The agreed programme was edited in place
The programme issued at contract award was the working file. Six months of updates later nobody can show what was agreed, only what is now forecast.
Programme
Baseline programme: the fixed plan you measure slippage against
A programme that is updated every week cannot show how far the job has slipped, because the thing it slipped from has been overwritten. A baseline is the copy you keep: the agreed programme frozen on a date, so that every later version can be laid over it and the difference read in days. This page explains what a baseline is, how variance is read, and how Fidrel saves and shows one.
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Why programmes lose their baseline
Baseline kept as a PDF
The agreed programme survives as a printout. Comparing it with today’s plan means reading two documents side by side with a ruler, and a reader who was not there cannot tell which activities moved.
Several baselines, no names
A re-baselined programme after a major variation is a legitimate new reference, but if it simply replaces the first, the slippage before the variation vanishes. Baselines need names and dates, and all of them need keeping.
What a baseline programme is
A baseline is a snapshot of the programme at a moment that matters: contract award, the start on site, or an agreed re-programming after a change. It holds every activity’s dates, the links between them and the working calendar as they were on that day, and it is never edited afterwards. The current programme carries on changing as progress and forecasts are entered. Variance is the difference between the two, read activity by activity or at the finish. Without a baseline a programme can show where the job is, but not how it got there.
Scheduling
How to read variance
The simplest reading is at the finish: the forecast completion against the baseline completion, in days. A plus figure is a later finish. Fidrel shows this as a key figure under Baseline comparison and flags it when the finish has moved later. The second reading is per activity: the activities that have moved carry the baseline as a grey line under their bars, so you see which started late, which overran, and which were moved deliberately to recover. The third is the pattern: slippage that appears at one activity and runs down the chain after it points at a cause; slippage spread evenly across the programme points at a different kind of problem.
Saving and reading a baseline in Fidrel
Step 1
Save the baseline when the programme is agreed
In the programme choose Save baseline. The name is prefilled as Baseline and today’s date; change it to something the team will recognise, such as “Contract programme, rev B”, and save. Only a project administrator edits the programme and saves baselines.
Step 2
Choose the baseline to compare with
Under Baseline pick the saved one to show. Where an activity has moved from it, a thin grey line is drawn beneath its bar at the baseline dates, with the part it now finishes later in orange, and hovering the line shows the baseline’s start and end.
Step 3
Read the variance in the key figures
The Key figures tab’s Baseline comparison shows the variance of the programme finish against the chosen baseline in days, with a plus sign for a later finish; until a baseline is selected it says to select or save one.
Step 4
Save a new baseline when the reference changes
After an agreed re-programming, save another baseline with its own name. Earlier baselines stay in the list, so the plan can be compared with the original as well as the latest agreed version.
What Fidrel keeps in a baseline
A saved baseline records the activities as they stood, with their dates, the dependencies, the working calendar, the name given to it, who saved it and when. It is read-only from the moment it is saved; Fidrel offers no way to edit or delete it. Several baselines can be kept for one programme and any of them chosen for comparison. Exports of the Gantt to PNG or SVG include the chosen baseline’s bars, so a printed programme shows the slippage as well as the plan.
A worked example
A twelve-week fit-out is baselined at the start on site as “Start on site, week 0”. In week five the mechanical first fix starts four working days late because the ductwork was delivered late. The baseline bar under that activity now begins four days before the current bar. The activities after it on the critical path move with it, and the Baseline comparison shows +4 days. The contractor recovers two days by overlapping the ceiling grid with the second fix; the comparison shows +2. After a client variation adds a server room, the parties agree a new programme and the planner saves “Revised programme after VO-003” as a second baseline. From then on the team compares with the revised programme for the day-to-day, and with the first for the account of what the variation cost in time.
What Fidrel does not do with baselines
The variance in days is shown for the programme finish; per activity, the baseline is read from the grey line drawn beneath a moved activity, not from a column of figures. A baseline is not brought in from another programme tool: it is saved from the programme in Fidrel. There is no approval workflow for re-baselining; whoever administers the programme saves a new one when the parties have agreed it. A baseline holds dates, links and the calendar, not costs.
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A copy of the programme frozen on a date that matters, such as contract award, kept unchanged so that later versions can be compared with it and the slippage read in days.
When the programme is agreed: at award or start on site, and again after an agreed re-programming. Give each a name that says what it was, and keep the earlier ones.
No. Fidrel keeps a saved baseline read-only, with its name, who saved it and when. Save a new one if the reference programme changes.
The Key figures tab shows the variance of the programme finish against the chosen baseline in days. In the Gantt a grey line beneath each moved activity shows its baseline dates, with the exact dates on hover and any later finish in orange.
Yes. Each Save baseline adds one to the list under Baseline, and any of them can be chosen for comparison. Earlier baselines are not replaced.
No. A baseline holds the activities’ dates, the dependencies and the working calendar. Budgets and costs are kept in the project’s economy, not in the programme baseline.