In this article, you will learn the advantages of building schedules with ALICE compared to traditional legacy tools, along with best practices for creating them from scratch.
The key topics covered here are:
- Why start building schedules directly in ALICE
- Best practices to start building the schedule from scratch
- How to create a new project
- Functionalities that you need to know in ALICE to start from scratch
Why start building schedules directly in ALICE
Multiple team members can collaborate on one project
Current scheduling tools are primarily desktop-based, while ALICE is a cloud-based platform, accessible via the web. This enables real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to work simultaneously on the same schedule.
Traditionally, experts use separate tools like Excel, TILOS, Word, Microsoft Project, and Primavera P6 to create different parts of a project schedule. Later, a scheduler must then manually integrate these individual deliverables into a single file, which is a complex and time-consuming process. With ALICE, no such integration is necessary. Multiple team members can collaborate on a project simultaneously, each focusing on developing different areas. This allows the team to complete the schedule more effectively and meet tight deadlines or submission dates.
Parametric durations instead of static
Most traditional tools provide a static approach for assigning durations to activities (e.g. an excavation task takes 20 days). ALICE enables a dynamic, parametric approach that calculates activity durations based on various data such as quantity, production rate, or even number of crews required to complete the task. If any of these variables change, ALICE will automatically recalculate the durations.
Creating a parametric schedule in ALICE with variable durations instead of fixed amounts brings the following advantages:
- Streamlined Calculations: There’s no need to perform external calculations (e.g. in Excel) and then manually input the results into the schedule.
- Dynamic Updates: Any changes to the parameters will automatically update the entire schedule with the Re-schedule function.
- Flexible Scenario Analysis: Users can easily experiment with different parameters and observe their impact on the overall schedule, facilitating better decision-making.
Simpler schedule development and modification
The following functionalities allow users to simplify and speed up the process of schedule creation and modification:
- Bulk resource assignment: Assigning crews / equipment / material to multiple activities.
- Bulk duration assignment: Assigning fixed amount or duration formula to multiple activities.
- Bulk removal of contained relationships: To remove connections between multiple activities.
- Bulk addition of contained relationships: To add common predecessor(s) / successor(s) to multiple activities.
- WBS reconfiguration: easy reorganization of the WBS in the schedule.
- Rapid updates via Excel: All of the above processes can also be efficiently edited in Excel, allowing for rapid updates, especially for users who have experience with Excel and prefer to work in a familiar platform.
- Easy file merging: ALICE schedule can be easily combined with external schedules created in tools like Primavera P6 or Microsoft Project (MSP) using Excel.
- Export to various formats: Schedules created in ALICE can be exported to multiple formats, such as XER and XML for Primavera P6, or to Microsoft Project XML format.
Preventing resource overallocation (for resource-loaded schedules)
While legacy tools may allow resource overallocation and even violate scheduling constraints during resource leveling, ALICE ensures that the generated schedule fully complies with all user-defined rules. Primary constraints and resource constraints are always simultaneously honored, and soft restrictions are recognized as ideal and prioritized. ALICE will never generate a schedule that over-allocates resources, violates mandatory constraints, and disregards soft restrictions.
The scheduler algorithm automatically prevents resource overallocation and sequence conflicts, eliminating the need for manual detection by a person. It also recalculates the critical path while considering available resources. For more information on resource overallocation in traditional scheduling tools, please refer to this article.
Best practices to start building the schedule from scratch
The following outlines best practices for building a schedule from scratch in ALICE. It is common for all information not to be available in the initial stage. As you develop the schedule, relevant details will emerge over time. One of the key advantages of using ALICE is that once you have gathered this information, you can easily update your schedule and re-run the analysis to evaluate its impact on the project.
Setting goals and scope
Before building a schedule in ALICE, it is important to define the scope and goals you aim to achieve with the technology. For example, your goal could be to establish a reliable baseline for the tunnel scope with a level 3 detailed schedule.
Defining the scope and general objectives upfront ensures you gather the necessary information, meet stakeholder expectations, and reach your goals quickly and effectively. Additional objectives may develop as more project-specific information is collected.
Collect all relevant information
Collect and review all relevant project information to understand project constraints (e.g. site constraints, resource availability, hard logic constraints, etc.). If some information is not available at the moment, list the assumptions out so that this information can be updated once received. Data availability can often be a bottleneck in schedule development. It is always better to start with what you have and iteratively add more detail later as it becomes available.
Define project Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Well-structured WBS clearly outlines all tasks required to complete the project and allows for better understanding and communication.
Start by defining the major deliverables (components) of the project, then break down each major deliverable into smaller components. Ensure that WBS covers the entire project scope and no deliverable is left out.
Balance the level of detail - breaking down too much can make the WBS overly complex and difficult to manage, while too little detail can result in unclear scope and missed deliverables. It is better to begin with a high-level schedule and gradually add details step by step to avoid confusion and getting lost in too many details from the start. For detailed guidance on creating a WBS from scratch in ALICE, visit this article.
Example
Imagine the need to create a schedule for a roadway construction project that consists of three phases of roadway construction and two phases of structural work. Additionally, the schedule must incorporate the design and procurement phases as well.
From this information, we can identify three main components (phases) for WBS: design, procurement, and construction phases.
Once these major components are defined, they can be further broken down into smaller elements. For example, the construction phase can be divided into roadway construction and structure construction.
The WBS for roadway and structure construction can be further detailed, considering that roadway construction consists of three phases and structure construction includes two phases.
Identify activities and milestones
Review each work package to identify the necessary steps for completion and list all activities required to achieve the desired outcomes. To enhance organization and tracking, consider creating or updating unique identifiers (IDs) for each activity. To find detailed guidance on creating activities in ALICE, visit this article.
Identify and establish key milestones, which can be contractual milestones defined by the client or additional milestones to track specific phases of the project. Determine the type of milestone and specify a date if necessary. For step-by-step guidance on creating milestones and setting up milestone constraints (type and date), visit this article.
Consider developing a small scope to assess whether any modifications are necessary. Once this initial scope meets what is required, it can be duplicated for the other phases.
Determine activity durations
Activity durations can be established as fixed units based on historical project data and expert insights. Additionally, in ALICE, they can be determined parametrically by utilizing available information such as production rates, quantities, the number of crews, and other relevant parameters.
For more information on parametric duration formulas, please refer to this article. For detailed instructions on creating parametric formulas based on production rates and quantities, check out this tutorial.
Sequence activities
To establish the relationships between activities (precedence logic), it is essential to begin by defining the hard logic among them. Hard logic represents constraints that cannot be broken; for example, excavation can only begin after site preparation is complete, and excavation must precede drainage, not the other way around.
In contrast, soft logic—also referred to as preferential logic—can be based on past experiences from similar projects and resource availability. A soft logic example can be seen in the ordering of road phases: phase 1 is completed first, then phase 2 follows.
There are two general approaches that can be used when establishing the relationships between activities:
Scalpel approach
Develop a project schedule that includes both hard and soft logic constraints to create a more realistic baseline. As scenarios are explored, systematically remove soft constraints and add flexibility (e.g. parameters), scope by scope. This approach allows for a detailed assessment of how each change affects the overall project.
Consider using this approach if:
- The project is highly complex, requiring detailed management of constraints and their impact on the schedule.
- There is a need for clear visibility into how changes to individual constraints affect the timeline.
- Specific soft constraints need to be managed carefully.
- You want more control over the project scheduling process, as each scope’s constraints are examined in detail.
- An initial baseline is available as a reference, and there is a desire to validate the results against it.
Flexible schedule
Avoid incorporating preferential logic at the initial stage of the project and build the most flexible schedule. After reviewing scenarios based solely on hard logic, users can better assess whether specific soft constraints are necessary to implement in order to produce a realistic schedule.
Consider using this approach if:
- The project is relatively simple or not highly complex.
- You want to explore multiple paths without getting overwhelmed by too many preferential constraints.
- There is a desire to defer decisions about soft constraints until they are absolutely necessary.
- You need a high-level schedule quickly and are not concerned with detailed constraint interactions at the beginning.
- The intention is to avoid getting locked into specific constraints too early, as this may limit scheduling flexibility.
- The aim is to explore what the ALICE scheduler algorithm can suggest, as it may reveal options that haven’t yet been considered.
For more information on logic types and sequence assignment, check out this article.
Resource assignment
If resource information is available, these resources can be easily created in the Resource Pool tab or added via Excel. Additionally, if there are similar previously loaded resource schedules, resources can be imported from the previous project.
ALICE allows users to specify the exact amount of available resources for each task and project, ensuring that it never allocates more resources than are available. Additionally, ALICE’s features enable quick bulk assignments of both fixed and variable amounts of resources to tasks. For more information on resource assignment, check out this tutorial.
How to create a new project
For a more hands-on experience, navigate through the player for an interactive walk-through, or, if you prefer a more detailed approach, scroll down for a step-by-step guide:
Create New Project
- Open the ALICE dashboard and click + New to start creating the new project.
- Select Start from scratch option under the Task-based (Gantt) tab.
- Populate project information and proceed by clicking Create project
Functionalities that you need to know in ALICE
Creating New WBS, Level of Effort (LOE), Tasks, Milestones
Parametric task duration calculation
Assigning relationships between activities
How to assign milestone constraint
How to add / remove contained relationships