ADOT CPM scheduling requirements: 2021 Standard Specifications §108.03
The Arizona Department of Transportation states its critical path method requirement in the body of its own specification book: the 2021 Standard Specifications for Road and Bridge Construction, Section 108, Prosecution and Progress. The scheduling content sits in two adjacent subsections — §108.03, Preconstruction Conference, which is where the CPM requirement itself is written, and §108.04, Prosecution and Progress, which carries the update obligations. A third subsection, §108.08, Determination and Extension of Contract Time, decides what a schedule has to show before contract time moves.
The copy read behind this page was retrieved on 1 September 2026. Whether a later edition has since superseded the 2021 book was not established — the agency's specifications landing page did not resolve on that retrieval, and no edition later than 2021 was read. Treat the edition as needing confirmation against the contract before anything below is relied on.
The distinctive fact about this specification is its brevity. Of the state documents described on this site, Arizona's is the shortest treatment of scheduling by a wide margin: roughly two paragraphs create the CPM obligation. There is no separate scheduling section, no tiering by project value, no submission timetable table, and no named software. What it does contain is unusually concrete about the schedule itself, which is the part a program can check.
What Section 108 requires
| Requirement | What the 2021 Standard Specifications state | Clause |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduling software | None named. The specification requires the schedule to be in critical path method format and names no product, file format or version. | §108.03 |
| Baseline deadline | The progress schedule is submitted at the preconstruction conference, which is held before work begins. No separate day count is stated for it. | §108.03 |
| Update frequency | Every 30 days through the contract, or whenever the Engineer asks, a revised progress schedule reflecting actual progress, logic revisions, and the forecast completion of the major phases and of the work. Separately, a written two-week look-ahead is brought to the weekly meeting with the Engineer. | §108.04 |
| Narrative | Not stated in this provision. No narrative or written report accompanies the schedule submission under these clauses. The written justification described below is furnished on request and is not a narrative. | §108.03 |
| Recovery or revised schedule trigger | The Contractor gives the Engineer written notice of proposed major changes — those that may affect compliance with contract requirements, or that change the critical path or the controlling item of work. The 30-day revised schedule under §108.04 is periodic, not triggered by slippage. | §108.03, §108.04 |
| Time impact analysis | Not stated in this provision. A request for more contract time is made as a Request for Extension of Contract Time under §104.03, accompanied by a revised schedule and supporting data. No named analysis method and no fragnet requirement were read. | §108.08 |
| Float ownership | Not stated in this provision. No clause read in Section 108 allocates float to either party or describes it as shared. | Not established |
| Activity durations | No activity shorter than one day, and none longer than 15 working days. | §108.03 |
| Relationships | The schedule shows the interrelationships among activities. No relationship types are restricted, and leads and lags are not addressed. | §108.03 |
| Controlling work | The controlling items of work are identified across the whole project. | §108.03 |
| Duration justification | On the Engineer's request, information supporting activity durations: estimated manpower, equipment, unit quantities, and production rates. | §108.03 |
Three rows say not stated in this provision. That is the reading, not a summary of it: narrative content, a float ownership rule and a time impact analysis are absent from the clauses read, and nothing here infers them from what neighbouring states do. A special provision on a particular Arizona contract may add any of the three.
Durations that must be defensible on request
The duration band — nothing under a day, nothing over 15 working days — is the single most widely shared requirement across the documents compared on this site, and Arizona's version is ordinary. What is not ordinary is the sentence beside it.
Most specifications that cap durations stop there, leaving the cap to be checked and the number behind it unexamined. §108.03 adds that the Engineer may call for the working behind any duration, and names four inputs: how many people, what equipment, what quantity of work, and at what rate it is expected to be produced. That converts a duration from an assertion into something with an arithmetic behind it that somebody else can redo.
A schedule file does not carry that arithmetic. Manpower and production rates are not fields in an exported network, and this project's engine does not invent them. So the cap is checkable from the file and the justification is not — the justification is a document request, answered by people, and the Engineer decides whether the answer holds.
"Controlling item of work", and where the phrase does its work
Section 108 uses controlling item of work alongside critical path rather than as a synonym for it, and the distinction is load-bearing in one specific place.
§108.08 states that an extension of contract time is not considered unless the affected work is a controlling item at the time of the change, or becomes one because of it. That is a gate on entitlement written in scheduling vocabulary: it is the schedule, and only the schedule, that establishes whether the affected work sits on the controlling path. §108.03 requires those controlling items to be identified throughout the project, which is what makes the gate operable at all — a schedule that never marks them cannot answer the question §108.08 asks of it.
This project reports what the imported schedule contains about its longest path and the float on each activity. It does not decide whether a delay was excusable, whether an extension is warranted, or whether a given item was controlling on a given date. Those are determinations for the reviewing authority under §108.08.
Periodic revision rather than triggered recovery
Most of the specifications on this site name a slippage condition that obliges a revised or recovery schedule: a number of days behind, a change to the critical path, a contract modification. Arizona's structure is different. §108.04 asks for a revised schedule every 30 days regardless of progress, and separately asks for the two-week look-ahead each week. The obligation to tell the Engineer about a change is a notice obligation under §108.03 — written notice of proposed major changes — rather than a trigger for a new submission.
One consequence worth stating plainly: because the revision is periodic, the comparison a reviewer makes is between consecutive monthly schedules rather than against a fixed, accepted baseline. Section 108 as read does not establish a baseline schedule that later submissions are measured against, and does not use the word. An agency that re-states its plan monthly and an agency that holds a baseline fixed and measures drift from it are doing different things with the same file, and the clauses read here describe the first.
What this page does not tell you
- It does not tell you which clauses govern your project. The incorporated contract documents — the edition of the standard specifications the contract names, plus every special provision — are what apply. An agency's name alone does not establish which clauses govern a given contract.
- The current edition was not established. This page reads the 2021 book. If a later edition exists, its clause numbers and content may differ.
- Three requirement rows are absent rather than negative. Narrative content, float ownership and time impact analysis were not found in the clauses read. That is not the same as an agency having decided against them.
- There is no rule pack behind this page. The five agencies with per-agency pages elsewhere on this site rest on implemented rule sets; this one rests on a reading of the specification text. Everything above cites a subsection you can check.
- This project computes and reports; it does not decide submissions. It states what the imported schedule contains and checks it against the clauses cited. Whether a schedule is acceptable is determined by the reviewing authority.
Related pages
- How state DOT scheduling specifications compare.
- Neighbouring readings: MnDOT · NJDOT · SCDOT.
- UFGS scheduling requirements.
- Glossary — float, critical path, lead and lag, constraint.
- What the engine does and its limitations.
- The conformance rule catalogue and the standards map.
Source: web/pages/azdot-scheduling.md. Source commit date: 2026-09-11.