A DCMA 14-point check in plain language.

The DCMA 14-point assessment is a health check for the structure of a schedule, not its content. It doesn't ask whether your dates are right — it asks whether the network underneath them is sound enough to trust those dates at all. Think of it as a building inspection for your logic.

What the 14 points cluster into

The checks sound like a long list, but they group into four simple questions:

• Is everything connected? — Missing logic, dangling activities and tasks with no predecessor or successor. A network with gaps can't compute a reliable critical path.
• Is the logic honest? — Excessive leads, hard constraints standing in for real relationships, and high lag counts that hide the true sequence.
• Is it realistic? — Activities longer than two months, invalid dates in the past or future, and missing resources.
• Is it on track? — The Critical Path Length Index (CPLI) and Baseline Execution Index (BEI), which measure whether work is keeping pace.

Why gaming it backfires

It's tempting to tune a schedule to pass the thresholds — strip constraints, mass-edit lags, shorten activities on paper. But the metrics exist to surface real risk. A schedule tuned to score well while hiding broken logic will sail through the check and fail on site, which is exactly the outcome the assessment is meant to prevent.

The goal isn't a passing score. It's a schedule whose dates you can actually defend.

Running it continuously

Most teams run the 14-point check once, at baseline, then forget it as the schedule drifts. OPTEAM runs it automatically on every update — flagging new dangling logic, constraint creep or float erosion the moment they appear, so quality is maintained continuously rather than rediscovered at the next audit.