Project Audit (DCMA Schedule Quality Audit)

Also referred to as Schedule Quality Audit and DCMA schedule quality audit. Available in ProjectLibre Cloud.

Build a quality schedule you can trust. Project Audit is ProjectLibre’s built-in schedule-quality audit. It automatically evaluates the structure and discipline of your CPM schedule using DCMA-style checks, identifies weaknesses, and lets you drill directly to the tasks that need attention. The result is a stronger schedule for planning, execution, forecasting, earned value, resource management and risk analysis.

Who it’s for: Project managers who need a systematic way to identify structural schedule issues, and anyone building or maintaining a CPM schedule who needs schedule-quality discipline throughout the project. Especially relevant for schedules used in execution, status reporting, earned value, resource management, forecasting, and Monte Carlo. DCMA quality audits are required for government contracts over $20 million; the same DCMA-style checks are widely used project-controls best practices well beyond defense contracting.

This is a PM / project-controls review of the live CPM model—not a team-member (My Work) feature.

See also: Gantt Chart · Linking Tasks and Dependencies · Main Views

Overview

A Gantt chart can look complete and still hide structural problems that distort the critical path, forecasts, and management decisions: missing logic, excessive float, long durations, restrictive constraints, invalid dates, and similar weaknesses.

Project Audit treats the schedule as a model of how the work is expected to happen. It analyzes the real CPM model ProjectLibre already calculates (network, dependencies, critical path, float, constraints, dates)—not a separate spreadsheet exercise—and automates DCMA 14-point schedule assessment concepts inside the project schedule.

What it helps you do:

• Audit the CPM schedule

• Highlight out-of-range tasks

• Fix issues and re-run

• Build a schedule you can trust

Why it matters:

Theme	What you gain
Better planning	Expose structural issues before they become execution problems.
More credible forecasts	Improve confidence that calculated dates and critical-path results are meaningful.
Faster correction	Drill directly into the tasks that caused a check to fail.
Continuous quality	Re-run the audit after changes and as the project schedule evolves.

ProjectLibre CPM Gantt chart schedule.

When to use

Valuable throughout the project:

• When building the schedule

• Before a baseline

• During updates

• Before major reviews

• Whenever schedule logic changes

• Especially before Monte Carlo — risk simulation is one downstream use of a quality schedule

What you get

The Schedule Quality Audit combines a spider chart, pass/fail summary, thresholds, and direct links to the affected tasks.

ProjectLibre presents this in two complementary ways:

1. Spider-chart audit profile (product overview) — each spoke is a schedule-quality check, with results you can inspect and drill into.

2. Schedule quality audit modal — a pass/fail list with summary badges, per-check rows, drill-down links, optional auto-fix actions, and a Re-run button.

The walkthrough video shows the list modal. The current product also adds the spider-chart visualization shown in the overview screenshots below. Use both: the spider for an at-a-glance profile, the modal list for check-by-check correction.

Spider chart (audit profile)

Each spoke of the spider chart is a schedule-quality check. Hover or click the audit chart to understand a specific check. The top of the profile summarizes the audit and explains each check. Per-check results show the measured value against the applicable threshold / limit / target.

Schedule quality audit modal

Opening the audit from the Gantt toolbar (see How to run, correct, and re-run) opens a modal titled Schedule quality audit.

The modal (as shown in the walkthrough) includes:

• Summary badges at the top — for example 4 PASSED, 6 FAILED, 4 NOT ASSESSABLE (demo values).

• A header Re-run button.

• Per-check rows with a description, status badge, metric vs threshold, and drill-down links such as Select N tasks in the grid.

• Optional auto-fix actions on some checks (examples from the demo: Zero 1 lead, Relax 2 to As Soon As Possible).

Pass, fail, caution, and not assessable

Status	Meaning
PASS	Within the quality limit (green badge in the modal).
CAUTION	Close to the limit.
FAIL	Outside the limit (red badge in the modal).
N/A	Cannot be assessed with current data (gray badge in the modal; also shown as NOT ASSESSABLE in the summary).

Some checks require a saved baseline or a must-finish target. If that data does not exist, the check shows as not assessable instead of a misleading result. In the walkthrough, status-driven metrics (Invalid dates, Missed tasks, Critical Path Length Index, Baseline Execution Index) show N/A without a status date and saved baseline.

Thresholds

• Missing Logic: threshold 5%, demo measured 13%.

• High Duration: 5% tolerance; the demo highlighted four long tasks (15-day, 50-day, 20-day, 46-day).

Drill-down to tasks

Use the right-side results (spider profile) or the per-check rows in the modal to jump directly to problem tasks. Failed checks can include a link such as Select 39 tasks in the grid (wording from the overview; N is the failing count). Click it to highlight the offending activities in the project grid.

From there you correct the schedule (for example in the predecessor column or by changing duration) and Re-run.

DCMA 14-point schedule assessment

ProjectLibre automates DCMA 14-point schedule assessment concepts inside the project. Check names below follow the product overview; modal labels from the walkthrough are noted where they add UI wording.

#	Check	What it finds / assesses
1	Missing Logic	Incomplete activities missing a predecessor or successor relationship.
2	Leads	Negative lag / lead relationships that can obscure schedule logic. Modal: Leads (negative lags).
3	Lags	Use of lag in relationships; flag excessive reliance on it.
4	Relationship Types	Whether the network relies excessively on relationship types other than Finish-to-Start. Modal: Relationship types (Finish-Start share).
5	Hard Constraints	Restrictive constraints that can override normal network logic.
6	High Float	Activities with unusually high total float (may indicate weak/incomplete logic).
7	Negative Float	Activities whose calculated dates conflict with required or constrained dates.
8	High Duration	Long-duration activities that may need to be broken into more manageable work packages.
9	Invalid Dates	Date conditions inconsistent with schedule status and progress rules.
10	Resources	Resource loading where the assessment can be applied. Modal: Unresourced tasks.
11	Missed Tasks	Uses baseline information to identify activities that missed planned completion expectations.
12	Critical Path Test	Whether delaying a critical activity appropriately moves the project finish.
13	Critical Path Length Index (CPLI)	Critical-path realism against a target or must-finish date when one exists.
14	Baseline Execution Index (BEI)	Compare completed activities with activities that should have completed according to the baseline.

Status-driven metrics (Invalid dates, Missed tasks, Critical path test, CPLI, BEI) become especially important once the project is updated against the approved baseline. Together they go beyond formatting rules: they help determine whether the schedule remains logically credible and whether actual execution is tracking the approved plan.

High Duration guidance (walkthrough): activities longer than the DCMA guideline are hard to measure and control. Instead of one 50-day activity, consider breaking work into measurable stages such as fabrication, inspection, factory acceptance, testing, and shipment.

How to run, correct, and re-run

Open Project Audit

1. Open a project so the Gantt chart is in view (Gantt Chart / Main Views).

2. On the top toolbar / ribbon above the Gantt chart, click the icon that looks like a document/clipboard with a checkmark and the letters DC.

3. Tooltip: Schedule quality audit (DCMA).

4. The Schedule quality audit modal opens.

Adjacent on the same toolbar: Schedule risk analysis (Monte Carlo) — see Audit then Monte Carlo.

Workflow:

1. Create or import the schedule — Build the CPM schedule in ProjectLibre or import from another scheduling system.

2. Run Project Audit — Open Schedule quality audit (DCMA) from the Gantt toolbar as above. The product evaluates the schedule against the DCMA-style quality checks.

3. Drill down and fix — Click Select N tasks in the grid (or the equivalent results link) so problem tasks are highlighted in the grid. Correct the schedule—for example add a predecessor in the predecessor column, adjust duration, or use a modal auto-fix when one is offered (Zero 1 lead, Relax 2 to As Soon As Possible in the demo). Re-calculate as needed.

4. Re-run — Use the modal Re-run button (or run the audit again) to confirm that schedule quality improved before relying on the model for decisions.

Walkthrough example (demo project: secure facility network modernization):

• The audit failed missing logic, leads, and hard constraints among the 14 points; some checks passed. Summary example: 4 PASSED, 6 FAILED, 4 NOT ASSESSABLE.

• Missing Logic was at 13% vs a 5% threshold. Clicking the task link highlighted gaps in the grid. Task independent safety review was missing a predecessor; entering predecessor 3 in the predecessor column, then Re-run, dropped the missing-logic count to three.

• High Duration at 5% tolerance highlighted four tasks (15-day, 50-day, 20-day, 46-day). After a duration change, Re-run reduced high-duration tasks to three.

Closing workflow from the walkthrough: run → identify → correct → re-run.

Audit the schedule first, then Monte Carlo

A quality schedule is the foundation for risk simulation. Framed workflow:

1. Schedule — Build the CPM model.

2. Audit — Find structural weaknesses.

3. Improve — Correct issues and re-run.

4. Monte Carlo — Simulate uncertainty on the stronger schedule.

On the Gantt toolbar, Schedule risk analysis (Monte Carlo) sits adjacent to Schedule quality audit (DCMA). A simulation repeatedly recalculates the CPM schedule under uncertainty; if the underlying network has missing logic, excessive float, unrealistic durations or restrictive constraints, the analysis can be statistically sophisticated but based on a weak model. Stronger logic improves critical path analysis, resource planning, forecasting, and Monte Carlo risk analysis.

Disclaimer

ProjectLibre Project Audit uses DCMA-style schedule-quality checks as a diagnostic aid. It is not a government certification or endorsement. The audit helps identify schedule-quality weaknesses and supports better scheduling discipline; it is not a government certification of the project schedule.

Watch the walkthrough

Watch: DCMA Project Quality Audit (5:04) — ProjectLibre project management software.

The video explains the schedule-quality audit and the practical checks behind it, including the Schedule quality audit modal, drill-down into the grid, and Re-run. The current product also adds the spider-chart visualization shown in the screenshots above.

Summary: Use Project Audit to test, improve and verify the schedule throughout the project—and to provide a stronger foundation for execution, forecasting, earned value, resource management and Monte Carlo risk analysis.