The plan lives in the site manager’s head
The weekly plan is agreed at the Monday meeting and written on a whiteboard. By Wednesday a trade has moved its start and nobody told the trade that follows.
Project calendar
A lookahead programme the site team confirms week by week
The master programme says the second-floor screed is in week 32. The lookahead programme says which days, which gang, after which other trade has cleared the floor, and whether the screeder has agreed. In Fidrel the site team keeps that short-term plan in the project calendar: work entries shared with the project, with the people assigned accepting or declining and marking their work Planned, Confirmed, Done or Blocked.
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Why lookahead planning slips
Nobody has said yes
A plan that lists a subcontractor for Thursday is a hope until that subcontractor has confirmed. The difference between the two needs to be visible to everyone.
Blocked work discovered on the day
The electrician turns up and the ceiling grid is not in. If the person assigned could have marked the work blocked the day before, with a note saying why, the day is not lost.
What a lookahead programme is for
The master programme is for the contract: it sets the sequence and the completion date and changes rarely. The lookahead is for the site: it takes the next two to six weeks of that sequence and breaks it into pieces of work that one gang can confirm, with the days, the location and what has to be finished first. It changes every week, because it is written at the level where things change. The test of a good lookahead is not that it matches the master programme but that each trade on it has looked at it and said yes.
Site & diary
Work entries, responses and statuses
A calendar entry has a kind: Meeting, Work or Note. A Work entry shared with the project carries an assignment for each participant. Each participant gives two answers. The response, Accepted, Declined or Awaiting response, says whether they will be there. The work status, Planned, Confirmed, Done or Blocked, says where the work stands, and a note explains a Blocked or a Declined. The entry shows all participants with both answers, so the site manager reads the state of Thursday’s work in one place.
Running the lookahead in Fidrel’s calendar
Step 1
Create the work entries
In the project’s Calendar an administrator chooses Create new, sets the kind to Work, gives a Title such as “Screed, second floor, east wing”, the Start and End, Notes on what must be ready first, and Shared with the project.
Step 2
Assign the people and publish
Add the Participants from the project’s members, up to a hundred per entry, and tick Publish. Until it is published the entry is a Draft that only administrators see, so a plan can be built before it is shown.
Step 3
The trades respond
Each participant opens the entry and sets their response to Accepted or Declined, and because it is a work entry they also set the status of their work to Planned, Confirmed, Done or Blocked, with a note of up to two thousand characters.
Step 4
Read the week
The calendar shows the plan by Day, Week, Month or as an agenda. Opening an entry shows each person’s response and status side by side, so a Declined or a Blocked stands out before the day arrives.
Drafts, publishing and who may plan
Only project administrators create entries shared with the project; other members keep private entries of their own. A shared entry stays a Draft, visible to administrators only, until Publish is ticked, which lets the site manager lay out a fortnight before showing it. Participants must be members of the project, so a subcontractor’s foreman is invited to the project to be assigned work. Entries can be moved by drag in the calendar, and a changed entry carries its revision so two people do not overwrite each other.
A worked fortnight
A site manager plans two weeks for the second floor. Monday to Wednesday: “Strip and clear, east wing”, assigned to the main contractor’s own gang. Thursday and Friday: “Screed, east wing”, assigned to the screeding subcontractor, with the note “after clearance signed off Wednesday 4 pm”. Week two: “Partitions, east wing” for the drylining foreman. The screeder declines Thursday and writes that the pump is booked elsewhere; the manager moves the entry to Friday and Monday, and the drylining foreman, seeing the change, marks week two’s work Blocked until the screed is cured. The plan now says what everyone has agreed, not what was hoped.
What the lookahead in Fidrel does not do
The calendar is not generated from the Gantt programme: work entries are written by hand, and an entry is not linked to an activity in the programme. There are no trade resources, crews or quantities on an entry, and no constraint log or make-ready list. Fidrel does not calculate a percentage of planned work completed from the statuses. Nobody is e-mailed when work is assigned or its status changes; participants see it in the calendar.
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Project calendar
Frequently asked questions
Anything else on your mind? We are happy to help.
Talk to usA short-term plan, usually two to six weeks, that breaks the master programme into pieces of work a gang can confirm, with days, location and what must be finished first. It is rewritten each week.
No. The lookahead is kept in the project calendar as work entries written by the site team. The Gantt programme and the calendar are separate, and an entry is not linked to an activity.
As a participant of the project they open the entry, set their response to Accepted and their work status to Confirmed. Later they mark it Done, or Blocked with a note saying why.
Project administrators create and publish entries shared with the project. Other members respond to the entries they are assigned to and keep private entries of their own.
Yes. A shared entry stays a Draft, visible to administrators only, until you tick Publish. Build the fortnight, then publish the entries together.
No e-mail is sent. The entry appears in the participant’s calendar in Fidrel, and they respond there.