Critical path scheduling
A schedule you make decisions from, not one you report with. Levels 1 to 4, critical path method, tens of thousands of activities in Primavera P6.
Contractors send schedules in different formats and at different levels of detail — merging them into one is impossible.
Slippage becomes visible only once it can no longer be recovered.
It is unclear which delay moves the completion date and which merely eats into float.
The bank, the investor or head office asks for a schedule in a specific standard, and there is nothing to show.
Work breakdown structure
The project split into manageable packages by asset, stage and owner. The shared basis for schedule, budget and reporting.
Level 1–4 schedules
From the investor-level summary to the working site schedule. One project at different resolutions, with no contradictions between levels.
Baseline
The approved schedule that actuals are measured against. Without it, slippage has nothing to be compared to.
Critical path
The chain of activities that drives the completion date, and the float on everything else. It shows where a delay costs money and where it does not.
Resource and cost loading
The schedule becomes an S-curve of earned value and a period-by-period demand for labour and plant.
Update procedure
Who submits what and when, so the schedule stays alive rather than being refreshed once a quarter for a meeting.
Delay analysis
Variances traced to causes and to the party responsible — including as evidence in a dispute with a contractor.
- 1
Source data and WBS
We collect design documents, contracts, quantities and construction methods, build the hierarchy and agree it with the participants.
- 2
Building the schedule
Activities, durations, logic links and constraints. The logic is checked for loops, open ends and redundant constraints.
- 3
Baseline approval
Sign-off with the participants, the baseline fixed, and the rules for changing it agreed.
- 4
Update cycle
Progress collected, schedule updated, critical path and forecast completion recalculated. Typically weekly for the site and monthly for the investor.
- 5
Forecast and variance
What happens at the current rate, what recovery options exist, and what they would cost.
A schedule you can look at, not one emailed as a file
The S-curve, the schedule performance index and a Gantt chart with the critical path — in a dashboard the client has access to. Exactly what the home page shows, but for your project.
See what it looks like- What is the difference between schedule levels 1 to 4?
- It is one project at different resolutions. Level 1 is milestones for the investor and fits on a page. Level 2 covers stages and major assets. Level 3 is the working schedule the site runs on. Level 4 is contractor detail down to weekly and daily assignments. Lower levels must never contradict the higher ones.
- Does it have to be Primavera P6? We use MS Project.
- It does not. P6 earns its place on large projects with tens of thousands of activities and several contractors. On smaller projects MS Project copes. We work in both and can move the model between them.
- Why formally approve a baseline?
- Until the baseline is fixed, slippage is a matter of opinion. Once it is, every variance is measurable in days and money, and changes go through a procedure instead of quietly rewriting history.
- How often should the schedule be updated?
- Weekly for the site and monthly for investor reporting. Less often and the schedule stops reflecting reality, so people stop using it. More often and collecting the data costs more than it returns.
We run the whole project, but any single task can be taken on its own.
Ready to take your project under control?
Tell us about the task — within 1–2 days we will prepare a team structure, a roadmap and a commercial proposal.