Understanding the Collapsed As-Built Method

Discover insights from a professional Project Management Advisor with over 30 years of experience advising on complex projects. **Subscribe to be the first to get each new project management tip every week** You are at the end of the project. You have been delayed. You have a copy of the project schedule that is a record of what has been achieved, but you don’t have a copy of the original project schedule. How are you going to go about assessing the delay? Hi, my name is Grant and I am a director of Core Project Advisory. The collapsed as-built method is one of six delay methodologies we can use to identify and assess project delays. With the collapsed as-built method we take the actual or as-built schedule that includes the delay events that have occurred. We then take a copy of this schedule and remove the delay events we have identified. The two schedules are then compared against each other with the difference being the overall delay. This method of delay assessment requires a logic linked schedule with accurate actual information on when activities started and finished. The challenge with the collapsed as-built method is that it can time consuming to prepare and often does not consider the impacts of other delay events not identified. Also, like the impacted as-planned method, it is a hypothetical model as often once the delay events are removed the remaining activities do not relate to the actual time they occurred. This is not a method that I use often, as there are many challenges, particularly when activities have been completed out of sequence and only really works on simple projects. The important thing when it comes to delay assessment is making sure you reply on factual information. It presents much better and is often a lot easier to comprehend than hypothetical models. #delayassessment #delaymethodology #collapsedasbuiltmethod #delayanalysis