The Effect of Early Freezing of Scope on Project Schedule

摘要

With the objective of finding means to reduce project delivery time, a number of schedule improvement methods (SIM) were examined to determine their effectiveness in schedule reduction. The researcher focused on means that lead to reduction of project delivery time without increasing project overall cost. As a result, all the cost-time trade-off methods (e.g., overtime, multiple-shifts, more costly crew mix, etc.) were excluded. Among the promising SIMs were methods used to achieve early freezing of project scope. Three case studies were examined to determine the implementation highlights, success factors and implementation barriers. The case studies verified that measurable schedule reduction could be realized by early freezing of project scope. The data suggested that reduction up to 20 percent of the project delivery time compared to historical data could be realized. In addition, implementation of methods for early freezing of project scope resulted in net cost savings for the documented projects. Success factors, implementation barriers, and lessons learned were grouped under management, employees, and process issues. These issues were further ranked according to their apparent frequency in the case studies. Although the limited number of case studies did not allow the determination of statistical significance, such ranking provides a framework to which future data could be added for more comprehensive conclusions.