How To Use Project Schedules In Residential Construction
Schedules are an integral part of life. They keep the entire world running on time - including your residential construction business.
We all have the same 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week, and 8736 hours a year. And construction schedules help us to ensure we're using those hours as efficiently as possible.
Since you can't add hours to the day, a construction project schedule helps you use the time you have to focus on the tasks to increase productivity.
Why Schedules are Important
Remodeling or custom building homes are complex projects with thousands of individual tasks involving many people, from trade partners to team members to clients. The best way to keep the entire project team aligned on what's happening - and when it's supposed to happen, is to use a project schedule as part of your building process because:
It sets a realistic timeline for the completion of the project plan.
It allows trade partners to input valuable information based on their experience.
It enables you to confidently guide your clients on how long they need to vacate their homes (and keeps them from trying to move back in early, delaying the project.)
It ensures the right amount of time is allotted for proper quality control of the work.
It allows you to identify parallel project activity streams that can be completed concurrently.
It allows you to ensure project teams aren't working on top of each other and compromising the quality of their work.
It identifies potential risks or threats to the project and allows you to schedule ample time to manage them.
We can also use Project Schedules to highlight the design selection items we'll need at various project stages. For example, cabinets have a long lead time and can take months before they are built, finished, and delivered. But other finishes like countertops, sinks, and tile can't be installed without them.
Those delays impact your project's overall timeline and budget and can have domino effects on trade partner schedules, making them less inclined to work with you on future building projects.
Using a Design Selections Schedule that you create in your pre-construction planning will aid in identifying long-lead time items and ensure that while you're addressing the "first up" items like windows and plumbing, you're not jeopardizing progress later on during the build.
It is also a very powerful collaboration tool to use with your interior design partners on the project so that they are focused on the things you need first (windows and plumbing fixtures) instead of working on things that aren't relevant yet (the hardwood finish and location of bathroom accessories).
What are the Most Common Construction Scheduling Formats
The two most common formats residential construction professionals use in construction project planning are calendar views and Gantt charts.
The calendar view shows the phase and/or task in a monthly format and is typically a helpful and digestible view for your clients. On a larger project, it's more of a focused view and doesn't show the 'big picture.'
Gantt charts, in contrast, are bar charts that show the entire project's duration in a wider view. They are visual and helpful for the project manager to see the overall project plan. This helps to identify areas where certain tasks that are overlapping or parallel activities can happen and highlight where tasks could be negatively impacted by overcrowding or stacking them.
List view is also something you might be familiar with and use in your daily task manager (aka your notebook). Task lists are helpful for each specific portion of the project but are not an effective overall construction scheduling tool as they are too focused on the minutia of the job. These tend to be more effective for the final 1 - 2 weeks of your project, where you schedule resources by day.
Regardless of the format that you choose to use, a good project schedule will include:
Start date and finish date for major phases of the project.
Start date and finish date for the individual components of the major phases.
Clear dependencies between tasks to ensure that if one part of the project is delayed, it's easy to shift everything in line.
How Much Detail Should a Construction Schedule Have
A project calendar can have three levels of detail or transparency. Who you're sharing the schedule with will determine how much detail you want to reveal.
In residential construction projects, schedules are typically broken down into three levels:
Phases
Blocks
Tasks
Phases, blocks, and tasks have their own level of detail and importance depending on the audience.
Phases are the highest level view with the lowest level of detail, covering the broad phase that the project is in. For example, "groundwork" is a phase.
Blocks are the next level, representing the longer parts of each phase, broken down into categories. For example, the 'groundwork' phase can be broken down into these blocks:
Land clearing
Excavation
Footings
Foundation walls (form + pour)
Sub-slab drains
Sub-slab prep
Concrete flatwork
Tasks represent the most granular level of detail and are used to break down the steps for each of the blocks we've listed above.
For example, the 'Excavation' block can be broken down into these individual tasks:
Schedule locates
Surveyor to mark positions
Client approval on orientation/location on the lot
Site hoarding for safety
Tree protection/burn area requirements/ravine or erosion protection
Remove fencing, or adjacent neighbor sheds to prevent damage from machinery
Crushed gravel installed for machinery
Critical Path Scheduling
Every project has a critical path - which is the minimum amount of time required to complete the entire project from start to finish. The Critical path method helps outline the dependencies between the phases, blocks, and tasks on your construction schedule.
Dependencies refer to tasks in sequential order that are dependent on each other. In other words, a dependent task only starts when another task is completed or started.
If one item in your critical path is delayed, the entire project is delayed. This is why scheduling is so crucial because countless things can go wrong, adding extra time to a project's length (and additional frustration for the client), all of which can eat into your profit's bottom line.
For simplicity's sake, we'll look at two types of dependencies you'll likely encounter.
End to Start: This will be the most common dependency you are likely familiar with and the most common one you'll program. It simply means, "I can't start Task B until Task A is complete." If Task A is delayed, so is Task B.
For example, you can't prime walls until the drywall taping, sanding, and clean-up are completed first.
Start to Start: This is the second most common dependency and one of the most crucial techniques in delivering on-time projects. In a start-to-start dependency, you receive a signal to start Task B when Task A starts. This means they will run in parallel. Start-to-start dependencies are also known as "proactive tasks."
For example, the start of insulation is a signal to ensure that interior doors and trim are ordered, so they arrive on time.
Float time, in its simplest explanation, means that the task on the schedule can change in either its duration or start/end time without impacting the subsequent task or overall project time.
Float time can either be "free float," which means there's time within the task for it to be completed without impacting the subsequent task, or "total float," which means that there's time within the task for it to be completed without jeopardizing the overall construction plan timeline.
Critical path tasks (End-to-Start dependencies) don't have any float time because each subsequent task depends on the prior task's completion. Start-to-Start dependencies do allow for "free" or "total" float time, but it's crucial to remember that you shouldn't regularly push tasks off as that's the easiest way for the project team to get behind on a project.
When to Start a Project Schedule
It's best to start a project schedule during your pre-construction process for a few key reasons.
First, for our clients, the project schedule shows them the overall project scope and timeline so they know what to expect during this journey, and it lets them know what their deadlines are for submitting design selections to you.
Second, for us as home builders and construction managers, the project schedule can be a helpful tool in making sure we haven't underestimated costs for the project, particularly for internal labor. Because we tend to estimate projects in silos (or blocks), it can be easy to underestimate the amount of labor we need for each phase as we're not seeing the "big picture" - and that's money we're potentially leaving on the table.
By taking your estimate and populating it across the full project schedule timeline, you can double-check your accuracy to ensure you've captured the correct labor hours for each phase of the project. More often than not, doing this uncovers gaps where additional labor is needed - and that's billable time to the client.
To learn more about how to estimate labor for your remodeling projects, click here.
Sharing Schedules with Stakeholders
The different stakeholders on a project (your team, trade partners, and clients) may have different needs when it comes to scheduling information, so it's important to determine how much detail you want to share with each.
Clients
Schedules are often your client's only lens into the timeline of the project, so it's important to share it with them. But it's better to give them high-level views of the overall project scope and not bog them down with individual tasks that they won't understand and that can expose you and your team to unnecessary liability.
The "Phases" and "Blocks" portions of the schedule give clients the relevant information and reassurance they need during this process without overwhelming them.
For example, your client doesn't need to know the exact date a specific trade is supposed to be on-site because if that trade is delayed for any reason, it can create doubt or frustration for your client (and more time you'll need to spend fielding their questions). But letting them know that this resource will be on-site during a specific week or phase gives them peace of mind (and you the breathing room in case a trade is delayed by a day or two.)
Trade Partners
Your trade partners value good construction project scheduling because it ensures that you are ready for them when you call them and that they aren't stacked on top of each other, causing friction when completing certain tasks. But they don't need the whole project calendar sent to them, nor do they need the minutia of the work breakdown structure. They are professionals and know how to do their job.
Your role is to schedule your trade partners with the right amount of physical space and time for them to execute their project activity. Most trade partners don't want to be added to your construction management software and get a notification every time a prior phase is delayed. Instead, they want you to call them directly in advance so they can divert their teams to other projects that are ready for them.
Internal Team
Your team members are knee-deep in the minutia and need the highest level of detail about the phases, blocks, and tasks. They will be aware of who is scheduled to be on-site each week (and often daily) and the broken-down tasks that you are performing internally.
They should be added to your project management tools and interact with the construction project schedule to achieve the best outcome. Their perspective on project pace will ensure that clients are happy with the overall progress, your trades feel respected because you're ready for them and they have the right environment to succeed, and your construction teams have clear alignments on the sequence of self-performed tasks.
Eight Tips for Using Project Schedules Effectively
These eight tips will help you implement a rock-solid process for creating and managing schedules for your residential construction company.
1. Color Code Your Teams
Choose one color for your internal teams and different colors for everyone else involved in the project so that you can easily identify where your teams will be at any given point throughout the job. Assign the same color to your internal team for every project schedule.
2. Allow for Overflow Time
Overlap phases within the construction schedule and provide yourself plenty of 'overflow' to account for typical delays and stuff that happens on job sites like trade scheduling issues, design changes, material procurement delays, etc. Don't forget that project delays for any of those reasons are billable delays and that you should be issuing change orders for them. Read more about how to use change orders in your residential construction business here.
3. Collaboration is Key
Always collaborate with your teams and other professional partners when creating schedules. As humans, we often succumb to the "Planning Fallacy," where we underestimate the time it will take to complete a task, despite knowing that similar past project activity has typically taken much longer. We benefit from the objective view of other people's experiences to help us see when we're being unrealistic.
4. Think in Weeks, NOT Months
There are 12 months in a year that break down into 52 weeks, meaning that, on average, each month has more than four weeks. So when planning your schedule, think in weeks, not months.
5. Define the Critical Path
Challenge yourself to think about the elements that are dependent on each other first (critical path method), and then color in the items that have either free float or total float time.
6. Create a Couple of Templates
Create and use templates for a couple of the different project types you and your team work on, and be consistent with them, especially when setting alignments with clients. Everyone thinks about scheduling differently, and most people aren't effective at scheduling because, again, planning fallacy.
7. Don't Forget the Updates
Project schedules are organic documents that are constantly changing. Make it a routine to update schedules weekly, so everyone (team members, professional partners, and clients) are always working with the most current set of facts.
(Pro tip: if you're using cloud-based construction scheduling software that shares information in real-time, take it offline while working on it to avoid confusion!)
8. Switch to Days vs. Weeks
For smaller projects (those typically less than 30 days), schedule in days instead of weeks. And if you're working on a larger project and get inside the 30-day window to completion, switch to a "day" view.
Master the Art of Using Schedules
Construction project schedules play several vital roles in ensuring the success of your remodeling or custom home-building business and in providing a superior experience for your clients.
Your schedule is both a key planning/executional tool and integral in keeping all stakeholders informed and up to date.
There's an old saying that goes, "the moment you've finished the schedule, it's out of date." And while this is often true, it's important for a project manager to use one to steer the ship in the right direction. Otherwise, you could be operating like a one-legged duck swimming in a circle.
Mastering the art of using schedules takes practice, and if you're not ready to jump right into using construction scheduling software to manage your project schedules, consider using a construction schedule template instead.
The BUILD AND PROFIT SYSTEM is a complete operating system for your remodeling or custom home-building business with over 30+ templates ranging from Schedules to Construction Checklists and everything in between.
If you'd like to learn more about how joining the program can change the trajectory of your 2023, click below to get started.
