Project Baseline

Project Baseline

Once a viable and approved plan has been established and before project initiation, a permanent record of the plan and scope must be set to create a reference point for future Progress Tracking and Performance Measurement. Project Baselines are used for archive, historical, as well as analytical purposes such as:

• Comparison reporting
• "What-If" simulations and trend monitoring
• Contract backup
• Claims support/negotiations
• Change control

To determine whether the project objectives of schedule and budget are met, you must know the details of the original plan so that the degree of variance in the Current/Live plans may be assessed. The baseline, together with systematic progress tracking, may help answer the following questions:

• Are we ahead or behind schedule?
• Is the project within budget targets?
• What activities need to be closely monitored?
• Is the logic of the project still valid?
• Are resources being used effectively?

After the Project Baseline has been stored, work generally begins, and progress information for completed work and actual expenditure is recorded against the current plan. As your project progresses, changes will most likely occur. These changes should not be incorporated into the baseline plan. For an accurate comparison, Safran Project enables you to add changes via the Change Register and configure how these changes are considered during the various update processes.

A well-accepted principle of professional project management is to make no changes to the baseline unless at specific, pre-agreed points in time and backed by due authority from your project owner. Many project management systems, however, routinely re-schedule whenever changes occur. Upon doing so, all previous baselines—including the original—are lost, and little or nothing may then be analyzed regarding project performance. By allowing automatic rescheduling, you also lose an excellent opportunity to improve the quality of plans and forecasts based on utilizing the deviations that inevitably occur between the baseline and project actuals.

In Safran Project, the baseline and performance measured against it are frozen until being revised through the execution of a baseline revision process. Only then, and under complete user control, will record changes and Variation Orders—which are simultaneously being tracked separately during project execution—be included. It may be necessary, at later stages, to create multiple baseline versions to measure if the project scope changes significantly, making comparisons to the original baseline meaningless.

The Original Baseline

Once the project schedule and scope have been approved, the first milestone is reached, i.e., establishing the original schedule and scope of work.

Before updating the project with progress, new logic changes, new/additional work, or additional resource information, you must save the original plan as a baseline for future comparison and trend analysis.

Storing the Original Baseline

To set the first baseline, run the initial baseline update process, which makes a copy of the original schedule and scope available as a benchmark against which to measure. A complete record of the original plan (schedule/scope) is kept throughout the project life cycle to ensure full traceability.

Open the required Project and click the Set Baseline icon in the PROJECT ribbon to start the Baseline process. A Baseline Revision code must be entered, and an optional remark or description for the baseline is available.

Setting a Baseline in Safran Project requires the project to be in an analyzed state. Setting Timenow to the first day of the reporting period is also highly recommended. If you have weekly cutoffs and the cutoff day is Sunday, you should set Timenow to Monday, a week before the first Cutoff date. This ensures all reporting periods are the same length when printing reports. During the Baseline Process, Safran Project checks the project to ensure that a valid baseline may be run on your project.

Enter the required information to identify the Baseline, and press OK. Once the Baseline has been completed, Safran Project displays the 'Baseline Complete' Window.

The following rules apply to the Baseline Process:

• A Baseline Update may be run for all Main Projects.
• Other users may access none of the projects during the Baseline Update Process.
• The project is analyzed, Timenow set, and the required status is saved to the database.
• The current Timenow date for the project is used as a basis for Cut-Off for the Baseline.

Once the project is underway, changes to scope will affect the plan. Safran Project enables you to lock the scope so that subsequent changes, modifications, new activities, and additional work must be recorded as Variation Orders. This ensures that the plan and scope are kept intact and unchanged and are still valid for performance measurement and comparison reporting.

Lock Scope

After setting the Baseline, click on the Properties in the PROJECTS ribbon and check the Lock Scope box to freeze the current scope. All succeeding changes and updates to the resource quantity fields must be input and assigned to a valid Variation Order. Leaving the Lock Scope box blank allows for unrestricted updates to the scope.

Control Scope Summarization

The Scope Configuration panel controls how the plan will summarize and include variation orders. In the PROJECT ribbon, click on Properties and then select the Scope Config tab.

The Baseline Update field controls whether or not quantities are to be summarized from resource level to the corresponding activity scope fields, Baseline Scope, Current Scope, and Total Scope, during the Baseline Update process. The Status Update field controls the same information during the Status Update process.

The Baseline Scope should only be allowed updates during baseline revisions. Please refer to the Change Control section for project scopes and variation order details.

Revisions to Baseline(s)

During project execution, changes and scope increases will happen, impacting your baseline schedule. Baseline revisions should be carried out to provide an adequate basis for control.

The current schedule and plan will, at all times, represent the latest client-approved estimate. However, Safran Project also allows you to record another non-approved estimate: the Present Forecast.

It should be noted that a project’s status might be measured against different reference points. Therefore, when referring to project status as Percent Complete or Earned Value, you are offered multiple points of reference:

• Planned Progress vs. Original Baseline.
• Planned Progress vs. Current Baseline.
• Planned Progress vs. Current Plan.
• Planned Progress vs. Forecast Plan.
• Actual Progress.

The measure of the progress of the project—Earned Value may be derived from any of these points of reference. Scopes are updated according to the configuration chosen on the Quantity Configuration panel when the status and baseline update processes are invoked.

Revisions—Setting Subsequent Baselines

The original baseline is a direct copy of the initial plan. Subsequent baselines are built up by adding the change and variation orders at the revision time to the then-current baseline. The Current plan will then contain the Current Baseline and all approved Variation/Change Orders.

The Baseline Update Process

We recommend that you follow these steps when preparing a new baseline:

1. Carry out re-planning activities.
2. Analyze current project
3. Run the Baseline Update Process
4. Enter a new baseline revision number.
5. Enter baseline remarks

The Baseline process will now complete and store the baseline data in the database.

During the baseline update and computation, you may want to adjust values computed as part of the last status update, Frontline dates, and Planned percentages and update the previous status update with the new baseline scope.

Since these values are computed as part of the status update, a predecessor to the Baseline process, your new baseline does not “know” these figures. Marking these two checks modifies the data so that the actual figures and baseline planned figures meet. However, please be aware that this might alter values already reported for your project status.

Safran Project also keeps a baseline update log for traceability. The baseline log may be used as an internal audit log of the system and lists all revisions to the project.

To View the Baseline Log, click on the Baseline Log icon in the PROJECT ribbon.

Baseline Annulment

With Safran Project, you can cancel your project's latest baseline. In the PROJECT > Baseline, click on Annul. Before withdrawing the baseline, Safran Project prompts you to confirm this process.

Partial Baseline

During project planning preparation or project execution, you may be asked to revise or include a new baseline for only parts of your project, and preferably, this should be done without affecting the baseline dates or quantities for the rest of your schedule. Safran Project supports a Partial Baseline process, which allows you to add new work to an existing baseline or amend or alter baseline data for a selected group of activities.

The Partial Baseline Wizard

The Partial Baseline function has been implemented as a wizard-type function. You start your partial baseline by clicking the Partial Baseline icon in the PROJECT ribbon. Safran Project then provides you with the Partial Baseline - Definition screen.

The Partial Baseline can only be run against your last baseline revision.

From the baseline definition screen, you can select to update any or all Baseline Dates, Baseline Scope, and Baseline Resource Profiles. New activities will be added to the last baseline. Once the setup is completed, press the Next button to continue. You will not be prompted to select activities to be included in the Partial Baseline adjustment.

From the Partial Baseline - Filter screen, you can create user-defined selections by choosing a previously defined filter from the drop-down list or specify single or multi-line statements by adding or inserting rows to the selection panel.

The default selection is NONE. You have to make a selection to run the Partial Baseline.

Click the Back button to return to the Partial Baseline - Definition screen, or press the Next button to continue to the Partial Baseline - Check Dates screen. If you have checked "Baseline Res. Profiles" only in the configuration screen, you will now be asked for confirmation—and the update will be performed if you confirm. If you marked any of the dates or QTYs' updates, you will be taken to the following form, where you can change the dates.

You may update any of the date fields listed for each activity. Press Finish to save Partial Baseline data to your baseline tables.

Running Partial Baseline from the Barchart Editor

You may select Partial Baseline as an option from the tools menu. Suppose you run the Partial Baseline wizard from the Barchart Editor. In that case, there is a feature enabled that, in some cases, may make the selection process more accessible: If you highlight a set of activities before initiating the Partial Baseline Module, these activities are implicitly a part of the selection. If you have some highlighted activities and the selection pane says that (R8) Comm. Pkg = 018101, only the highlighted activities with Comm. Pkg 018101 will be selected. All your highlighted activities will be baselined if the selection pane is empty.

Running Partial Baseline from the Sub-Project Register Module

Partial Baseline may also be run from the Sub-project register module. If you do so, the active sub-project within that module is implicitly a part of the selection. If you were on sub-project AAB and in the selection pane, say that (R8) Comm. Pkg = 018101, only the activities having both sub-project AAB and Comm. Pkg 018101 will be selected. If the selection pane is empty, the complete sub-project will be baselined.