A construction schedule refers to an outline of a project aimed at organizing tasks and activities, estimating their duration, identifying their dependencies, setting up overall milestones and putting all these information on a timeline. Besides, it also defines all the resources required to complete these tasks.
All the work needed to finish the deliverables of a specific project can be accounted for using a schedule. It also shows all the associated costs put in the project budget. As you can see, a construction schedule is an essential tool you can use to implement a project within budget and on time. This page discusses what you need to know about construction scheduling.
Understanding construction schedule
You can create and track construction schedules using construction scheduling software. This system has several key features to allow you to monitor the progress of resources, tasks, and even costs in real-time. Even better, they can also assign link dependent tasks, work, allocate resources, view dashboards, and many more.
For example, you can find some construction scheduling software that has online Gantt Charts suitable for scheduling tasks and resources. Also, they have team management features as well as reporting tools to give a comprehensive project management platform.
Keep in mind that you can create construction schedules during the planning phase. They are also important when you need to create a project plan when you identify requirements and deliverables. The construction schedule is designed to guide you during the execution of the project.
Therefore, you can use a construction schedule during the execution phase and use it as a baseline to compare the actual progress. Some of the things to include when creating a construction schedule include deliverables, tasks, budgets, dependencies, resource duration, task duration, and project deadline.
Construction schedule steps
When creating a construction schedule, you can utilize a construction schedule template that gives construction schedule examples and a construction schedule for free. However, the best way is to use construction management software that integrates the construction schedule into other construction management features. These features include dashboards, reports that monitor progress.
Depending on which path you decide to create a construction project, there are some key steps you need to make. These include defining the person in charge of the schedule, identifying all the project activities and tasks, figuring out the tasks that are dependent on other tasks, estimating the required resources, sequencing all the activities and tasks chronologically, and determining the duration of activities and tasks.
It’s worth noting that estimating the duration of activities and tasks accurately can create a realistic schedule. Therefore, you need to use several construction scheduling techniques. You can interview your team and other stakeholders to have their perspectives on how long specific tasks can take, and compare their responses to the historic data you got from similar previous projects.
On the other hand, you can also use mathematical tools as well. For example, you can use the critical path method which is an equation that indicated the longest timeline to complete the project.