Florida Department of

TRANSPORTATION

Construction

1.         Pursuit of The Work - Contractor diligently and systematically pursues the work with sufficient labor, materials and equipment at all times. Active progress is made on critical path items each day in accordance with the approved schedule. The contractor schedules the subcontractors so that they are pursuing their work as well. Contractor worked five (5) days a week unless the contract states otherwise, excluding weather days. Percent is based on allowable contract time (minus weather days) and on a five (5) workday week unless otherwise stated in the contract.
 

Contractor Notification Method:      Contractor notified monthly by weather letter.  Contractor can appeal grade given in this category for the month within 10 days of receiving weather letter. 
 

Guidance provided:
1.  Contract time is normally established utilizing a 5 day work week, that is why the CPPR Pursuit of Work is evaluated against a 5 day work week unless specified differently in your contract.  This works even for bonus jobs that are striving to achieve the monetary bonus by working extended hours, shifts, or days.
2.  The grading form already indicates that weather days are excluded from the calculations. Weather days should be accounted for in the following manner:
	If during the week it rained 3 days of the 5 the contractor was to work and he pursued the 2 days that he could, then the calculation for that week would be pursued 2 of 2 (100%) days with note in the remarks that had 3 days rain.  If the contractor did not work 1 of the 2 available days, then his pursuit would be 1 of 2 (50%) days.  If the contractor worked weekends to try to make up for the rain impacts, the time for pursuit would still be determined as 2 of 2 (100%) days regardless of the weekend work.  As an example of accounting for weather days, see excerpt from spreadsheet below:
3.  As for grading a Contractor in both Category 1, Pursuit of Work, and Category 8 when the Contractor is not on the project and the schedule shows that they should be working, definitely would affect Category 1.  It would only affect Category 8 if the Contractor neglected items of work that affected the quality of workmanship (i.e., MOT, erosion control, etc.).
4.  In the event a Contractor shuts down company-wide operations, for a period not to exceed 7 consecutive calendar days during a calendar year, to provide for employee vacation and such period of inactivity is shown in the schedule submitted at the time of pre-construction conference, then such period of inactivity shall not be counted as non-pursuit days in the category of "Pursuit of the Work" in the Contractor Past Performance Report. Given that the decision by a Contractor whether or not to make a company-wide shut down for a vacation or holiday is often determined by the needs of the Contractor near the time for the shut down (i.e., whether a job(s) are on schedule or behind), this should be discussed early in the project when reviewing project schedule.  Consideration should be given to allowing for a vacation/holiday shut down of operations if reasonable notice is given by the Contractor even if the shut down was not initially shown in the Contractors project schedule.
5.  Question: I need a little more direction in the use of Category 1, Pursuit Of Work, CPPR, when the contractor is in liquidated damages. Your email of 8/4/03 directed us to use a 5 day work week when evaluating Pursuit Of Work. Your email of 10/31/03 went on to instruct us to apply all liquidated damage days as non-pursuit days. If the pursuit category is based on a five day work week, don't we skip the weekend days that the contractor is in liquidated damages?
Answer: You are correct in your understanding of the weekend days.  To be consistent, we decided that since we are accounting for the workdays (either as 5 days per week or as defined in your contract) we would stay with the same work day count for non-pursuit days.  Rather than changing from 5 days per week used before the job went into LD's to 7 days per week after the job went into LD's, we decided to leave as defined in your contract.  See example below:
6.  Category 1 is based on a five-day work week unless the contract stipulated otherwise.  Also, a Contractor's performance is measured against his submitted, accepted schedule.  If a contractor is not working on the Critical Path activities on the project, then his performance will be measured as a non-pursuit day.  Also, work on weekends isn’t included as the category was developed based on the 5-day work week or work week stated in the contract.
7.  Question: Would the five days be the five days defined in your contract?  For example, if the project was night work on the nights Sunday through Thursday, then those would be the five days used?
Answer: Yes.  The five days used would be the same from week to week unless defined otherwise in your contract.  Section 1-3 of the Standard Specifications defines the working day as "any calendar day on which the contractor works or is expected to work in accordance with the approved work progress schedule."  Also, specific reference to work limitations should be defined in your contract under Limitations of Operations.  The typical project work days are Monday through Friday, daytime hours.  There are some specific projects that limit the time/days on which the contractor can work, hence the Sunday to Thursday night work example provided in my earlier response.  If the contract does not stipulate what days or hours the contractor can work, then the contractor is free to choose which days/times to work.
8.  If the Contractor doesn't begin work on the first contract day, but gets the project finished early, are the days they don't work prior to final acceptance non-pursuit?
Answer:  Yes.  For example, if the Contractor signs the project and then does not show up to work for the first 25 days as shown in your example, those days would be counted as non-pursuit days, even if it ends up that the project finishes early.  The reason is that once we put up the signs on the project, we are telling the public that we are ready to start work and their expectation is to see work going on.  If the Contractor does not sign the project and let's us know his intentions regarding starting the project later, we have not been charging those days as non-pursuit.
Additional Example:  If the Contractor was ahead of schedule in completing some critical items and so he pulled off the project for a couple of weeks to send his crew to another project.  Would they be marked down for "non pursuit" because they were not working on the job?  Even if they completed their items ahead of schedule and as long as they didn't get behind when they returned, could we not mark the non pursuit category?
Answer:  The time on the job when the contractor has pulled off would be non-pursuit.  The intent with pursuit is that it is maintained at all times on the project, unless otherwise specified in the contract.
9.  Can a Contractor be in pursuit when using a two person crew a part of a day installing silt fence (It took them three weeks to complete what normally would take two days)?      Response:  We would consider that not meeting the intent of actively pursuing the work.  Remember that per the directions given in Contractor's Past Performance Report form that the Contractor is to diligently and systematically pursue the work with sufficient labor, materials, and equipment at all times. Active progress is made on critical path items each day in accordance with the approved schedule.  Also, the grades for the category are based on aggressively pursuing the work.  Having a crew of two working on a task that would normally take a regular crew only a few days in not considered diligently, aggressively pursuing the work.
10. If the Contractor is being charged with a non-pursuit day, can it be considered an nonconformance day on the little bit of work they do complete?      Response:  If the quality of the work was considered acceptable, then there would not be a nonconformance day(s) charged while this work was being done during nonpursuit.  If, as your lead in statements indicated, the work performed by the 2 member crew was unacceptable, the work would be nonconforming and the days would be nonpursuit.
11.  Regarding the CPPR Instructions for Pursuit of Work, pg. 4 of 7, it reads "Contractor diligently and systematically pursues the work with sufficient labor, materials, and equipment at all times. Active progress is made on critical path items each day in accordance with approved schedule."     Response: Presumably this means if by contract day #100 the Contractors schedule shows work completed to be at 50% and yet the Contractor has only completed say 10% of the work, then he is in non-pursuit.
Additional Example:  With that being said, what percentage threshold of the planned schedule work vs. actual progress must the Contractor fall behind before we start marking every available day as non-pursuit?
Response: Your presumption that a contractor is in non-pursuit whose schedule shows should be 50% complete at day 100 but is only 10% complete is correct. There is no minimum percentage threshold established for planned versus actual work performed on a project. The accounting of non-pursuit days begins on the first day of the project. The requirement for being considered a pursuit day is that the contractor is diligently and systematically pursuing the work with sufficient labor, materials, and equipment at all times and that active progress is made on critical path items each day in accordance with the approved schedule. In your example, the contractor is only pursuing the work at a production rate of 20% of what was scheduled, that would not be considered sufficient labor, materials and equipment to meet the schedule, even though the work may be on the critical path. In this example, it appears that the majority of the days used so far were not actively pursued.
12.  A contractor states on his Controlling items of work that he is going to work 6 days a week. It rains on a Wednesday, he gets a weather day and Pursuit of work is only 4 of 4, with a weather day which equals 5 available days. Four days worked and one rain day. It rains on a Saturday, Pursuit of work is 5 of 5. Do we grant a weather day for the rainout on Saturday?
Response: If the contractor's schedule shows a six day work week, we would grant the weather day for the Saturday.
Follow-up:  What happens if it rains on a Sunday, do we grant a weather day for a Sunday if it was not a scheduled day of work?
Response:  No on Sunday since it was not a scheduled work day. The granting of weather days is for delays to the work caused by the weather - if no work scheduled, there is no delay to work due to weather.
Follow-up:  I know that we show Weather Days on the CPPR so that we can come up with Allowable Contract Days.
Response: Actually, the allowable contract days are accounted for in Category 8, Conformance with Contract Documents. Category 1 is not going to match allowable contract days for the project unless the contractor works 7 days/week with no weather days.
Follow-up:  In the Remarks column of Category 1, should we show weather days if Saturdays and Sundays become weather days?
Response: You would show Saturday if it was a scheduled workday, would not show Sunday based on scenario from above.
Follow-up:  What I try to do when I get copies of the monthly CPPR is to verify that category 1 and category 8 days are listed correctly. I look at a calendar and determine the Work Days for the month. Then I add up the Pursued Days, non-pursued days and the weather days and figure that should equal Work Days for the month. But I have run across one that this does not work since they are giving Saturday's and Sunday's as weather days.  What are your thoughts?
Response: The quickest way to account for accuracy of the days in the spreadsheet is to sum the Category 8 allowable days column and compare it to days used in the header. If the numbers match, the days are correctly accounted for. As for Category 1, as I alluded to above, if the total work days will not match the allowable days due to weather and the fact that few jobs have a seven day a week schedule.

13.  If the Contract was based on a 5 day work week and you have a Contractor that chooses to work 4 days a week (10-16 hrs/day), The Contractor is making good progress, would you calculate the time based on the schedule for 4 days or should we be counting the time based on a 5 day work week, as called for in the Contract? I realize that if we would base the evaluation on the work schedule that we would not allow for the contractor to use a Fri., Sat. or Sun. as a make up day for weather or nonpursuit of a previous scheduled work day.

Response: If we accepted the schedule based on a 4 day/week schedule of long days, we should evaluate the pursuit in Category 1 based on 4 day/week. Refer to CPPR guidance on the SCO website, Category 1, item number 2 for more information.

In this case, the Contractor is working Mon -Thur on 1 week and Tues - Fri. on the other week, alternating back and forth. (The Contractors employees are form out of town and he uses the long weekends to allow his personnel to go home and see their families, though that is neither hear nor their.)

Response: I would have no problem with this if it was communicated to the Department up front in the Contractor's schedule and was accepted by the Department.

14.  Question:  Can a contractor submit and be evaluated for Pursuit of Work against a 6 day or 7 day per week schedule?

Response:  It was inferred in earlier responses to questions on Pursuit of Work that a workweek could be longer than a 5 day per week schedule provided it was agreed to and accepted by the Department.  This response is written to provide more specific guidance on that issue. 
 

The contractor has had the opportunity to submit a schedule all along that showed a 6 or 7 day workweek.  If the Department can accept this schedule then that becomes the measuring stick by which the pursuit of work is measured.  The contractor can not bank days.  If the contractor submits and we accept a 6 day/week work schedule, for example, then its pursuit would be evaluated against the work of 6 days.  If the contractor only worked 5 of the 6 days, then its pursuit percentage that week would be 83%. 
 

The contractor's pursuit, in the event the contractor chooses to abandon the project, would be measured against the 6 day work week of the accepted schedule and would feel the impacts in its grade.  We would/should not accept a week to week varied schedule (i.e., 5 day work week one week, 6 day the next, 5 the following, etc.).  The accepted work week should be the one that the contractor uses for the job duration. 

This only includes an accepted baseline schedule and not the two-week look ahead.  If the contractor submits a revised schedule at some point during the project to go from a 5 day to a 6 day work week and we accept it, at that point we would begin measuring pursuit against a 6 day work week.  What we won't accept is workweeks jumping back and forth between 5 or 6 days.