Relocations that live outside the schedule
The relocation date sits in a letter or a spreadsheet, while the schedule shows excavation starting on a day the utility cannot meet. The conflict is found when the excavator arrives.
Civil projects
Utility relocation coordination: one chain, one owner per conflict
Utility owners relocate on their own timelines, and a civil job stalls when a relocation is not tied to the construction sequence and nobody owns the open conflict. This page shows how to carry each relocation in Fidrel as a dependency chain with a named owner, and what it leaves to the utility owner’s own systems.
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Why relocations stall a civil job
A conflict that belongs to everyone
A conflict is noticed on a site walk, mentioned at the coordination meeting and then belongs to the whole room. Without one name and one date, it is the last item on the agenda every week.
Waiting time disguised as work
The utility owner needs notice, a crew and an outage window. When that wait is typed into the activity’s duration, the bar says the relocation is work in progress and nobody can see that the job is simply waiting.
A relocation as a dependency chain
A relocation activity linked finish-to-start to the work behind it releases that work on the next working day after the relocation finishes. Lag is counted in working days, so a utility owner’s notice period of five working days is entered as a lag of 5. If a relocation slips, successors move forward automatically when the link requires it; if it finishes early, they keep their dates until you move them. The critical path highlights the activities with no float, which shows which relocations decide the finish date and which have room.
Scheduling
One owner per conflict
An issue has an Owner, a Due date, a Company, a Discipline, a Location, a priority and a status: Open, In progress, Blocked, Resolved or Closed. The views Mine, Open and Overdue show what is waiting on whom, and the person named gets a notification in Fidrel and finds the item under Assigned to me. A conflict that needs a drawing answer becomes an RFI with a recipient, a deadline and a history, linked to the revision it was raised on.
Carrying a relocation in Fidrel
Step 1
Make each relocation an activity
Add an activity per relocation and fill in Responsible and Company with the person who chases it and the utility owner. Use a milestone for the day the relocation has to be complete.
Step 2
Link it to the work behind it
Open the activity that has to wait, such as the trench excavation, and add the relocation as its Predecessor. Enter the utility owner’s notice or mobilization time as the Lag (working days), not in the duration.
Step 3
Raise each conflict as an issue
Choose New issue, set the category to Coordination, name the Owner and the Due date, and add the Company and the Location. Use an RFI instead when the design team has to answer a question.
Step 4
Mark what blocks the work
On the activity, open Linked records, add the open issue or RFI and mark it blocking. The activity shows Blocked, with the title and deadline on hover, until the issue or RFI is closed or answered.
Step 5
Follow up in the meeting
Give each coordination agenda item a responsible person and a due date, and bring it up again at the next meeting until it is closed. The responsible person is notified in Fidrel.
Measuring the slip
Save a baseline of the schedule before the relocations start to move. The end date then shows the variance in days against the baseline, and each activity bar has the baseline bar under it, so a relocation that arrives three weeks late is visible as three weeks on the finish date.
What Fidrel does not do
Fidrel has no utility-owner portal, and it does not track rights-of-way, permits or agreements for a relocation. Fidrel does not map the utilities or show a conflict on a plan or a map; a location is text you type. A blocking link flags an activity and records the connection, but it does not move any dates, and no transportation agency’s procedure is built in or followed. Only the project’s administrators edit the schedule; other participants read it.
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Only as a project member with an account, and project members other than the administrators read the schedule rather than edit it. Fidrel has no separate portal for utility owners.
Add the relocation as the Predecessor of the excavation activity with a finish-to-start link. The excavation is then released after the relocation finishes, plus any lag you enter in working days.
It flags the activity as Blocked and shows the RFI and its deadline on hover, for as long as the RFI is not answered or closed. It does not move any dates.
No. Fidrel does not map utilities. The Location of an issue is text you type, so use whatever reference your crews use, such as a station or a gridline.
No. Keep those where you keep them now and refer to them in the issue text or attach the file to the issue. Fidrel has no register of agreements or permits for a relocation.
An agenda item has a responsible person, a due date and a status. The person is notified in Fidrel, and the item stays under Assigned to me until it is closed, and can be added to a later meeting.