Construction Management: Planning and Scheduling

Schedules are management tools that allow leaders to make informed decisions about activities on a construction site. Although the terms planning and scheduling are often used interchangeably, there is a significant difference between these two activities, and an accurate schedule cannot be developed without first developing a proper plan. Planning activities involve developing the logic of how a project is to be constructed—beginning with the construction documents that define the end product, and then identifying the individual tasks or steps required to arrive at this end result. Scheduling consists of integrating the plan with a calendar or time period, and assigning time durations and resources to each task.

This course identifies the steps needed to develop a proper plan, and demonstrates how that plan is transformed into a construction schedule. Throughout the course, instructor Jim Rogers shares examples of his own successes and failures in the areas of construction planning and scheduling, so as to lend real-world context to the concepts he covers.

Learning objectives
Types of schedules
Planning versus scheduling
Work breakdown structure
Developing a schedule
Creating a network model
Assigning durations, costs, and resources
Identifying the critical path
Letting the software do the calculations
Checking and updating the schedule
Scheduling's impact on productivity