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Module 3 - Time Management

Day 11: Acceleration, Recovery, and Module Mini-Exam

9% of the exam - about 2.5 hours - 14 practice questions

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Reading

Recovery versus acceleration are distinct and the exam separates them.

Recovery: the contractor's own obligation

Recovery is the contractor's obligation to get back on schedule after a non-excusable delay that the contractor caused. The contractor bears the cost. A recovery schedule is typically required by contract once the contractor falls behind by a defined threshold, and the CM reviews it like a baseline, checking that the proposed recovery is physically achievable rather than a paper exercise.

Directed acceleration: crashing and fast-tracking

Acceleration is compressing the schedule to finish earlier than the current contractual completion date. If the owner directs it, it is directed acceleration and the owner pays. The classic methods are crashing, which adds resources to critical activities and raises cost, and fast-tracking, which overlaps activities that would normally run in sequence and raises risk of rework.

When crashing, the correct target is the critical activity with the lowest cost per day saved. Adding resources to a non-critical activity buys nothing but cost. This is a common exam question, and the right answer is always to crash on the critical path, cheapest first, rechecking after each compression because the critical path can shift.

Cost of crashing rises nonlinearly as compression increases A curve showing that the cost per day of schedule compression stays relatively low for the first several days crashed, then rises steeply as more days are compressed, reflecting overtime premiums, added shifts, and productivity loss from trade stacking. 0 days 20 days crashed high $ $0 Early days: cheap Later days: overtime, stacking, steep cost
Crash the cheapest critical days first. As compression continues, sustained overtime and trade stacking degrade productivity, so the cost of each additional day saved rises steeply rather than staying flat.

Constructive acceleration

Constructive acceleration is the subtle one, and it appears on the exam. It occurs when the contractor experiences an excusable delay, requests a time extension it is entitled to, the owner refuses or fails to act on the request, and the contractor is then compelled to accelerate to meet the original date. The owner never issued an acceleration directive, but the effect is the same, and the contractor may recover acceleration costs. The elements usually cited are an excusable delay, a timely request for extension, denial or unreasonable failure to grant, some owner insistence on the original completion date, and actual acceleration costs incurred.

The practical lesson for the CM is direct. Sitting on a legitimate time extension request does not save the owner money. It converts a time-only exposure into a time-and-money exposure. When a question offers "defer the extension request and require the contractor to maintain the original date," that is usually the wrong answer.

Diminishing returns in acceleration

Overtime, added shifts, and crew stacking all reduce productivity per labor hour. Sustained overtime is generally understood to degrade productivity meaningfully, and trade stacking in confined areas degrades it further. The CM evaluating an acceleration proposal should expect the cost per day saved to rise steeply as compression increases, and should be skeptical of proposals that claim linear cost for nonlinear compression.

Time impact analysis, revisited

The forward-looking, contemporaneous method generally preferred for evaluating a delay is a time impact analysis. You take the schedule update in effect immediately before the delay event, insert a fragnet representing the delay, recalculate, and measure the movement of the project completion date. Because it uses the schedule as it stood at the time, it avoids the hindsight distortion of as-built analyses performed years later. Contracts increasingly require TIA for any time extension request.

Practice Questions

1. A contractor falls behind due to its own low productivity. The schedule compression required is:

  1. Constructive acceleration
  2. Recovery, contractor pays
  3. Directed acceleration, owner pays
  4. Force majeure

2. When crashing a schedule, resources should be added to:

  1. The critical activity with the lowest cost per day saved, rechecking each round
  2. Non-critical activities, to build float that protects the critical path from further slippage
  3. The longest activity regardless of path
  4. All activities equally

3. Fast-tracking primarily increases:

  1. Retainage
  2. Direct cost only, because overlapping activities require added crews on both activities
  3. Risk of rework from overlapping activities
  4. Float

4. Constructive acceleration generally requires:

  1. A force majeure event that shuts down the critical path for longer than the contract's stated limit
  2. Contractor default after the CM rejected two recovery schedules and the owner terminated the contractor for cause
  3. An excusable delay, a timely extension request, its denial, insistence on the original date, and added cost
  4. A written acceleration directive from the owner

5. An owner delays acting on a legitimate time extension request to avoid granting time. The likely consequence is:

  1. Cost savings to the owner
  2. Contractor default, since the contractor may no longer rely on the extension request it filed
  3. No effect
  4. Turning a time-only exposure into a time-and-money exposure (constructive acceleration)

6. Time impact analysis is generally preferred because it:

  1. Eliminates the need for notice
  2. Uses the schedule in effect immediately before the delay, avoiding hindsight distortion
  3. Is the cheapest method, because it needs only the final as-built schedule and no update history
  4. Always favors the owner

7. A contractor proposes accelerating 20 days at a cost that scales linearly with days saved. The CM should be:

  1. Satisfied, since a linear cost curve makes the proposal easy to check against the contractor's unit rates and the independent estimate
  2. Indifferent
  3. Skeptical, since overtime and trade stacking degrade productivity and cost per day saved normally rises
  4. Required to accept it

8. A recovery schedule should be reviewed by the CM primarily to check that it is:

  1. Signed by the surety, since the surety guarantees completion on the original contract date
  2. Physically achievable rather than a paper exercise
  3. Identical to the original baseline
  4. Funded entirely by the owner

9. Which of the following is a required element of constructive acceleration?

  1. A timely extension request that the owner denies or ignores, plus insistence on the original date
  2. Termination of the contract
  3. A written directive from the owner to accelerate, issued after the owner denied the contractor's extension request in writing
  4. A non-excusable delay caused by the contractor

10. On the crash-cost curve, why does the cost per day saved rise steeply after the first several days of compression?

  1. Because standard contracts prohibit crashing more than ten days without a new notice to proceed
  2. Because crashing only ever affects non-critical activities
  3. It doesn't; cost per day saved is always constant
  4. Sustained overtime and trade stacking degrade productivity as compression increases

11. Fast-tracking and crashing both compress the schedule, but they differ because:

  1. Fast-tracking always costs less than crashing, because overlapping work needs no added resources
  2. Crashing is never used on the critical path
  3. They are the same technique with different names
  4. Crashing adds resources to shorten durations; fast-tracking overlaps sequential activities

12. A CM continues crashing a schedule without rechecking the critical path after each round of compression. The risk is:

  1. Automatically triggering constructive acceleration
  2. Voiding the contract
  3. None; the critical path never changes
  4. Spending money crashing a path that is no longer critical, buying nothing

13. Recovery and directed acceleration differ primarily in:

  1. Who caused the need to compress the schedule, and therefore who pays
  2. Recovery is always cheaper
  3. There is no meaningful difference
  4. Both are always owner-funded

14. A time impact analysis is generally preferred over a purely retrospective as-built comparison because it:

  1. Reflects what was actually critical at the time of the event, rather than being distorted by hindsight
  2. Never requires notice
  3. Applies only to non-excusable delay
  4. Is always faster to prepare

Glossary

Recovery
Contractor-funded effort to get back on schedule after a contractor-caused delay.
Directed acceleration
Owner-directed compression of the schedule to finish earlier than the contractual date; owner pays.
Crashing
Adding resources to critical activities to shorten duration, raising cost.
Fast-tracking
Overlapping activities that would normally run in sequence, raising rework risk.
Constructive acceleration
Contractor forced to accelerate after an owner denies or ignores a legitimate time extension request; owner bears the acceleration cost despite issuing no formal directive.
Time Impact Analysis (TIA)
Forward-looking delay analysis method that inserts a delay fragnet into the schedule as it stood immediately before the event.

Progress

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