processes, the main one being carried out by IO. • Aim: to compile the overall reference baseline. In order to be aligned with this reference baseline, IO keeps control of all the deliverables and inter‐DA interfaces.

Critical Systems In the definition of the current baseline, a few EU systems resulted to be on the critical or on the near critical (float ≤ 30 days) path to the first plasma milestone. Critical systems: Toroidal Field Coils, Buildings and Vacuum Vessel. F4E has investigated various procurement strategies and alternative fabrication routes, as schedule options, to reach the current balance between time span, available budget and resources while reducing the global risk.

Float in non Critical Systems The remaining systems have a float which will lead to the execution of the works with no need for major mitigation actions in case of delays. The number of non critical systems and the amount of related float has determined an acceptable global confidence level.


Integration within the overall ITER Project

• IO collects all the DWS from the project partners (DAs) and summarizes with a manual procedure the data into the reference schedule baseline. This process results currently in the Integrated Project Schedule (IPS). The DAs then are asked to reconcile their schedules to fit the IPS.

• With the purpose of identifying the exact source of information of the reference baseline, a mapping system is created whereby in the DAs DWS the first activity and the last activity, which roll‐up to an activity in the IPS, are identified through a coding strategy. This process is repeated for each activity in the IPS where the source of information is the DAs DWS.

• When an IPS activity parameter is modified, as a result of a change of few activities in the DA’s DWS, a change procedure is started. The responsible for this modification (i.e., the DA, IO or both) initiates this procedure where the impact level determines the exact steps. Variances are declared when the delay has a possibility of being absorbed in the short term. While Project Changes are requested when the delay impacts the overall schedule in a way which cannot be recovered.


Integration within the F4E organization

• Enterprise environmental factors and organizational process assets have been taken into account to grant full integration of the schedules.

• Information derived from these schedules is compiled and examined as a whole for different aspects

• Overall budget and yearly amounts. Depending on availability of funds per year, schedules are rearranged by reallocating contracts and introducing options to be activated in different years.

• Number of contracts to be launched and/or run in parallel, allowing F4E management to estimate the number of resources needed to carry out the activity.

• Impact on the planning: when a peak of resources is leveled by spreading out these activities over a longer timeframe, thus increasing the duration of the overall project

• Overall risk analysis to pre‐mitigate likely causes of delay, resulting in changes in the procurement strategy (e.g. introduction of a prototype, completion of detailed design before material procurement,…)

• F4E has a well defined set of procurement rules derived from those used by the European Commission. This particularity results in additional parameters, which have to be taken into account while managing the schedules.


Integration with F4E Suppliers

• Granularity of supplier schedule much higher than that of an execution planning, and thus planning is summarized at a level which allows F4E to manage all undergoing activities without losing the overall perspective.

• Three levels of mapping done to the EU schedules. The more detailed level is provided by the supplier, agreed milestones and customized summaries are used to build the activities at the level of the DA DWS Schedules.

• This methodology allows small delays to be absorbed and more significant delays to be completely transparent to IO.


Management of Interfaces

The integration of schedules calls for a way of identifying relationships between projects.

Interfaces Definition Due to the distribution of the procurement packages among the different DA’s, the group of projects managed by each DA may have many integration milestones within the party and with others. Some projects are isolated while others are strongly tied among themselves. This situation is managed with the definition of the Inter‐Project Links (IPL). An IPL is a standard schedule relationship (e.g., a finish‐start) linking two activities belonging to two different schedules. The activation of these links allows project control to be performed in a schedule group.

Tools to manage interfaces The first step of the integration is performed in‐house on F4Eprojects: performing a consistency check before the schedule information is submitted to IO. (Directed graph representing IPL`s in the EU projects with the different DA’s and IO in the next slide)

Although every component will be formally delivered to IO, by a handout of responsibility, some will not physically go to IO site, but rather to the destination where they are needed for the following step. When this next step is under European responsibility, an EU‐EU interface is identified and the related IPL spanning two different DWS is activated by F4E. A tool has been developed to visualize as a directed graph all quantified interfaces between European projects.


Management of Interfaces

Directed graph representing IPL`s in the EU projects with the different DA’s and IO


F4E and its suppliers

• Relation with suppliers in terms of P&S• Pre‐contractual stage (procurement preparation)

• Selection criteria related to P&S• Evaluation of proposals

• Signature of the contract/grant• P&S Guidelines for suppliers – binding (contractual) or not depending on contract characteristics

• Contract/grant execution• Agreeing on baseline for contract• Receiving the supplier schedule on a monthly basis• Summarising supplier schedule information in the DWS• Reporting internally (F4E management) and externally


F4E Suppliers ‐ Planning Conventions (QA)

1. Scope and Planning level of detail2. Definition of timeframe (Prerequisite and

Delivery Milestones, Pre‐M’s and Del‐M’s ) and Integration Milestones (IMs)

3. Work Breakdown Structure and Activities1. WBS Structure2. WBS ID3. WBS Naming4. Activities ID5. Activity Naming6. Activity Type

4. Activity Logic1. Activities Relationship2. Constrains3. Lags

5. Control Points1. Naming Convention and

implementation templates2. Logic implementation

6. Progress Declaration 7. Others8. Baseline Approval9. Progress Update

INPUT TO F4E SUPPLIERS


• The schedule has to cover the entire scope as defined contractually, thisincludes identification of all required activities needed/required to achievethe scope itself.

• The level of detail has to be such to identify all the activities concurring toform, bottom‐up, the critical path (free float equal zero) of the procurementand the near critical path (bandwidth for critical path in terms of free float tobe defined per each contract (grant), typically 1‐3 months.

• Lower level of detail is necessary as far the single activities are from the nearcritical path.

F4E Suppliers ‐ 1. Level of Detail


F4E Suppliers ‐ 2. Definition of Milestones Pre‐M’s, Del‐M’s and IM’s

Schedule Timeframe for the SupplierThe Supplier is asked to develop a detailedschedule within a specific timeframe defined byall prerequisites and final deliveries. These byusing prerequisite and delivery milestonesrespectively (Pre‐M and Del‐M).

F4EITER

IOSupplier IMs

Del-Ms

Pre-Ms

Milestones naming conventionThe activity name of the above milestones have to use the following prefixes: Pre‐M, Del‐M and IM.

Integration MilestonesIMs milestones provide the method to provide feedback to EU‐DA in order to cross‐checkconsistency with schedule information provided by EU‐DA to IO as part of relevant ProcurementArrangement.Use of customized summariesOn the specific request of the EU TRO, different combinations of IM pairs could be used in thesupplier schedule to define customized summaries (levels‐of‐effort, i.e., hammocks) for facilitatingthe analysis/integration of the supplier schedules, also for having an early detection of schedulevariants, not necessarily immediately impacting on the IM’s themselves.


F4E Suppliers ‐ 3. WBS and ActivitiesWBS StructureF4E propose to the supplier a specific WBS top‐level structure to allow integration.WBS IDThe definition and management of the WBS ID is up to the Supplier. Once the ID is defined in thereference baseline, the ID cannot be changed without prior approval of F4E.WBS Description (name)WBS descriptions will be concise, specific and in sufficient detail to prevent ambiguity.Activity IDThe definition and management of the Activity ID is up to the Supplier except for Pre‐M’s, Del‐M’s andIM’s. Once the ID of these milestones is defined in the reference baseline, the ID cannot be changedwithout prior approval of F4E.Activity Description (name)

•Activity descriptions will describe the work being performed•Activity descriptions will be concise, specific and in sufficient detail to prevent ambiguity (i.e., activity name must be univocally self‐explaining without relying on related WBS)

Activities type•Task Dependent•Finish or Start Milestone

Activity durationAll the durations in the schedule have to be intended as calendar elapsed time and resource loaded


F4E Suppliers ‐ 4. Activity LogicActivities Relationship• Activities will be logically linked to identify activity dependencies, critical paths and float.• All the activities must not have open ends, i.e., must have at least one predecessor and one successor (with the exception of the T=0 start milestone and of “acceptance of last delivery” finish milestone).

• The schedule, which has to be bottom‐up, should be based as much as possible only on finish‐startrelationships.

• In case the schedule is developed top‐down to match a specific final date, the schedule has to bereversed bottom‐up by constraining the resulting start date and removing, if present in the top‐down, all the unnecessary as‐late‐as‐possible and hard activity constraints (mandatory finish &mandatory start).

ConstraintsThe use of constraints must be closely monitored and controlled and minimised to the maximumpossible extent such that constraints are only applied to the schedule logic when consideredabsolutely necessary. Where constraints are used then the Primavera notebook should be used toexplain/justify the rationale. Mandatory finish and mandatory start constraint shall not be used.

LagsUse of negative or positive lags affecting the relationship between activities should be avoided; whenlags cannot be avoided then the Primavera Notebook should be used to explain the rationale.


F4E Suppliers ‐ 5. Control Points, naming convention

CONTROL POINTS NAMING CONVENTION

Activity Type Activity Name DURATION

HOLD POINT

1Milestone HP ‐ …2Task Dependent Hold Point ‐ Review by EU… 14 calendar days3Milestone HPC ‐ EU approval for…

NOTIFICATION POINT

1Milestone NP ‐ … 14 calendar days prior to the scheduled manufacturing step

AUTH. TO PROCEED

1Milestone ATP ‐ …2Task Dependent ATP Point – Review by EU… 7 calendar days3Milestone ATPC ‐ EU approval for…

Control PointsThe schedule has to contain all the control points as specified in the contract/grant.


F4E Suppliers ‐ 5. Control Points, logics implementation

14 CAL. DAYS

HP ‐ EU…

Hold Point ‐ Review by EU…

HPC ‐ EU approval for…

ATPP ‐ EU…ATPP‐ Review by EU…

ATPC‐ EU approval for…

NP – (14 Calendar days prior the schedule step end)

Schedule Step

Schedule Step

Schedule Step

7 CAL. DAYS


F4E Suppliers ‐ 6. Progress DeclarationProgress Update DeclarationData Date: The progress has to be declared up to the last working day of the month (for the supplier)% Complete Type: PhysicalSending progress to F4EThe monthly progress update has to be sent to F4E the last working day of the month (for the supplier).In case of changes the supplier has to draw‐up a list of justifications and the quantification of the delay (ifany).In case of delay impacting on Milestones (Pre‐M’s, Del‐M’s and IM’s), a further analysis will be done byF4E either to accept these delays or to ask for recovery actions to the supplier.Assigning BaselineSecondary Baseline: Previous Month, Tertiary Baseline: Reference Baseline


F4E Suppliers ‐ 7. Others

CalendarThe Calendar (or Calendars) has to be the one of the Country (Countries) in which the work it isforeseen to be performed and has to include all national holidays and specific closure days of theCompany/Association

Acronyms and abbreviationsA list of the acronyms and abbreviations has to be prepared to avoid misunderstandings andduplications

Activity CodesAll activity codes used by the Supplier which are not explicitly agreed with F4E have to checked out assecure codes (thus not included in the P6 export file)

….….


F4E Suppliers ‐ 8. Baseline Approval

Submission to F4EPlanning

Assumptions Document

Analysis Integration

Format

Comments and recommendations

Implementation of F4E comments

Baseline Approved

Ref

eren

ce B

asel

ine

appr

oval

Supplier F4E


F4E Suppliers ‐ 9. Monthly Submission

Submission to F4E1) Schedule

2) List of Assumptions

Analysis Integration

Format

Comments if neededImplementation of changes if needed

Mon

thly interaction

Supplier F4E


F4E working for improving the ITER Project Schedule System


- System based on IPS, as structured and managed currently, has exhibited some major drawbacks- Partial scope taken into account, significant parts are missing or out‐of‐date- Integration is not carried out at the right level and in a proper way, interfaces included only

partially, update cycle too long and done manually- IPS, having its own logics, may not be reflecting the logics of lower level schedules, even being

decoupled from the DA schedules in some cases- IPS is too detailed as a strategic schedule (more than 20,000 activities)- IPS cannot effectively be used as an all‐purpose tool, i.e., time phasing, logics, integration,

performance, credit, risk, recovery, ...- If progress is not accurately reflected in IPS, EVM reporting on it might be inaccurate- Change Control consumes too many resources- IPS is not acting as an early warning system, update is labour intensive and open to

interpretative mistakes

- Currently very high number of PCRs, which might be a sign that the technical consistency of the approved IPS baseline was poor or not adequate

Why a change?


• The IHCM at its meeting on 3rd December 2010 endorsed the establishment of an IO & DA Project Schedule Task Force (PSTF)

• The objective of the PSTF is to jointly and collectively discuss and develop solutions for simplifying and improving usability of the planning and scheduling system of the ITER Project

• New Project Schedule system based on the following key points:– A unique Project Schedule (PS), intended as the set of DWS by the DA’s and IO– Adoption of a classic customer/supplier approach, where IO is the customer and DA’s are the

suppliers with Project Schedule owned by all the parties also if developed by a single DA– The PS, i.e., the full set of DWS, is the only appropriate level for an accurate, operative and full

integration and for a correct and detailed analysis of global project criticality – Integration to be done automatically at level of DWS by means of an Interface Table of

Correspondence (under IO control) – Sufficient maturity level of IO & DA’s schedules is an essential requirement to be fulfilled – The new system has to allow a formal review & approval step by each DA management for

their submitted schedules (predecessor/successor effects cannot be automatic)

Project Schedule Task Force


Structure of new Project Schedule


Automatic Integration


Functional Dependency of Project Schedule Elements


• SMP, the Strategic Management Plan– time phased baseline strategic plan, driven by baselined key milestones for each project participant (IO and

DAs), establishing boundary conditions of the project– assists in the project decision‐making process, evaluation and reprioritization of critical deliverables

• DWS, the set of Detailed WBS Schedules– containing the activities, milestones and interfaces encompassing the DA project scope for each

procurement package and the IO project scope (both as contributor and integrator) and supporting the strategic management plan

– unique source of data, each DWS is developed by single DA or IO, but unique reference for all involved DA’s & IO TRO’s

– DA‐DWS as “supplier” schedule from DA against the “customer” IO– DA‐DWS scope and milestones baseline controlled for signed PAs– IO‐DWS scope, schedule and cost are baseline controlled at IO WBS Level 6

• SMT, the Strategic Milestone Table– containing the common milestones between the DWS and the SMP, determining the time frame of this

latter one

• ICT, the Interface Control Table (ID assignment per IPL pairs via web application)– defining each unique interface between the individual DWS (DA's and IO)– for project schedule integration and analysis of interface violations (baseline control, reporting & actions)

Definitions


SMP

SMT

ICTIO‐DWS (at Level 6) DA‐DWS IO‐DWS (at Level 6)ICT

SMP Schematic


PA Signed

Preliminary Design Approved

Final Design Approved

Fabrication Contract Award

Required On‐Site

Installation Completed

SMP is built upon key milestones and resulting typical phases

The SMP is a baselined summary of the entire project based upon the template

above used for each system/PA

SMP as Project summary


PA Signed




Required On‐Site


1st Plasma

DWS 2

DWS 3

DWS 1

First Step: the key milestones (as in SMT) are extracted directly by DWS being the

SMP time skeleton

Delivery to Site

How SMP is rolled up from DWS (1)


PA Signed




Required On‐Site


1st Plasma

DWS 2

DWS 3

DWS 1

Second Step: the phase based summary bars in between each pair of key milestones are

automatically calculated in duration

Delivery to Site



PA Signed




Required On‐Site


1st Plasma

DWS 2

DWS 3

DWS 1

Third Step: finish‐start logics is applied to phase based summary bars for the only purpose to carry‐out live in management meetings what‐if (trend) analyses (to be

confirmed after that at DWS level)

Delivery to Site



DA No.1

Contract Award

Delivery A

Delivery B

DA No.2Required A

Required B

Delivery X

Delivery Y

Contract Award

Start/finish dates are copied from DWS

SMP tracks milestones for first and last delivery per each

procurement contract. Not only deliveries to IO, but also to other DA (indicating also the related

required dates) ‐> DWS interface



SMP example at PA Level

WaterDetritiationSystemTanks


DWS of Predecessor DWS of Successor

UDF AC UDF

Activity ID Interface ID Activity Name IO‐IPL Activity Name Interface ID Activity ID

IO.34890 INT.0040 IPL > DRAWINGS FOR xyz DELIVERED TO JA

IO.JAIPL < DRAWINGS FOR xyz

RECEIVED FROM IO INT.0040 JAkk.3420

RF.ss.001 INT.0185 IPL > ITEMS abcDELIVERED TO EU

RF.EUIPL < ITEMS abc

RECEIVED FROM RF INT.0185 Euhh.0640

ICT Elements:

ICT for:• Identification of interface violations (“as submitted” and “as activated & rescheduled”)• Analysis of critical path & near critical path, identification of global driver delays • Improving/facilitating communication and technical discussions among the parties

Interface Correspondence table• ICT (Interface Correspondence Table) defines and maintains the pairs of IPL (inter‐project link) defining each single interface (one IPL‐out predecessor and the corresponding IPL‐in successor).

•No sense to define in a DWS an IPL (in or out) if the corresponding IPL (out or in) from another DWS is not available or there is not an univocal one‐to‐one correspondence.


DWS Integration Java Routine

Routine Schematic by Maria

•Automatic DWS integration is carried out at database level via ICT

•Primavera API (Application Programming Interface) developed by F4E P&S Group


– An improved and simplified method to communicate, configuration control and manage the project baseline

– The SMP is regenerated/updated and managed by limited IO P&S resources at each monthly update cycle

– The forecast milestones are “automatically” updated from the detailed schedules using a database routine enabling rapid comparison to the baseline dates

– The SMP is designed to provide instant recognition of strategy and progress at a level suitable for senior management

– The SMP is reliant on good quality detailed planning

– Focus is on the project “Backbone” Construction, to RFE, to Installation, to Commission, to Complete

– Is available for use ‘live’ during management level meetings to determine impacts of current and forecast delays and recoveries

– Linked with simplified and accelerated approach to change control

The Strategic Management Plan (SMP)

Planning & Scheduling at Fusion for Energy - CEA

Documents

Transcript of Planning & Scheduling at Fusion for Energy - CEA