The schedule health assessment identifies a critical integrity issue, driven primarily by seventy activities exhibiting negative float. This condition undermines confidence in the reported completion dates, as the schedule indicates an inability to deliver key milestones, including Practical Completion, on their planned dates. The presence of such widespread negative float suggests the current logic or duration estimates do not align with the remaining programme, requiring immediate review to determine if the delay is real or a modelling artifact. The reader should examine the float analysis section to verify the extent of the negative float and its impact on the critical path.

The MEP Rough-In and Superstructure packages present the most significant schedule risks, driven primarily by the presence of negative float and a high concentration of near-critical activities. These areas warrant immediate review to understand the extent of the logic constraints and float erosion.

The contractual and progress dates the project is managed against — Practical Completion, sectional handovers, commissioning — auto-detected and ranked critical-first, lowest float first.

Reading this chart. Two cumulative curves over time: where the schedule should be (Planned Value, solid blue) and where it actually is (Earned Value, solid red). The vertical dotted line is the data date; the gap between the two curves at that line is the current schedule performance.

Acronyms. PV = Planned Value — the share of total scheduled work that should have been consumed by a given date under the baseline plan. EV = Earned Value — the share actually completed, computed as Σ(original_duration × percent_complete) ÷ Σ(original_duration). SV = Schedule Variance = EV − PV, expressed in working-day equivalents under the duration-weighting. SPI = Schedule Performance Index = EV ÷ PV. SPI < 1.00 ⇒ behind plan; SPI > 1.00 ⇒ ahead.

Why duration-weighted. P6 / MS Project exports routinely strip resource and cost data, so a cost-weighted EV (the classic EVM formulation from AACE RP 27R-03) is not always available. Duration-weighting is the industry-standard fallback: each activity contributes in proportion to its original working-day duration rather than its budget. Full formula and caveats in METHODOLOGY §5d.

The schedule data indicates that the recent earned-value trajectory is unstable and does not support a single implied completion date. Consequently, the forecast relies on productivity-factor scenarios to establish a range of plausible outcomes relative to the stored plan. These scenarios demonstrate how variations in productivity rates shift the implied Practical Completion date, with lower productivity resulting in later completion. This panel serves as a high-level sanity check and does not replace a full critical-path recalculation.

Remaining-plan compression: 1.40× the demonstrated production rate — significant compression (required 0.113 vs demonstrated 0.080 pp/day; band thresholds 1.10 / 1.35 / 1.75 are heuristic calibration — a feasibility flag, not a determination). The remaining plan asks for roughly 40 % faster production than the recent demonstrated pace, sustained to completion — out-performance of a kind the recent history does not show. At the demonstrated rate the plan crosses the severe-compression threshold around 2027-04-03.

Indicative only. The PF rows apply the named productivity factor to remaining durations on labour activities (procurement / milestones are not scaled) and re-trace the longest path. They do not re-level resources, re-apply calendars, or re-optimise logic — use alongside a native P6 re-schedule for any contractual decision (METHODOLOGY §5b).

What this section answers: where else forward risk is concentrated besides the controlling chain. Each row is an alternative chain to the project endpoint that's within 20 working days of the critical path; any of them could become controlling with a small slip.

Four float paths sit within twenty working days of the critical path, with the cluster dominated by zero-float chains that are already critical. These near-critical paths represent forward risk because any of them could become controlling with a small slip. The table below details the top sub-critical paths ranked by float ascending, including their driving activities and envelope dates.

Top 3 of 5 shown — the full 5-path table and the float-path overlay chart are in the Narrative layer.

DCMA 14-Point Assessment: 6 pass, 5 fail, 3 not assessed.

The full 14-item scorecard (every measured value, passing items included) is in the Narrative layer; per-check offender lists are in the appendix and the Excel workbook's DCMA detail sheet.

The full set of near-critical chains behind the Brief-layer float-path callout, with the overlay chart showing when each chain lands on the calendar. The Excel appendix carries the complete per-activity list per path.

DCMA 14-Point Assessment: 6 pass, 5 fail, 3 not assessed.

Float analysis measures how much delay each activity can absorb before it pushes the project finish. Activities with zero or near-zero float drive the completion date.

Chart colour key (DCMA §6/§7 bands):

• Red — activities at immediate risk (negative or zero total float)
• Orange — activities with 1–10 working days of float (DCMA's near-critical band)
• Blue — activities with comfortable float margins
• Grey — excessively high float (over 44 working days), usually signalling missing logic

Note: the cover-page Near-critical activities headline counts activities within the schedule's status cycle rather than the strict 1–10 wd band, so it can include activities that fall in the orange and blue regions of the chart. See METHODOLOGY §5c.2.

Concrete next actions derived from this analysis. Every recommendation below references a specific number, finding, or warning elsewhere in the report — nothing speculative.

Industry precedent (AACE RP 29R-03 §4.3; CIOB Guide §5.5) treats this section as a required deliverable element of any forensic report.

• Close the open ends: 1 missing predecessor(s) and 4 missing successor(s) — see DCMA §1 (Logic) in the DCMA 14-Point scorecard above and the Findings table for the affected-activity list. Every incomplete activity should have at least one predecessor and one successor so the critical path is fully driven by logic.
• Address the negative-float population (DCMA §7). The schedule is admitting it cannot deliver its planned dates from current logic and progress; a recovery plan, re-baseline, or formal acknowledgement of the slip is required before the reported dates can be relied on for contract correspondence.
• Schedule Performance Index is 0.90 — trending behind plan. Review critical-path remaining work and cause-of-delay records; trigger corrective actions before the slip becomes unrecoverable.

The analysis engine identified twenty-one findings, comprising one critical item, eight warnings, and twelve informational observations. The single critical finding concerns seventy activities displaying negative float, a condition that the DCMA 14-Point Assessment §4.7 notes indicates the schedule logic cannot achieve the contractual completion date. This negative float is reflected in the inability of the current schedule to deliver Substructure, Fit-out, and Practical Completion on their respective planned dates, with each milestone showing fifteen working days of negative float. The Critical Path Length Index of 0.95 sits at the threshold where the DCMA 14-Point Assessment §3.1.2.3 flags the need for further investigation into recovery rates. Additional warnings highlight eight activities with dangling logic and ten relationships utilizing positive lag, which the CIOB Guide §4.26 advises should generally not exceed fifty percent of the shortest linked activity duration. The critical finding regarding negative float warrants direct reviewer attention to assess the validity of the completion dates and the integrity of the underlying network logic.

Logic quality checks assess whether the network is fully driven by sequential dependencies. Gaps, excessive non-FS links, and dangling chains all undermine the critical path calculation.

Activities with missing logic — either no predecessor (nothing must happen before them) or no successor (nothing depends on their completion).

DCMA 14-Point §1 expects fewer than 5% of incomplete activities to have open logic.

• Missing predecessors allow an activity to start on the project start date regardless of its true sequencing.
• Missing successors mean delay to the activity never flows through to the completion date.

Review each row and confirm with the planner whether the logic gap is intentional.

Scheduling options from the source file. These govern how P6 calculates float and the critical path.

Two options in particular (Progress Override and the 'Include all activities meeting CP definition' flag) can change the reported critical path materially without changing a single activity or relationship.

Any setting that warrants a warning is listed separately in the Findings table above.

The activities and relationships behind each failing DCMA item, most severe first. Tables are capped at 20 rows; the Excel appendix's “DCMA detail” sheet carries the full lists.

The accompanying ``.xlsx`` workbook is the audit companion to this PDF. Wherever the PDF says ``full list in Excel appendix``, the matching tab below carries the unabridged data.

The workbook is laid out in two tiers. The first tier (presentation tabs) gives audit-ready tables of milestones, the critical path, ranked float paths, and the full activity register. The second tier (findings-register tabs) drills into each individual finding with affected activities — one tab per finding.

This report assesses the uploaded schedule against the published industry standards listed below. Each finding traces to a specific rule in one or more of those standards. The analysis is automated and deterministic — the same schedule file will always produce the same findings.

Scope of this analysis. This report is based solely on the schedule file(s) you uploaded. Determinations that — under AACE RP 29R-03, the SCL Delay & Disruption Protocol, or other cited standards — require evidence outside the schedule file have been flagged as candidates rather than concluded. Specifically, the following determinations and analyses require manual verification by a qualified delay analyst before being relied on for contractual purposes:

• Pacing vs concurrency — distinguishing contractor pacing (AACE §4.2.F / SCL §10) from independent concurrent delay requires contemporaneous notice, correspondence, and resource records that are outside the scope of schedule-only analysis.
• Constructive acceleration — identifying directed or constructive acceleration (AACE §4.4) requires correspondence and contract notices not available to the engine.
• Contractual classification — categorising delay events as excusable, compensable, or non-excusable depends on contract terms outside the schedule file.
• Concurrency during the overlap window — the SCL §10.4 test asks whether two delays were both critical during their overlap. The engine evaluates this as the union of baseline-side and update-side critical-path membership, which is a snapshot-level approximation of the window-level test. A precise test would require a CPM walk per overlap interval, which is outside V1 scope. The approximation will under-detect concurrency where an activity was on the critical path only during a sub-window of the overlap and not at either snapshot date.
• As-built critical path — the report does not produce a stitched as-built critical path across multiple updates. On comparison reports the per-update critical path is shown for each schedule in the comparison (Driving Path section); on series reports an interim methodology paragraph describes the per-period substitute. A V1.1 release will add a cross-period as-built CP synthesis section to the series report Brief layer.
• Recomputed total float — float and criticality figures throughout this report (including the DCMA float checks, float paths, and near-critical detection) are recalculated from the schedule's own logic, durations, and calendars, because as-submitted float is absent from a large share of real exports. The recalculation applies Retained Logic/Progress Override per the file's scheduling options but does not model Start/Finish-No-Later-Than or As-Late-As-Possible constraints, Expected Finish forcing, or an imposed must-finish date — on schedules using those features the recomputed float can differ from the value the source tool displays. The as-submitted float is preserved and compared against the recomputed value by the stale-critical-path check.
• Engine-attributed-vs-observed divergence — the engine's net-delay figure is an attribution of observed completion movement to specific activity-level events. It can diverge from the observed figure in either direction. Undercount divergence (engine attributes less than observed) typically reflects unquantified topology changes, scope absorption, or parallel-path absorption the activity-level formula cannot capture without a CPM recalculation. Overstate divergence (engine attributes more than observed) typically reflects double-counting along a critical chain, scope-add events whose full duration is being counted, or concurrency absorption gaps. In both directions the observed figure is authoritative for the headline; the engine-attributed figure is a subordinate diagnostic surfacing what specific events contributed.

Where the engine raises a candidate flag for any of these determinations, the relevant section explicitly says so. The engine does produce a rule-based first-pass entitlement classification on each delay-register row (Employer risk, Contractor risk, Neutral, Concurrent, or Not Assessed) — this is a preliminary tagging based on activity-description keywords and category defaults, not a contractual determination. The classification is presented as '(prelim.)' in the column header and every row carries a review-note prompt to verify against the contract, the variation register, NCRs, and documentary evidence before relying on it.

ScheduleLens is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or certified by AACE International, the Project Management Institute, the Defense Contract Management Agency, the Chartered Institute of Building, the Society of Construction Law, or the Government Accountability Office. Citations to these standards in this report are bibliographic, indicating the analytical basis for each check.

Each abbreviation used in the Reference column of the findings table maps to the full title below.

These are bibliographic citations indicating the analytical basis for each check. ScheduleLens is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or certified by AACE International, PMI, DCMA, CIOB, or the Society of Construction Law.