Building & Updating the Schedule

Welcome

Hello, and welcome. This is Super Structures General Contractors — a national general contractor headquartered in Powhatan, Virginia — here to help you and your clients build something that lasts. We're glad you're with us, and we look forward to connecting with you.

Here's a topic that quietly separates the good from the great — Building & Updating the Schedule. Bottom line — write this one down: Build the schedule from a WBS with realistic durations, sound logic, milestones, and long-lead procurement as activities — then keep it current against the baseline; resource/cost-load it, check quality (DCMA), and remember a schedule that isn't updated is worthless and indefensible. This is how the pros pull ahead — and now it's yours.

A useful schedule is built right and kept current — most schedules fail not in the building but in the never-updating.

Build it, then maintain it

• Build: break work into activities (a work breakdown structure), assign durations (from production rates/experience), define the logic (what precedes what), add milestones, and freeze a baseline.
• Update: record actual progress, re-forecast the remaining work, and compare to the baseline to see slippage.

Going Deeper (Intermediate)

Right-size activities — not so granular they're noise, not so coarse they hide problems (often ~5–15 working days). Critically, include procurement, submittals, and long-lead items as activities, because those often drive the schedule. Set milestones and interim dates, treat the baseline as the contractual reference, and update from a clear data date (% complete and remaining duration).

Advanced / Pro-Level

Use resource leveling to smooth labor/equipment peaks and cost-loading to forecast cash flow. Check schedule quality with the DCMA 14-point assessment (logic, leads/lags, hard constraints, high float, negative float, etc.), and avoid the manipulation that makes a schedule useless. Above all, keep updating discipline — a stale schedule is worthless for management and indefensible in a claim. The plan is only as good as its maintenance.

Practice Challenge

Why must long-lead procurement (like switchgear or structural steel) appear as activities in the schedule, not just construction tasks? (Answer: procurement lead times often drive the critical path — if 16-week switchgear isn't ordered early, it stalls everything downstream. Modeling submittal → fabrication → delivery as activities reveals those constraints so you order in time, instead of discovering the delay in the field.)

Takeaway: Build the schedule from a WBS with realistic durations, sound logic, milestones, and long-lead procurement as activities — then keep it current against the baseline; resource/cost-load it, check quality (DCMA), and remember a schedule that isn't updated is worthless and indefensible.

Educational overview — methods, contracts, and laws vary by project and jurisdiction; follow your specific contract and consult professionals.