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5.3 Preparing the schedule of work

5.3.1 Procedure

Programming is likely to be on a simple basis, and preparation of the schedule of work is likely to be coupled with the production drawings.

The framework of the schedule of work should be established at an early stage, using a relevant office template if considered suitable. The framework can then be used to record specification decisions as they are made during the detailed design process, in tandem with the drawings. The work items may be drawn from the system library or written specially.

In populating the framework, work items and constructions from previous projects may be used. Re-use of material has obvious advantages, but rigorous checking is needed to ensure that it is appropriate and up to date.

When detailed design is virtually complete each element of new work and every room or other location of alteration work should be considered exhaustively, one by one, to ensure that the schedule of work adequately covers every cost significant item of work. Any items that are overlooked may result in a cost increase.

The reference specification should then be prepared by simple editing of a base text. Only those CAWS work sections referred to in the schedule of work should be included. Within each work section standard text relating to things that do not occur on the project should be removed, e.g. bedding of ridge tiles if dry fixing is specified.

Checking of schedules of work can be difficult and time consuming, and it is better to aim for a 'right first time' strategy. Nevertheless, it is highly desirable for an experienced person other than the author to read through the completed schedule of work carefully before issue. In a small office a suitable person may not be available at the time, in which case the author should check his own work.

Many of the procedures set out above are amenable to standardisation within the office. The nature and extent of this should be based on the experience of completed projects rather than preconceptions. Standardisation and control issues to be considered include:

• Creation of schedule of work templates for commonly recurring types of project, and the amount of detail that they contain.
• Creation of standard or virtually standard reference specifications for commonly recurring types of project.
• Rights to view only or edit template schedules of work and particular project schedules of work.
• Checking and review procedures, and by whom.

Good knowledge of the content of the system reference specification and of the system work items and constructions will minimise the number of conflicts within the documents. The creation of office specific work items, constructions and templates will facilitate 'on the job' learning and can help eliminate the recurrence of previous problems.

5.3.2 Presentation

The presentation of the documents should focus on how the information is likely to be used. There will be three different types of information - the preliminaries, the reference specification and the schedule of work. The presentation style does not need to be common to all three although common headers, footers and page numbering are desirable. Office standardisation of format and page layout for each type of information is highly desirable.

Numerous variations on cash columns are available to the specifier. A simple cash column should suffice for the preliminaries, but columns for quantity and rate may be required for the schedule of work. The reference specification should contain no priceable information and as such should not require a cash column.

The construction manager/contractor will almost certainly wish to group constructions and/or individual work items into subcontract packages, e.g. roof tiling plus lead flashings plus roof drainage, or LTHW heating plus H & C water plus sanitary fittings. The current practice of marking up paper copies of the schedule of work into subcontract packages is time consuming and frequently leads to items of work being missed or priced more than once in different packages. If the schedule of work is supplied to the construction manager/contractor in electronic form, he should be able to generate the subcontract packages automatically with greater speed and reliability.

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