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Scheduling and project controls provide music and direction for
American’s performance. This ability to successfully orchestrate has
allowed American to take on the most complex mixed use and
multifamily projects, including up to 3 ½ levels of subterranean
parking topped with five stories of bearing steel studs with units
that don’t stack and don’t have parallel walls. Several of our
complex projects have had over 10,000 activities to define and
provide the precise timing for each drum beat to be provided by each
of our subcontractors, suppliers and vendors, which on some projects
number close to 100 separate companies.
American
is the first mixed use and multifamily general contractor to have an
in-place, fully integrated cost-loaded scheduling program. All of
our subcontractors’ and material suppliers’ payment processes are
automatically driven by each update of our cost-loaded schedules.
Our monthly subcontractor schedule of values is automatically
updated by our scheduling system, which then generates each
subcontractor’s monthly bill. With each change entered in our
project management system, the schedule is updated, keeping our
“music” current and fully integrated at all times. This process
allows us to generate, at any time, accurate cash flow projections
at both the project and subcontractor levels, to help manage cash
flow.
Our
schedules are updated weekly and our project management system is
updated daily on an extemporaneous basis. Weekly, the Company’s
Executive Committee reviews the progress of each project by
reviewing and examining the available “float” in each project’s
critical path and the float available in each of the projects key
milestones. In addition to managing float on a weekly basis, the
Executive Committee also looks closely at the flow of change order
processing and the duration of request for information (RFI)
answers, which can impact the schedule from the front end, and the
timing of corrections of the Company’s quality control notices,
which if not corrected quickly can effect the schedule on the
backend.
The
Company uses Primavera’s state of the art, web-based, integrated
project software, including P5 for scheduling and Contract Manager
for project management. |
