Scheduling that survives the site

A schedule can be logical and still a lie: a pour in nearly four years, to the day. Here is one that tells the truth.

Two hundred five-day pours, end to end. The last finishes on 30 August 2030. Nobody believes it. Plan by horizon. Within a month, nothing over three days; three months, two weeks; six, thirty; beyond, ninety.

The chart becomes a wedge: fine where you can see, coarse beyond. Read far dates as ranges. Total float and the critical path still work on a wedge. One chain here: all critical, float zero.

Weather is a number of lost days a year. Put them on the critical path as an allowance. Before anything moves, pin a baseline: Schedule, Baselines, choose this schedule, name it, then Add.

Set data date, tick Update progress as planned, Apply: progress up to then is recorded as planned. Then the storm: four more days on the task in progress, and the finish slips four days.

Shorten the allowance by four days, to six, and the finish comes back: 11 April 2028, unchanged. A dry season, and the allowance turns into float. Either way the schedule told the truth in advance.

Other risks get days too, from statistics or a register: the owner's here, the contractor's there, kept apart. The variance shows what the allowance absorbed: four days late along the chain, then zero.

A planning tool, not a defence exhibit: detail near, ranges far, the risk on the page.

That was the article, on a schedule. Next in the Guide: the logic habits, from the best-practice piece.

Taken from the video’s English captions.