It is an honor to be recognized as one of the top contributors for the development of AACE Recommended Practices, however that would not have been possible without the active contribution of numerous planning and scheduling professionals who have provided their skills, knowledge, time and encouragement to support these efforts: Some of the professionals that helped guide and contributed to these RPs included: Vera Lovejoy, Fred Plotnick, Donald McDonald, Ron Winter, Jim Zack, Paul Levin, Glen Palmer, Mike Nosbisch, Tim Calvey, Doug Gransberg, Dan Melamed …and even Chris Carson. There are others too numerous to name, who contributed also and are responsible for our successes.
I have been a scheduler by profession for a long time. Contrary to some rumors that my first scheduling logic diagram was ‘drawn on a buffalo hide and hung on the side of a covered wagon on the western United States prairie’, I only began working as a scheduler in 1980! While I was working in the Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear project construction program, there were always professional associates available to provide advice and guidance. However, when I moved forward in the commercial construction industry into the 1990s, I experienced more project assignments where there were not any professionals nor resources readily available to provide the planners and schedulers with that necessary advice and guidance. There was definitely a requirement to develop these RP reference resources that would be available for that solitary scheduler to guide them and confirm that the processes and procedures being implemented were the appropriate planning and scheduling industry practices.
The P&S recommended practice development really kicked off with the successful PSP Certification program in 2003-2004. That prompted the revision of RP 14R-90 to encompass the scope of the new certification. The P&S Committee’s RP development work pushed ahead in early 2005, working in parallel with the development of the PSP certification study guide and the overarching Total Cost Management (TCM) Framework development under John Hollmann. It has been a pleasure to work with these professional associates and a challenge to be a part of those successes.
Significant efforts by our AACE membership over the past year has been successful in reviewing the existing RPs to identify those RPs that need to be updated as well as to identify gaps in the scope of knowledge which need to be covered by a new or revised recommended practice. New AACE members are encouraged to get involved in the development of AACE Recommended Practices. If there is an area of your profession that needs is missing or shortcoming the guidance appropriate to perform that work, consider getting involved in developing the recommended practice.