Construction Management: Planning and Scheduling [Updated: 11/23/2022]

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 difference, and a proper plan is essential for an accurate schedule. Planning activities involve the logic of how a project will be constructed—beginning with the construction documents that define the end product, and then identifying the steps required to reach this end result. Scheduling consists of integrating the plan with a calendar and assigning time and resources to each task.

This course identifies the steps needed to develop a proper plan and shows you how that plan is transformed into a construction schedule. Instructor Jim Rogers shares examples of his own successes and failures in construction planning and scheduling, to lend real-world context to the concepts he covers. Plus, Jim goes over the future of planning and scheduling, as well as Lean principles with CPM.

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