The schedule
Move one bar and watch what follows
Why this one matters
A list of dates is not a programme. It is a picture of one possible future, accurate until the first thing slips — and on a building job the first thing slips in week two.
What makes a programme worth keeping is the links between the tasks. Move the slab and the frame moves, the plumber moves, the lock-up claim moves, and you knew on the Tuesday rather than in week eleven.
What you will see
- Tasks linked so the dates move together instead of one at a time
- Lag on the waits that always get left out — curing, drying, lead times
- The critical path, so a delay that matters looks different from one that does not
- A programme imported from MS Project rather than retyped
What was said
The narration, word for word, for anyone who would rather read it than watch it — or who is on a train.
The schedule is your programme: every task, how long it takes, and what it's waiting on.
Add a task with its duration. Group tasks into stages to keep a long programme readable.
Link tasks that depend on each other. Framing can't start until the slab is down.
Most links are finish to start. Start to start, and a lag, cover the rest: the plasterer can start two days after the electrician.
Foundations is running two days late. Because the tasks after it are linked, everything downstream has already moved.
When something slips, change the task that slipped, and let the rest follow. Don't drag later tasks back to protect the finish date. That just hides the slip.
The critical path is the chain of tasks with no room to move. A day lost there is a day lost at handover.
Save the plan as a baseline while you still believe it. Later, it's the only honest answer to: are we behind?
Switch between days, weeks and months to see the detail, or the whole job.
Each task can carry its cost and the person doing it. A task connected to a purchase order takes both from the order, so the subcontractor's name appears on the bar. Or set them by hand, or take the cost from a cost code, and the schedule becomes your cash flow too.
Calendar sets the working week and start date for this job, and its holidays as well as the company's. Durations skip the days nobody works, so the dates are real.
You rarely start from nothing. The Schedule menu exports to and imports from MS Project, starts from a template, builds tasks from your cost codes, or adds a task for each purchase order.
Doing it, rather than watching it
This page is the tour. When you are in SmarteBuild with a job open and need the detail — every option, every exception, the things the video had no time for — the help centre has the full article.
Building a schedule — the full reference
Read about it instead: Schedule & Gantt · Call-Up Sheets · Procurement
Start with one job and see
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