What is a construction schedule?
A construction schedule is a programme of activities, each with a duration and the activity it must follow. From those, planned start and finish dates are worked out and drawn as a bar chart. Recording actual dates and percent complete against it marks each activity as on track, behind or complete.
A construction programme in Excel. List the activities, give each a duration in working days and the activity it must follow, and the sheet works out planned start and finish dates — skipping Sundays and the holidays you list — and draws the bar chart week by week. As the job runs, enter actual dates and percent complete, set the status date, and every activity is marked on track, behind or complete.
What is in the construction schedule workbook?
- Project Details — project particulars, project start date, status date, working week and holiday list.
- Schedule — the activity list, calculated dates and status, and the weekly bar chart.
- Filled Sample — a G+2 residential building programmed from start to handover, with progress recorded to mid-July.
How does the construction schedule sheet calculate?
- Planned start = the next working day after the later-finishing of its predecessors, plus the lag in working days — but never before the project start date or the start-no-earlier-than date. An activity with no predecessor starts on the first working day on or after the project start.
- Planned finish = planned start + (duration − 1) working days. A duration of 0 makes a milestone whose finish equals its start.
- Working days exclude Sundays on a 6-day week (nothing on a 7-day week) and every date on the holiday list, using Excel's WORKDAY.INTL and NETWORKDAYS.INTL.
- Planned % at status date = working days from planned start to the status date ÷ duration, capped at 0% and 100%.
- Status is Complete when an actual finish is entered or progress is 100%; Should have started when nothing has begun but the planned start has passed; Behind when % complete is below the planned %; otherwise On track or Not started.
Worked example from the sample sheet: with the project starting on Monday 6 April 2026 and a 6-day week, six days of mobilisation run from 6 to 11 April and excavation starts on 13 April, skipping Sunday the 12th. Twenty-four linked activities, with two fixed national holidays and example festival closures, give a planned handover of 14 January 2027.
How do you use the construction schedule template?
- On Project Details, enter the project start date, choose a 6-day or 7-day working week, and list holidays and any days the site will be shut.
- On Schedule, overwrite the suggested activities with your own. Give each a duration in working days and up to two predecessors. A predecessor must be listed above the activity that depends on it.
- Use Lag for a wait after the predecessor finishes, and Start No Earlier Than for a date you cannot start before.
- Each week, set the status date and update actual dates and percent complete. Status compares your progress with the planned progress at that date.
- Do not type in the bar chart area — the bars are drawn from the dates.
What should you check before relying on the construction schedule?
- The dates are only as good as the durations. A duration should come from the quantity of work divided by the output of the gang you will actually deploy, not from a guess at the finish date.
- Only finish-to-start links are modelled. Where activities genuinely overlap, split them by floor or zone and link the pieces.
- Formwork striking and curing periods are set by IS 456 and your specification, not by this sheet. Enter the lag your engineer has approved.
- The workbook uses WORKDAY.INTL and NETWORKDAYS.INTL, which need Excel 2010 or later, or a current version of LibreOffice or Google Sheets.
What does each column mean?
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| ID / Activity | A number and a name for each activity. The suggested list follows a typical framed building; overwrite it with your own. |
| Duration | Working days to complete the activity. 0 makes it a milestone. |
| Pred. 1 / Pred. 2 | IDs of up to two activities that must finish before this one starts. A predecessor must be listed above the activity that depends on it. |
| Lag | Working days to wait after the predecessor finishes — curing before de-shuttering, for example. |
| Start No Earlier Than | Optional. A date the activity cannot start before, such as a material delivery. |
| Planned Start / Planned Finish | Auto-calculated from duration, predecessors, lag, the working week and your holiday list. |
| Actual Start / Actual Finish / % Complete | Entered by you as the work runs. |
| Planned % at Status Date | Auto-calculated. Working days elapsed at the status date as a share of the duration. |
| Status | Auto-calculated. Complete, On track, Behind, Not started or Should have started. |
| Finish Variance | Auto-calculated. Actual finish minus planned finish, in calendar days — positive means late. |
A programme is only tracked if progress is recorded. The daily progress report is the site record the actual dates and percent complete on this schedule are updated from.
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