2 TOP TIPS FOR BETTER CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULING
In the face of increasing complexity in capital construction, smart use of AI and a strong commitment to collaboration combine to deliver better project outcomes
The data doesn’t lie: Capital construction projects rarely meet their promised timelines. Just 8.5% of major capital construction projects deliver on time and on budget, and only 0.5% deliver on their promised value, according to a study written up in Harvard Business Review. Three key shortcomings in traditional scheduling practices contribute to the mismatch between expectations and outcomes. But forward-thinking leaders can overcome them with collaborative work and judicious applications of AI.
8.5% of major capital construction projects deliver on time and on budget
0.5% of major capital construction projects deliver on their promised value
COMMON SCHEDULING PRACTICES THAT UNDERMINE CAPITAL PROJECTS
SCHEDULING SILOES
In most organizations, the scheduling function is siloed from the rest of the business. Schedulers interact only in a limited way with field execution teams and other parts of the business. Severe misalignment often results.
NO BUY-IN
As a rule, field execution teams see the schedule as a contract document, not a tool for planning. Even if they know what the schedule says, field teams too often fail to align their short-interval or lookahead plans with the schedule and its milestones.
RISK GETS IGNORED
Traditional scheduling tools and practices make accounting for quantitative risk prohibitively difficult. But without quantitative risk analysis, overly optimistic project schedules are distressingly common.
The increasing complexity of both projects and the contracting methods that govern them only increase the challenges schedulers and teams face. “The rise in design-build type contracts that require way more collaboration to be successful on a project -- that’s driving what technology provides for users today,” said Jordan Brooks, product director at InEight, discussing the value of collaboration and AI in construction scheduling. “So we’re seeing a lot more collaborative, democratized, streamlined processes.” By adopting more thoughtful practices, teams can improve accountability, visibility, and accuracy.
USE AI WISELY TO CREATE FASTER, MORE ACCURATE SCHEDULES
As AI tools become ever more ubiquitous, and as the promises about the benefits they’ll deliver become ever more hyperbolic, schedulers and leaders are smart to bring their skepticism to bear when evaluating AI’s potential benefits. But if used with care and with realism, AI has the potential to deliver a few specific benefits.
DRAFT SCHEDULES FASTER
A high-quality schedule can take time to build, and complex projects only add to the time required. Cutting corners on quality isn’t an option, but AI can dramatically speed things up. Schedule creators can lean on AI to suggest work breakdown structures and select appropriate elements of past projects to re-use, for a quicker and more realistic draft.
MAKE USE OF HISTORICAL EXPERTISE
Accurate schedules are often created by late-career schedulers, based on their years of accumulated construction expertise. Retirements (or overtaxed teams) can make it harder to apply historical expertise to new schedules. But AI can help, by finding and surfacing the expertise built into past projects and captured in as-built data.
SURFACE THE KNOWLEDGE OF FIELD TEAMS
Experienced schedulers aren’t the only ones with expertise. Field teams have in-depth knowledge about the processes they own, but combing through their expertise and feedback to find trouble spots consumes valuable time. AI tools can quickly analyze collected input from field teams, pinpointing areas that need clarification.
SPOT ONGOING SCHEDULING RISKS
Traditional scheduling practices make it difficult to detect early schedule slippages, especially when risk analysis is separated from day-to-day updates. Even small delays can ripple across dependent activities and throw off the entire plan. More advanced practices and supportive AI tools surface these risks in real time, so teams can make proactive schedule adjustments before slippages affect major milestones.
IF USED WITH CARE AND WITH REALISM, AI HAS THE POTENTIAL TO DELIVER SPECIFIC BENEFITS.
SLOW SCHEDULE CREATION IS A FORM OF DELAY
Planning for complex projects requires lots of input and plenty of adjustment, and that means it’s critical to get started fast. “If you don’t have a basis of a plan, then that project planning is delayed from the beginning,” says Brooks, “or it’s going to be delayed as long as it takes you to have a basis to actually do some meaningful planning from. So by quickly being able to build a, let’s say baseline schedule, it gives users and project teams a lot more time to go in and make adjustments.” Asking a scheduler – or a project manager stepping into the scheduling role for a given project – to build a schedule from scratch invites a slow start, just given the sheer volume of work involved. Using AI to deliver a fast early draft of a schedule jumpstarts the process, and can deliver a more realistic starting point for expert feedback, too. A practical AI tool can even identify the sections or elements of past projects that make logical starting points for new schedules.
“If you don’t have a basis of a plan, then project planning is delayed from the beginning.”
- Jordan Brooks, Product Director, InEight
COMBINE CURRENT AND HISTORICAL SCHEDULING EXPERTISE
More and more teams find themselves stretched thin in today’s construction environment, making it harder to get timely access to scheduling experts whose experience could make a big contribution to the quality of the initial schedule. Increasing retirement contribute to the challenge, as those leaving the workforce take their knowledge with them. But historical expertise lives on in data about past projects, and AI can efficiently surface it by pulling from project libraries, and even checking schedules against as-built data for extra confidence in a suggested draft schedule. But there’s no need to stop at mining past data. Another wise use of AI: analyzing input from the field teams working on the current project. “I might have a subject matter expert in concrete that I’m getting his input and expertise, I’m getting a subject matter expert in electrical, I’m getting hers,” Brooks says. “We’re just kind of spreading that expertise out. So I benefit from the knowledge of the entire team instead of just the one person.” The real magic happens when AI highlights mismatches between expert opinions, prompting the discussion needed to resolve conflicting opinions and improve the schedule in the process.
HISTORICAL EXPERTISE LIVES ON IN DATA ABOUT PAST PROJECTS, AND AI CAN EFFICIENTLY SURFACE IT.
COLLABORATE WITH AI FOR REALISTIC PROJECT SCHEDULES
For maximum benefit, think of AI as collaborator too. When creating a schedule with InEight Schedule, the software uses context, such as the chosen work breakdown structure, to suggest appropriate schedule fragments from complete projects. The schedule creator can then accept or reject each suggestion, creating a two-way learning loop. “The end user still is the final decision maker, but this allows not only the human to learn from the computer, but the computer to learn from the human,” says Nate St. John, Vice President at InEight. “This approach not only accelerates plan development, freeing up time for more analysis, et cetera, but it also ensures we’re planning within realism because we want to be avoiding an overly optimistic or aggressive schedule.”
WORK COLLABORATIVELY TO BUILD BUY-IN AND ALIGNMENT
“The success of any project relies on its foundation, and that foundation really is the plan,” says Nate St. John, Vice President at InEight, in a discussion of the importance of harnessing team expertise. But when the information and knowledge used to build the plan are scattered, the quality of the plan suffers. “Collaboration is key to increasing the quality and efficiency of that input to improve the certainty of the plan,” St. John says. Collaboration breaks down in four main areas, damaging alignment and threatening project outcomes. But on the flip side, improvements in these aspects of collaboration have the potential to deliver big improvements.
- Misalignment on scope and objectives. If stakeholders don’t agree, it’s impossible to meet everyone’s expectations. When leaders fail to be proactive and thorough about clarity on scope, the knock-on effects can derail a project.
- Failing to learn the lessons of past work. Benchmarking is common, at least in the sense of collecting data, but too few teams apply their historical insights to future projects. Forward-thinking schedule creators are meticulous about incorporating facts and details from past work for more realistic plans.
- Neglecting the expertise of domain experts. Execution teams are a wealth of knowledge, but many schedulers and planners don’t incorporate field expertise, or consult them too late. Consulting a wide range of experts can certainly be cumbersome, but a wider range of voices means a deeper pool of expertise.
- Relying on incorrect or varied sources of info on progress. As the plan transitions into execution, teams may fall out of alignment. Side schedules, the bane of any scheduler’s existence, are a surefire way to deepen the disconnection between field planning and the critical path method (CPM) schedule
Fundamentally, effective collaboration connects the schedule with the work at hand. “When we remove traditional scheduling from a silo, it allows for others to contribute to the planning process and that ultimately leads to more confident and realistic schedules,” St. John says. It’s critical to build repeatable, inclusive processes for getting input from those tasked with completing the work, both at the beginning, and as work progresses. Collaboration also builds buy-in to the schedule, so that field team members look to the schedule as a guide rather than as a contractual document that’s not relevant to their work. “Once people are invited in to the scheduling process, and once they begin to contribute, we can hold them accountable for their inputs and their opinions,” St. John explains. “We place them in situations where they’re able to brainstorm and problem solve. And lo and behold, when accountability is established, buy-in is reached and the team can now trust the CPM schedule.”
SAY GOODBYE TO THE SIDE SCHEDULES THAT RUIN YOUR CPM PLAN
From a scheduling perspective, capital projects have two main groups need to be aligned, and two types of schedules that often fall out of sync. On one side, the project controls group is charged with caring for the CPM, using it to communicate to stakeholders and as a basis for high-level analysis. On the other side is field execution, charged with lookahead planning and detailed plans for execution. “When these two groups become disjointed, confusion, doubt and the dreaded side schedules begin to appear on projects,” St. John says. “So, at the center of these two groups, we have a really great opportunity to ensure alignment is always maintained and we can easily create what I call connected planning.” InEight Schedule includes integrated, easy-to-use tools for daily planning that automatically flag any breaches of the CPM schedule, driving quick corrections where needed – and making side schedules an impossibility.
“The success of any project relies on its foundation, and that foundation really is the plan.”
- Nate St. John, Vice President, InEight
TO DELIVER WITH CONFIDENCE, START WITH GREAT SCHEDULING
“If we’re of the mindset, as I am, that projects fail due to poor planning rather than poor execution,” St. John says, “then we focus on how to build better plans.” With judicious use of AI capabilities and an aggressive focus on collaboration, schedulers can make significant progress toward that goal. St. John offers five practical focus areas for leaders driving change:
- Have a strategic plan in place to foster a culture of curiosity
- Choose the right technology to enable your process goals
- Establish clear protocols for every team member
- Set realistic goals; incremental achievements breed success
- Learn from and adjust to your experience
ABOUT INEIGHT
InEight is a leader in construction project controls software, empowering over 850 companies taking on challenging projects in industries including construction and engineering; transportation infrastructure; mining; water; power and renewables; and oil, gas and chemical. Uniquely suited to capital construction and other complex work, our integrated, modular software manages projects worth over $1 trillion globally, taking control of project information management, costs, schedules, contracts, and construction operations, and delivering insights with advanced analytics and AI. InEight's solutions adapt and scale to meet the dynamic needs of modern construction, driving operational excellence and successful project outcomes. For more information, follow InEight on LinkedIn or visit InEight.com. © 2025 InEight, Inc. All Rights Reserved