Construction projects involve dozens of activities. Running all these activities at their due time is important for the completion of the project on its designated date of completion. This is not an easy feat to achieve. If you are about to begin with, your construction project, make sure you carry out efficient Scheduling for your project.
In today’s advanced age, there are numerous techniques available for the very purpose. You can make use of one of these techniques or a combination of these to ensure the timely completion of your project.
This article will introduce you to the scheduling techniques you can employ for your construction project.
Best techniques for construction project scheduling
With the help of efficient Scheduling, you will be able to avoid instances of issues in production and maintain the flow of information clear and smooth. This will save your project from facing a lack of productivity at any given point during the project lifecycle.
Following are the techniques you can use for efficiently scheduling your construction project:
1. Gantt chart schedule
Using bar charts can help you keep your project work on the track. Gantt charts provide you with the easiest and simplest way to maintain the progress and are most widely used in the construction industry for the very reason. They are simple as well as versatile. You have to list down all the activities of the project lifecycle and add all the necessary and relevant information about each of these activities.
The Gantt charts include the duration and completion date of any and all activities. The detail relevant to each activity that you add in the Gantt chart may differ for each construction project. The complexity of the chart is directly proportional to the complexity of the project itself.
2. Line of Balance
Construction projects often involve tons of repetitive work. For instance, the lining of bricks to form a wall is repetitive work necessary for the formation of all the walls of the building. Line of balance scheduling techniques is helpful in case of repetitive work. In this process, you have to allow the resources to every small component of work in order to avoid delay in activity performance.
But the delays may still arise. In such a situation, hiring a professional delay expert is an essential endeavor to take on. This will help you deal with the schedule delays and mitigate the negative consequences. It will not be wrong to say that the main purpose of the line of balance techniques is to help plan the manufacturing process.
3. Q scheduling
Q scheduling has, at its foundation, the line of balance technique. But the Q scheduling technique isn’t only meant for repetitive work components. Instead, the Q stands for two important terms: quantitative Scheduling and Queue scheduling.
These terms are indicative of the fact that the schedule involves the number of resources allocated for various activities of the project, and their Scheduling and sequence.
4. The critical path scheduling method
This technique of scheduling construction projects is not as simple as a Gantt chart. In fact, it is quite complicated. It involves a thorough breakdown of project work into small activities, setting a duration of them, and then assigning a sequence. But this sequence is condition. Some activities are independent, whereas others are dependent on the preceding activities.
This method takes the start date and time and end date and time of all the activities. It splits the work components and keeps gaps of small-time periods to compensate for delays, which may occur in the completion of certain activities. This helps avoid any delay claims, which cause you to seek the help of a delay expert to save the project from critical delays. CPM provides you with the most effective way to find the shortest possible path in terms of time to finish a certain set of activities.
5. Excel template sheets
Excel is one of the most practical and easy tools to use for scheduling purposes. It is as simple as it gets. You can keep the details of your project together with the help of excel templates. This set of collected details can provide you with a way to channel all the important updates and required changes to each other while working on the project, with the help of spreadsheets.
You can also provide access to relevant documents, pictures to the people concerned with the project in some capacity and allow them to give their input in the shape of comments.
Read also: Mistakes to Avoid in Scheduling of Construction Projects
Efficient Scheduling avoids delay claims!
Planning and Scheduling act as the groundwork for a construction project. Thus make sure you designate sufficient time to plan your project and schedule it in detail. You will thus be able to avoid delays in individual activities. In this way, you won’t have to face a decline in productivity or escalation of costs. Just make sure you have an expert witness in the loop to stay on the safe side, throughout the project lifecycle.