The Effects of Adjusting Schedules is an informational guide detailing schedule adjustments you can make, and how they affect your job schedules in BuildPro. This guide addresses durations, offsets, and date changes. This section deals with Stage/Rank based scheduling. Click here for an explanation of Predecessor based scheduling.
Changing critical path tasks in BuildPro changes your schedules. A critical path is normally the task in a rank with the longest duration. In the stage below, there is only one task for each rank. Therefore, each task is a critical path task.
Figure 1
If you change the duration of the Foundation Prep task from 1 to 3 days in the Job Schedule Management (Graphical View) page, the dates on each task changes. Changing the duration on the Foundation Prep task from 1 to 3 days will move each task forward by two days (see below).
Figure 2
In the following example, there are many tasks with a rank of 10 in the stage, with the Frame Labor task being the critical path task (see below).
Figure 3
If the duration is changed on a non-critical path task, it does not change the rest of the schedule. For instance, if the duration of the Frame Trusses task is changed from 1 day to 2 days, the start dates for the other tasks do not change (see below). The start dates do not change because the Frame Trusses task is not a critical path task.
Figure 4
It is also important to note that if you change the Frame Labor task duration, it does not affect the start dates of the other tasks with the same rank of 10. The task start dates are not affected because all of these tasks have the same rank. This means that the tasks start on the same day and every task in rank 10 is based on the critical path task from the previous stage.
Changing the critical path task in rank 10 only affects the ranks below it, not the other tasks in the same rank. Therefore, if you change the Frame Labor task duration from 15 to 17 days, only the rank 20 task start date is pushed out by 2 days (see below).
Figure 5
Stage placement also affects schedule changes in BuildPro. When a template is constructed with consecutive stages, one stage following after another, it is easy to see how schedule changes ripple down through the stages. However, if the schedule has some stages running parallel to each other, changes may not filter down the way you expect. The following example is a stage view of a template constructed with consecutive stages in the Stage Management page (not all stages are shown for space purposes).
Figure 6
It is difficult to see schedule changes in the following stage view of the same template in the Schedule Management: Stage View page (Figure 7). In this view you might think that Mechanical stage follows the Exterior Trim stage until you notice the start/end dates. Both stages actually start on the same date.
Figure 7
In the Stage Management page view (Figure 6) you can see in level 5 that the Landscape and Interior Trim & Cabinets stages belong to the same level but do not start on the same dates. The Landscape stage follows the Exterior Covering/Exterior Paint stage, which ends on 7/7/2005, so the Landscape stage starts on 7/8/2005 (see Figure 7).
You can also see that the Interior Trim & Cabinets stage follows after the Sheetrock & Insulation stage in level 5 above (Figure 6), with the Interior Trim & Cabinets stage starting on 7/1/2005 (see Figure 7). If both the Landscape and Interior Trim & Cabinets stages followed the same stage, they would start on the same date.
It is important to note that if you change a critical path task in the level 3 stage (see Figure 6); it will ripple down through the level 7 stage and beyond. However, if you change a critical path task in the Exterior Covering/Exterior Paint stage of level 4, it will only affect the Landscape stage of level 5 below it. This only affects the Landscape stage because the Interior Paint stage of level 6 follows the Interior Trim & Cabinets stage of level 5, not the Landscape stage. There are no stages following the Landscape stage of level 5.
The following Stage Management page view shows the flow of a change to a critical path task in level 3.
Start dates in BuildPro remain unchanged in schedules unless you manually change them. Manual start dates (or actual start dates) are indicated by an exclamation mark (!) to the right of the Start Date field and critical path tasks are denoted by an asterisk (*) also to the right of the Start Date field (see Figure 9). In the following example, the Foundation Prep start date is 3/25/2005; it is also a critical path task.
Figure 9
If you manually change the start date for the Plumbing Rough task to 4/2/2005 (see Figure 10) and then change the Termite Pretreat task duration to 5 (see Figure 11) the Foundation Prep task start date does not change. The system assumes that if you hard code a date, the date must be right and does not change it. Also notice that the Foundation T/K task following the Plumbing Rough task did not change either. This is because the Foundation T/K task is in rank 40 and follows rank 30, which has only one task with a hard-coded start date. The rank detail is shown in Figure 12.
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12
If a rank has more than one task in it, and at least one of these tasks has a start date that has not been manually input or is an actual date, then an adjustment above it can still ripple down. For example, in the stage below there are a couple of dates that have been manually set (denoted by the ’!’). If you change the Frame Pack I Drop task duration from 1 (see Figure 13) to 20 days (see Figure 14), it becomes the critical path and will cause the schedule to adjust.
Figure 13
Changing the duration from 1 to 20 days on the Frame Pack I Labor task adjusted the schedule forward for some tasks. For example, the Windows task went from a start date of 6/13/2005 to 6/16/2005 (see Figure 14). All of the tasks with a rank of 20 & 30 adjusted as well. See Figure 15 for task rank detail.
Because there is only one task in rank 40 and this task has an actual start date (manually set), the schedule adjustment stopped with the rank 40 task. Since the rank 50 task is based on the rank 40 task, and the only task in rank 40 has an actual start date, the rank 50 task did not change and still shows a start date of 7/7/2005. If there had been more tasks in rank 40 with start dates that had not been set to actual, then the schedule would have adjusted further down.
Keep this in mind when you set manual dates ahead in your schedule. As you can see in this example, you could make a change of several days in your schedule and expect the job complete date to change, when in fact, it may not.
Figure 14
Figure 15
Modifying the Offset field also affects schedules in BuildPro. A change to the offset field affects the schedule if the offset is on a critical path task or makes a task become a critical path by extending the task past the current critical path task.
In the following example (see Figure 16) there are two rank 10 tasks. Both tasks have one-day durations, so they are both critical path tasks.
Figure 16
Changing the offset of the Roofing Labor task to 2 makes this task become the critical path (see Figure 17). The task now starts two days later on 7/14/2005. The following rank 20 tasks now start 2 days later on 7/15/2005 instead of on 7/13/2005.
Figure 17
Negative offsets also affect schedules. In the following example there are three rank 20 tasks. The Wallpaper task is the critical path task with a duration of 2 days. The rank 30 task, Interior Clean, starts on 5/6/2005 after the Wallpaper task finishes on 5/5/2005 (see Figure 18).
Figure 18
Go to Predecessor Scheduling