Not maintaining any Gantt charts for its project indirectly led to a construction company's failure and untimely demise. It had incurred extensive charges in penalties and eventually had to close down its construction which had run nearly 15 months behind schedule.
I have mentioned in my earlier article about the usefulness of Gantt Charts as a tool to aid better business management. However, they do not give all answers to your problems. I emphasized that the absence of such a chart could be disastrous: recently one company fell into receivership, partially on account of not maintaining a Gantt chart showing the critical paths of an important project.
Penalty Charges A dated plan for the project showing the critical path for construction of the apartment block was not included in the original contract. When the customer made changes to the original specifications, a plan revision could not be produced to highlight how such changes would affect the completing date of the project. The apartments were ultimately delayed for handing over by some15 months from the original target date, resulting in penalty charges.
To contest imposition of penalty charges, there was a need for the company to show: 1-It was possible to meet the originally agreed upon handover date as per the original contract specification. 2-The extended durations and additional tasks to be done on account of the changes proposed by the customer had to result in slippage of the end date.
They just had a few spreadsheets giving out the tasks undertaken: with each change, a new spreadsheet was added. The differences from the original plan were not shown on the spreadsheets, nor was the impact on the end date on account of such changes shown.
How Would Gantt Charts Have Helped
A Gantt Chart would have acted as a baseline plan for monitoring the progress, had it been created at the contract stage. The extra tasks required to be done by the company could have been added and the duration of the existing tasks could have been changed as and when the customer asked for changes in the specifications: the slippage in the handover date could have been clearly shown by this. The customer could have been then asked to agree to a revised end date and sign the amendment to the contract.
In the absence of these tools, the company could not prove that the delays were not as a result of their inefficiencies (it may still be argued that not having appropriate project management software for such complex projects is indicative of inefficiency by itself).
When called upon to supervise a time-bound project on behalf of a customer, there is a need to use of appropriate tools such and Gantt and other charts to monitor the progress and plan out the effect of changes in circumstances will have on the work, and inform all concerned about such changes.
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