ITD CPM scheduling requirements: Standard Specifications Subsection 108.03
The Idaho Transportation Department states its scheduling requirement at Subsection 108.03, "Project Schedule", of the 2023 Standard Specifications for Highway Construction. It sits in the body of the book, divided into four lettered parts: 108.03.A General, 108.03.B Initial Schedule, 108.03.C Monthly Update Schedules, and 108.03.D Final Schedule.
This document asserts copyright. Page 1 carries a copyright notice in the Department's name for the 2023 edition, with all rights reserved, immediately beneath its ADA and Title VI notices. That is a fact about the document and it governs how this page is written: every requirement below is characterised in this project's own words with the subsection cited, and the specification's own wording is not reproduced. Anyone needing the operative text should obtain the book from the Department.
Three things make Idaho's subsection distinctive among the specifications read for this site, and each is set out in prose below: the critical path method is required without a threshold; Microsoft Project is named as the compatibility target; and float is split at substantial completion, shared before it and the Contractor's after it.
What Subsection 108.03 requires
| Requirement | What the 2023 Standard Specifications state | Clause |
|---|---|---|
| When CPM applies | Unconditionally. The subsection directs the Contractor to submit a critical path method schedule, with no duration threshold, dollar threshold, or "when the contract requires" qualifier read in the text | 108.03.A |
| Scheduling software | Microsoft Project is named. The schedule must be created in a software format compatible with the most current version of Microsoft Project, and each schedule submittal must be in a format acceptable to the Engineer and compatible with that version | 108.03.A |
| Baseline deadline | The initial schedule is submitted for review at or before the preconstruction conference, and 108.04 lists it first among the items due then. It must show that substantial completion can be achieved within the contract time | 108.03.B, 108.04 |
| Agency review | A joint review meeting with the Engineer within 10 calendar days of submitting the initial schedule, to review, correct and adjust it together; resubmittal within 10 calendar days after that meeting, repeating until accepted. Work does not begin until the initial schedule has been accepted. For a revised schedule, the Department responds within 10 calendar days with one of three answers — accept, reject with reasons, or request more information — and the Contractor has 10 calendar days to respond | 108.03.B, 108.03.C |
| Preliminary schedule | Once the initial schedule is accepted, the Contractor may submit a preliminary schedule covering planned operations for the first 60 calendar days after award and indicating the general approach to the remaining work | 108.03.B |
| Update frequency | Monthly, at an onsite progress meeting the Contractor attends, where the Engineer and Contractor together verify actual start and finish dates, remaining durations, percent complete on incomplete activities, and proposed revisions. The updated schedule is submitted each month reflecting progress, and is resubmitted if it does not carry the as-built information agreed at the meeting | 108.03.C |
| Narrative | Two narratives. With the initial schedule: major equipment and assumed production rates for the major work activities, plus — on calendar and completion date contracts — a description of how the anticipated weather days in Table 108.07-1 have been incorporated. With every monthly update: project schedule status, the critical path, and schedule revisions | 108.03.A, 108.03.C |
| Revised schedule trigger | The Engineer's written request, where the Engineer determines the actual work is significantly different from what the current schedule represents. Due within 7 calendar days of receiving the written request, meeting the full 108.03.A requirements | 108.03.C |
| Final schedule | A final schedule reflecting actual start and finish dates for every activity, submitted with the written notice of completion. Final acceptance under 105.15 is not granted until the Engineer receives and accepts it | 108.03.D |
| Time impact analysis | Not stated in this subsection. No fragnet, windows or time impact analysis requirement was found in 108.03. Time extension provisions elsewhere in Section 108 were not read for this page | Not established |
| Float ownership | Split at substantial completion. Up to substantial completion, neither party holds float for its exclusive use or benefit; it is instead a resource that either may draw on as needed, on a first-come, first-served basis. Past substantial completion, the Contractor owns it | 108.03.A |
| Activity durations | Limited to 20 working days, unless the Engineer allows otherwise | 108.03.A item 6 |
| Relationship types | Limited to finish-to-start, start-to-start and finish-to-finish. Start-to-finish is not among them. Leads and lags may be used where applicable | 108.03.A item 7 |
| Constraints | Contractual date constraints only | 108.03.A item 8 |
| Calendars | The work calendar is defined for each activity | 108.03.A item 9 |
| Required content | Activities for the work including engineering, surveying, permitting, submittals and resubmittals, approvals, procurement, fabrication, deliveries, crushing, utility work and third-party work; milestones, interim completion dates, the substantial completion date and the contract completion date; descriptions that make the work readily identifiable; and early and late start and finish dates for each activity | 108.03.A items 1–5 |
| Required deliverables | Three: a time-scaled logic diagram, a predecessor and successor report, and a bar chart printout. See the section below | 108.03.A |
| Notification | The Engineer is notified at least 2 business days before work stops, resumes, or the project schedule changes | 108.03.A |
| Cost | The work of preparing, updating and revising a schedule is incidental to the other pay items and is not paid separately | 108.03.A |
A plotted time-scaled logic diagram
Of the deliverables listed in 108.03.A, the first is the one no other agency document read for this site still asks for in this form. The time-scaled logic diagram is to be plotted on sheets with a horizontal time scale that is the project calendar, with each activity's duration and dates plotted against that scale, on a sheet size the Engineer has accepted. Per activity it carries the number and description, the duration, the total float, and the start and finish dates, scheduled or actual — and the diagram must show sequence, interdependence and the critical path.
The other two deliverables are reports rather than drawings. The predecessor and successor report defines the schedule logic and shows relationships and constraints. The bar chart printout carries, per activity, the activity number or ID, description, calendar, original duration, remaining duration, percent complete, early or actual start and finish, late start and finish, and total float.
Every field in those two reports is a field an exported schedule carries, so their content is readable from a file. A plotted diagram is a rendering choice, not a property of the data, and nothing in a schedule file records whether one was produced or at what sheet size.
Float that changes hands at substantial completion
108.03.A states float ownership in two sentences that do different things.
Up to substantial completion, the float belongs exclusively to neither side; either may draw on it as the need arises, in the order the need arises. That is the common shared-float formulation, and it appears in some form in most of the specifications compared on this site — the difference is the explicit first-come, first-served phrasing, which says how the sharing is settled rather than only that neither party owns it.
After substantial completion, float is owned by the Contractor. No other agency document read for this site draws that line. It changes what the same schedule means either side of one milestone: a path with ten days of total float is a shared buffer before substantial completion and the Contractor's buffer after it, with no change in the arithmetic.
Two things follow for anyone reading a schedule against this clause. The substantial completion date has to come from the contract and from the record of the record of when it was reached, not from the schedule file, where a milestone with that name may or may not exist and may or may not be the operative date. And total float is a computed quantity: what it is depends on what the backward pass ran from, so two tools can report different float for the same activities. This project computes its own forward and backward pass and reports both its own float and the float the file states, saying which it used. Float ownership sets out the clause family and total float and free float the arithmetic.
Naming Microsoft Project
Most of the agency documents read for this site either name Primavera or name no product at all. Idaho names Microsoft Project, as a compatibility target rather than as a mandated purchase: the schedule is created in a format compatible with the most current version, and each submittal is in that format.
Two consequences are worth stating plainly.
"The most current version" is a moving reference. Which version is current is a fact about the date of the submittal, not about the schedule, and the specification does not pin a version number.
The exchange format differs from the Primavera family. The XER and P6 XML files this project reads are Primavera formats. A schedule authored in Microsoft Project and exchanged in its native format is not one of them. Where a project is run under a Microsoft Project requirement, the practical question is what file a reviewer actually receives, and that is a project fact rather than something the specification settles. Schedule formats sets out which formats carry which fields, and what the engine does states what it reads.
A final schedule that gates final acceptance
108.03.D is short and its consequence is not. A final schedule reflecting actual start and finish dates for every activity is submitted with the written notice of completion, and final acceptance under 105.15 is withheld until the Engineer receives and accepts it.
That makes the as-built record a condition of closing the contract rather than a courtesy at the end of it. It also means the last schedule on a project is a different kind of document from every update before it: it is a record of what happened rather than a plan for what remains, and its dates should be actual throughout.
Whether a schedule's activities carry actual start and finish dates is readable from an imported file. Whether those dates match what happened on site is not.
What this page does not tell you
- It does not tell you which clauses govern your project. The incorporated contract documents govern — the edition named in the contract, any special provisions, and any supplemental specifications in force at letting. None of those were read for this page beyond the 2023 book itself.
- Only Subsection 108.03 was read, with 108.04 and the reference to 105.15 checked where 108.03 pointed at them. Time extension and weather-day provisions elsewhere in Section 108, including Table 108.07-1 itself, were not read clause by clause. The absence of a time impact analysis requirement above is an absence in what was read, not a finding that the contract contains none.
- This page does not reproduce the specification. The Department asserts copyright in the 2023 edition, so every requirement here is a characterisation in this project's own words. Where precise wording matters — and for a submittal it usually does — read the Department's own text.
- Every deadline in the table is a fact about a submission. A schedule file records a data date; it does not record the date of the preconstruction conference, the date of a written request, or the date of the notice of completion.
- There is no rule pack behind this page. It rests on a reading of the specification text, with each requirement cited to the subsection it came from. Nothing in this engine checks a schedule against these clauses today.
- This project computes and reports; it does not decide submissions. Whether a schedule is acceptable, whether a relationship type or a constraint was permitted, and whether more contract time is due, are determined by the reviewing authority.
Related pages
- How state DOT scheduling specifications compare.
- Neighbouring readings: Utah DOT · WSDOT · MnDOT.
- Float ownership · total float and free float.
- Schedule formats — what each exchange format carries.
- Lags and leads · schedule constraints · activity durations and logic.
- Schedule calendars · schedule narrative · baseline schedule submission.
- Glossary — total float, substantial completion, time-scaled logic diagram, lag.
- What the engine does and its limitations.
- The methods this project uses and the standards map.