Scheduling: why projects run late and what to do about it

Back to the blog

Ask a contractor how long a job takes and you get a number. Ask three and you get three numbers, usually further apart than their prices.

Time is harder to estimate than cost because it depends on things outside anyone's control: inspectors, deliveries, weather, and whichever decision you have not made yet.

Duration is not the same as elapsed time

A bathroom remodel might be twelve working days of actual work and take five weeks. Both numbers are true and they measure different things.

The gap is waiting. Waiting for the permit. Waiting for the inspector, who comes when they come. Waiting for tile on back order. Waiting for the mortar to cure before the next trade can start.

When a contractor says three weeks, ask whether that is working days on site or calendar time from start to finish. The difference is where most scheduling arguments come from.

Sequence, and the tasks that cannot move

Construction is unusually sequential. Rough plumbing before drywall. Drywall before paint. Inspection between the two, and no proceeding until it passes.

Some tasks have slack: if they slip a day, nothing else moves. Others do not, and a day lost cascades through everything after. Project managers call that chain the critical path.

Ask which parts of your job have no slack. A contractor who can answer has thought about the schedule. One who cannot is working from a general feel, and the estimate should be treated accordingly.

Delays you can actually prevent

Some causes are outside your control. Several are entirely within it, and they are the most common.

• Late decisions. Every unmade selection is a task that cannot start. Tile, fixtures, paint colours and hardware should be chosen before work begins, not during.
• Change orders. Every mid-project change costs more time than the change itself, because it disrupts a sequence that was already booked.
• Slow approvals. If a contractor is waiting on you to approve a change or release a payment, the crew is somewhere else, and getting them back is not instant.
• Unclear scope. Work discovered mid-project was never in anyone's schedule.

Ask for the schedule in milestones, not a single date

A single completion date is one number that will be wrong. Milestones tell you whether things are on track while there is still time to react.

For a kitchen: demolition complete, rough plumbing and electrical complete, inspection passed, drywall complete, cabinets set, countertop templated, countertop installed, finish plumbing, punch list. Nine checkpoints instead of one, and if the third slips by a week you know in week three rather than week nine.

A word about "we can start Monday"

Immediate availability from a good contractor in a busy market is worth a question. Sometimes a job fell through. Sometimes it means they are not busy, and it is worth understanding why not.

The best contractors in an area are usually booked several weeks out. That is inconvenient and it is also information.

What a realistic answer sounds like

An honest estimate is a range with reasons attached. "Two to three weeks, assuming the inspector comes within a couple of days and the vanity arrives on schedule. If the subfloor needs replacing, add three days."

That is not evasion. It is someone telling you what the schedule depends on, which is exactly what you need in order to tell whether it is slipping.