The DCMA 14-Point Assessment, Explained for Construction

The DCMA 14-Point Assessment is a set of schedule health checks developed by the U.S. Defense Contract Management Agency for reviewing contractor schedules on defense programs. It's become a common yardstick well outside defense, including in construction, because it turns "this schedule looks sloppy" into specific, countable problems. This post walks through all fourteen checks, the thresholds usually applied, what each one means on a building job, and where the checks are less useful than they look.

How to use it

The 14 points are a screening tool, not a grade. A schedule can pass all fourteen and still be a bad plan, and a schedule can fail a few for good reasons. Use the results to find the activities worth looking at, then look at them.

Most checks count incomplete activities only, and many exclude summary activities and milestones. Tools vary in exactly what they include, so when you compare results across software, expect small differences.

The fourteen checks

#	Check	What it counts	Usual threshold
1	Logic	Incomplete activities missing a predecessor or successor	5% or less
2	Leads	Relationships with negative lag	0
3	Lags	Relationships with positive lag	5% or less
4	Relationship types	Share of relationships that are finish-to-start	90% or more
5	Hard constraints	Activities with hard (date-fixing) constraints	5% or less
6	High float	Activities with total float over 44 working days	5% or less
7	Negative float	Activities with total float below zero	0
8	High duration	Activities with duration over 44 working days	5% or less
9	Invalid dates	Actuals after the data date, or forecasts before it	0
10	Resources	Activities without resources or cost assigned	Depends on whether the schedule is loaded
11	Missed tasks	Activities that should have finished by now per baseline but didn't on time	5% or less
12	Critical path test	Does a delay to the critical path move the finish by the same amount?	Pass/fail
13	CPLI	Critical Path Length Index	0.95 or more
14	BEI	Baseline Execution Index	0.95 or more

The 44-day figure in checks 6 and 8 is roughly two months of working days. Now each one in construction terms.

1. Logic

Every activity except the project start and finish should have at least one predecessor and one successor. An activity with no successor is an open end: if it slips, nothing downstream notices. An "Install rooftop units" activity with no successor can run three weeks late without moving TCO, which is nonsense.

This is the check to fix first. See Open Ends and Dangling Logic.

2. Leads

A lead is a negative lag: "start drywall 3 days before rough-in inspection finishes." Leads are hard to read and easy to misuse. Usually the logic should be rewritten as a start-to-start relationship or the activities split by area.

3. Lags

Positive lags aren't wrong. A 7-day lag for concrete cure before stripping forms is reasonable. But lags are invisible on most Gantt views and nobody updates them. Too many lags means logic is hiding in places reviewers can't see. See Lags and Leads.

4. Relationship types

The check wants at least 90% finish-to-start. Construction schedules often lean on start-to-start and finish-to-finish pairs for overlapping trades, which is legitimate. Falling a bit under 90% isn't a crisis. Start-to-finish relationships, which are rare and usually a mistake, deserve a look whenever they appear.

5. Hard constraints

Hard constraints are those that fix a date regardless of logic, such as Must Start On, Must Finish On, Start No Later Than, and Finish No Later Than. They override the network and can hide delay. Soft constraints like Start No Earlier Than (for a material delivery or permit date) are usually fine. See Schedule Constraints.

6. High float

Lots of activities with two-plus months of float usually means missing successors. A landscaping activity with 120 days of float probably isn't linked to substantial completion. Some activities really do have big float (early procurement, an isolated site utility); check them, don't just delete float.

7. Negative float

Negative float means the schedule can't meet a constraint or deadline as currently planned. It's not a schedule error; it's a message. The schedule is behind its target. The check flags it so that someone explains it and shows a recovery plan.

8. High duration

Long activities are hard to status. "Interior finishes, 90 days" can be 40% complete for months. Break them down by floor, area, or trade. Exceptions are reasonable for things like procurement of long-lead equipment, where the duration is the vendor's lead time.

9. Invalid dates

Actual dates in the future or forecast dates in the past. These are always errors. See The Data Date, Explained.

10. Resources

This checks whether activities have resources or costs assigned. If your contract doesn't require a resource- or cost-loaded schedule, this check isn't meaningful and you can say so. If it does, unloaded activities are a gap.

11. Missed tasks

Of the activities whose baseline finish is on or before the data date, how many actually finished later than their baseline finish (or haven't finished)? This measures how well the job is executing to plan. A high number means the baseline was unrealistic, the job is struggling, or both.

12. Critical path test

Add a large delay to an activity on the critical path, recalculate, and see whether the project finish moves by the same amount. If it doesn't, the critical path is broken somewhere: a constraint, an open end, or a lag absorbs the delay. Run it on a copy.

13. Critical Path Length Index (CPLI)

CPLI measures how efficiently the remaining critical work must be performed to finish on time.

CPLI = (Critical path length + Total float) / Critical path length

Critical path length = working days from data date to forecast finish
Total float          = float on the critical path relative to the contract finish

Example:
Critical path length = 200 days
Total float          = -10 days (forecast is 10 days past the contract date)
CPLI = (200 + (-10)) / 200 = 190 / 200 = 0.95

A CPLI of 1.0 means you're exactly on track. Below 0.95 means the remaining work must be done noticeably faster than planned to finish on time.

14. Baseline Execution Index (BEI)

BEI = Activities actually completed / Activities that should be completed per baseline

Example, at data date:
Baseline says 100 activities should be finished by now
Actually finished: 92 (including any finished that weren't due yet)
BEI = 92 / 100 = 0.92  -> below the 0.95 threshold

BEI is a throughput measure. It doesn't care whether the late activities are critical. A BEI of 0.92 with all critical work on time is a different story from 0.92 with the steel package behind.

Reading the results

Prioritize the checks that affect the integrity of the critical path:

Logic (open ends)
Critical path test
Invalid dates
Hard constraints
Negative float, with explanation

Then deal with the stylistic ones: lags, relationship types, high duration. Those matter, but a schedule with 8% lags and solid logic is in better shape than one with 2% lags and forty open ends.

When you report failures, explain them. "Check 4: 84% FS. The difference is SS/FF pairs used for overlapping interior trades on floors 2 through 6, which is intentional." That's a complete answer.

Where the checks fall short

They don't tell you whether durations are realistic.
They don't check whether the sequence is constructible.
They can be gamed. Replace a lag with a dummy activity, and the lag count drops without improving anything.
Percentage thresholds hide concentrated problems. Three open ends on the critical path matter more than thirty on minor activities.

Use them alongside a human review. schedule.construction runs DCMA-style checks on every update, which handles the counting; deciding what the counts mean is still your job. For owners reviewing a submittal, see What Owners Should Check in a Baseline Schedule Submittal.

Key takeaways

The 14 points are a screening tool for schedule mechanics, not a measure of plan quality.
Fix logic, invalid dates, and hard constraints first; they break the critical path.
CPLI and BEI measure performance; the other twelve mostly measure construction of the schedule.
Explain failures instead of gaming the numbers.
Pair the checks with a review by someone who knows how the building goes together.