A full schedule review, section by section: the Vireo Line demonstration set

The files, and what the set is for

The Vireo Line Extension is a fictional 22,200 ft twin-bore heavy-rail metro extension with five underground stations in an invented American city: an owner-side case, with a Transit Authority holding the funding agreement and a Design-Builder holding the work. The set is a baseline (data date 1 April 2020) and eight monthly P6 updates (1 February to 1 September 2026): complete P6 exports with 212 activities, 419 relationships, seven calendars, 22 resources with 546 assignments, curves, activity codes and the user fields a linear schedule needs. It exists to show the case a date-only review cannot see, and nothing in it is real. The whole set is downloadable from inside the product.

1. Overview: the grade and what needs attention

The first screen is the whole review at a glance. Schedule health reads C, 62 of 100 (DCMA 7 of 13; GAO conformance 60 of 100). The review verdict is not on this screen: the workbook's front page and the Report Composer carry it, and it is fail, set by the update review. Project finish 30 April 2030, 78 days earlier than the prior update, 25 days later than the baseline, 153 days ahead of the contractual revenue service date of 30 September 2030; Substantial Completion 24 December 2029, 64 days earlier than July, inside its contract date of 31 January 2030. Two activities in a retired WBS branch are excluded from every count.

"Needs your attention" lists, in order: 4 changed historical actual dates on 2 activities (a 53R-06 hard error; the field-by-field register is on Month-over-Month § 3); 7 activities behind the prior plan; 2 late-date constraints (finish-on-or-before, one-way: they disclose a slip rather than hide one, and DCMA #5 does not count them); 2 out-of-sequence activities (one of them a level of effort, which P6’s own log counts too); 33 activities that lost float; and 9 relationships deleted. Cleared: no negative float (measured to the two completion dates the file imposes), the critical path stable (all of July's remaining critical path is still on it), open ends within the DCMA limit.

2. DCMA 14-point: 7 of 13 pass

Fails on lags (24.16 per cent of remaining links), finish-to-start share (74.16 per cent), high float (53.25 per cent) and long durations (80 per cent); missed tasks 87.86 per cent against the 2020 baseline; BEI 0.93 on watch; CPLI 1.11 passes; no negative float against the two imposed completion dates (a pass); resources not applicable. Each is the shape of a long metro programme and each is worth a sentence, not a rejection; the one that sends the reviewer elsewhere is check 4, because the links that changed type since July are the month's real finding. The full run, check by check: DCMA 14-point assessment.

3. Critical path: 18 activities, and which definition

The product identifies the critical path by the longest-path method, and within it Float Path 1 (free float, derived from the file's driving logic) is the critical path everywhere. On this update that is 18 activities, 23 per cent of the incomplete work, walked back from the latest early finish (VL-MS-0420, 30 April 2030). Seventeen of the 18 carry P6's own longest-path flag. The file stores a different Float Path 1 of 15 activities, because its float paths were calculated with P6's multiple-float-path option switched off; it is listed as P6 stored it. CPLI 1.11, measured from revenue service to its imposed finish date of 30 September 2030.

4. Month-over-Month: what changed, in three passes

Did the finish move? Revenue service 78 days earlier, Substantial Completion 64 days earlier; float on Substantial Completion from 2 to 10 days; 33 activities lost float, 45 changed float, 34 changed finish. Is the progress real? Nothing completed, one activity started, 16 percent-complete changes, 27 remaining-duration changes, and 4 previously reported actual dates changed on 2 activities. What was changed to get there? 9 activities added (three real, six a delay fragnet), 3 deleted (one retired), 2 renamed; 11 original durations revised (9 shortened, all in testing and commissioning); one calendar added and 6 activities moved onto it; 15 relationships added, 9 removed, 5 re-typed or re-lagged; constraints 1 added, 1 removed, 1 re-dated. The recovery is the file, not the work. Register by register: how to compare two P6 updates.

5. Delayed activities: 7

Measured against the prior update, reproducing P6's own "Delayed Activities" filter with the prior update supplying the baseline dates and level-of-effort and summary activities held out: 7 activities behind at the data date, 6 not started though due, 1 in progress and overdue, none on the critical path, all 7 due this period, 1 slipped more than 30 days. The largest: "all cross passages complete", due 10 July, now forecast 10 August. Seven overdue activities, none of them critical, is a distinction the page exists to draw: late, and it does not matter, is different from late on the path.

6. Relationships Forensic: one month of rewiring

Against the prior update: 15 relationships added (5 on the critical path), 9 removed (1 on the path), 5 re-typed or re-lagged (4 on the path), net +6 of 419 links, 21 activities affected, 10.1 per cent of the network, 6 of them on the current critical path (the testing chain: VL-TC-7020, 7030, 7040, 7050, the tunnel M&E containment and the wayside signalling installation). Lags are compared in hours, so a calendar edit cannot appear here as a logic change. Over 5 per cent of the network re-wired in one update: ask for the reason in writing.

7. Duration Analysis: are the durations credible?

The only honest test of an estimate is finished work. On 117 scored completed activities the estimating factor is 1.07× (the average activity ran 7 per cent over its estimate; median 1.05×, 1.07× weighted by duration), 94 per cent within ±20 per cent of estimate, 7 ran over 120 per cent of plan, none ran under 80 per cent, and 74 per cent of durations are round numbers (54 per cent on tens). Weighted by duration, the figure that scales the remaining work, the factor is also 1.07, yet on this update 9 remaining durations were cut.

8. Calendars: seven, and one that is new

Nine calendar definitions read from the export, seven of them in use, and every one in use has its hours-per-day set to its real shift (no mismatch, so no fractional-float artefacts from that cause). The new one is KB-TC7, 7×10 Commissioning Recovery, 3,640 hours a year against 2,600 on the five-day testing calendar it replaced for six activities. Seventeen activities carry fractional float and five start and finish mid-shift, from dates that sit off the shift boundary; 97 finish-to-start links cross calendars. No calendar closes for more than six weeks, which on linear infrastructure is worth a question.

9. Logic & Network Health: can a delay travel through it?

0 open ends (the start and completion milestones are legitimately open and not counted), 0 isolated activities, 11 dangling ends (all dangling finishes, 7 on incomplete work), logic density 2.00 links per activity (links between work activities, over the work activities), 5 activities riding the data date. One question failing out of five. The 11 dangling ends are the population the repair tool works on: dangling and redundant logic.

10. Resource Performance and Earned Value (P6 only)

22 resources (14 labour, 4 non-labour, 4 material) across 542 assignments, read from TASKRSRC, TRSRCFIN and RSRCCURVDATA. On the crawler and tower cranes, for instance: 96.42 per cent consumed (270.8k of 258.7k budgeted hours), against a planned 96.54 per cent on the early curve and 82.82 per cent on the late curve, with a scope variance of +22.1k hours because the at-completion total grew from 258.7k to 280.9k. Earned Value will not guess which resource carries the approved progress weight; on this set the Design-Builder's progress-weight resource is VLX_Cost, and against it the earned position is 74.5 per cent by value against 77.7 per cent planned (SPI 0.96, SPI(t) 0.97), 78.7 calendar days behind on earned schedule. The forecast improved 78 days in the month the earned position got worse.

11. WBS Breakdown: where the slip sits

27 WBS nodes, 22 lowest-level areas; 5 carry critical work; 2 are more than 15 points behind their baseline percentage, cross passages and communications, by 16 points each. The worst-hit area is Traction Power, +126 working days (187 calendar days) against the prior update. Slip concentrated in one area is a recovery conversation; slip spread evenly is a plan problem.

12. Weather Risk Matrix

The page classifies the schedule's physical work against a 27-type heavy-civil library (25 unfinished weather-sensitive activities matched here; project nature detected as stations, rail, tunnels and utilities) and counts their remaining working days month by month, on each activity's own calendar, against the climate normals of the region you confirm. The page opens on a setup step: it suggests the project type from the mix of work and the location from place names in the schedule's own text, and scores nothing until you confirm both, because which months are red depends on where the job is; nothing in a schedule file says that.

13. Dangling Logic Repair and Redundant Logic Cleanser

11 dangling ends, 4 on completed work (reported, never repaired) and 7 on live work: 7 repairs, all verified at zero drift, 0 refused, 5 open ends reported and never auto-linked. 14 redundant finish-to-start links removable of 423 relationships with no date change, 1 kept because it is a driving predecessor. Both tools write a copy of the XER; the original is untouched.

14. Linear Schedule

With the supplied setup loaded, 64 of the 210 activities draw on the time-chainage sheet in US stations: the five station boxes as blocks stepping down the alignment three months apart, the two tunnel drives as sloped lines at their planned 44 ft a working day, the cross-passage campaigns and systems fronts as lines, the shafts as bars, and the handover and completion ties as dashed rules across everything. The drawing is read from the file; nothing is written back. Time-chainage from a P6 file.

15. Delay Analysis & Validation: the same month, four ways

The August update carries a six-activity fragnet claiming three events, and a 64-day improvement. As a submitted TIA (path A): IMPACT 11 moves Substantial Completion by 69 calendar days (47 work days), IMPACT 12 adds nothing, IMPACT 13 is held for a structural fault, and the record is not fit as it stands. As this month's update (path B): 64 days earlier, progress 0, revisions 64, bucket recovered. Over seven windows (path C): +8, +12, +6, +13, +65, +6, −64, a net +46 days, contractor 110 and recovered 64, never netted. The tunnelling (path D): 49 days late, 85 of slips and 36 of recovery, 7 neutral. Four situations, four paths.

16. The workbook and the report

Every register above is a tab in the Comprehensive Quality & Forensic Report workbook (60+ tabs, a clickable contents index), so a headline in a report can be traced to the rows it came from: the changed-actuals register is tab B10, the partial-float analysis sheet 18, the delayed activities D1 and D2. The Report Composer builds the PDF, Word or PowerPoint from blocks you drag onto a page.

Try it yourself

The Vireo set is downloadable from inside the product, and every figure on this page appears when the same three files are loaded. The fourteen-day trial opens every section; current prices are on the pricing page.

RelatedHow to compare two P6 updatesDCMA 14-point assessmentSchedule delay analysisReading an XER without P6