Part 1: The illusion of Control
“The schedule was approved. The baseline was frozen. So why did the project still fail?”
If you work in EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) project controls or management, you have seen this story play out more times than you can count.
The baseline schedule is issued and approved based on the contractual Milestones, Early progress reports green.
And yet, months later, the project is late, over budget, and deep into claims discussions with the client and subcontractors.
This raises an uncomfortable question that many project teams avoid asking:
If the baseline existed, why wasn’t the project under control?
The answer is simple, but it is not easy to accept.
The Baseline Myth: Why “Having a Schedule” Is Not Having Control
In theory, a baseline schedule represents a shared, integrated execution plan.
In practice, especially on complex EPC jobs, it is often treated as a “set-and-forget” document.
Once approved by the client, the baseline is often:
- Filed away for contractual reference.
- Used primarily to satisfy governance requirements.
- Revisited only when delays become undeniable and a re-baseline is required.
What it is not used for is daily decision-making.
A baseline does not drive a project forward. It only tells you where you are relative to where you said you would be months ago. Control comes from how the baseline is used, not from the fact that it exists.
The “A-Ha” Moment: Real control doesn’t happen when a Project Manager asks, “When will this milestone finish?” Real control happens when they ask, “Why did the logic driving that milestone change since last month?”
A Familiar EPC Story
Consider a typical EPC project six months into execution.
- Engineering is reported as “mostly done” (though vendor data reviews are lagging).
- Procurement is “on track” (despite some unacknowledged vendor delays).
- Construction progress looks reasonable in the field.
- Monthly reports show manageable variances.
The schedule update shows a 2–3 week slip on a key construction milestone. The explanation sounds reasonable: “It’s just a sequencing issue; we’ll recover this in the next phase.”
No one panics, logic review is not done and what-if’s scenarios are not worked out.
Fast forward three months.
The same milestone is now three months late. Suddenly, the questions start flying: Why didn’t we see this coming? Why wasn’t this escalated earlier? Why does the schedule now show a completely different critical path through to commissioning?
The uncomfortable truth: The signs were always there in the schedule — but no one was looking it as a control tool.
The “Watermelon Project” Effect
One of the most dangerous phases of a failing project is when everything still looks fine on the surface. We call these “Watermelon Projects”—green on the outside, but deep red on the inside.
Dashboards show green. Progress percentages move forward linearly. Narratives sound confident.
But underneath that green exterior:
- Activities are progressing out of sequence (the “hard stuff” is being pushed right).
- Total Float is being consumed silently across non-critical paths.
- Key interfaces between engineering and fabrication are slipping without ownership.
- Construction productivity is declining—slowly, but consistently.
By the time, executive reports finally turn red, the project is no longer just drifting. It is already off track.
When Schedules Become Decorative
On many EPC projects, schedules slowly drift into a passive role. They become:
- Attachments to monthly progress reports.
- Pretty pictures for client presentations.
- Evidence gathering for future claims.
But they stop being used as:
- A decision-support tool for project leadership.
- A simulation model for testing recovery and what-if scenarios.
- A source of execution truth.
You’ll recognize this shift when schedule logic is never discussed in weekly meetings, critical path changes go unnoticed until it’s too late, and recovery plans exist only in PowerPoint decks rather than in P6.
At that point, the schedule still exists—but control is already lost.
The Real Question You Should Be Asking
Projects don’t fail because teams are incompetent. They fail because of a subtle but widespread misunderstanding in our industry: Documentation is often mistaken for discipline.
Approving a baseline feels like having control. Tracking dates feels like progress.
But without active use of logic, continuous interrogation of trends, and honest ownership of what the schedule is saying, the baseline becomes symbolic rather than operational.
If the baseline itself isn’t the solution, the real question becomes:
Who actually owns the schedule once execution starts?
And more importantly: Why does that ownership quietly disappear when reality becomes uncomfortable?
That question takes us to the heart of the problem—the gap between Project Managers and Schedulers, and how that gap silently drives projects toward failure.
➡️ In Part 2, we’ll explore the Ownership Gap—why schedules exist, but no one truly owns them.
