Creating and Modifying 3 Week Lookahead Schedules

 

Background

Creating lookahead schedules is one of the most important jobs a superintendent performs. Koester’s 3 Week Lookahead schedule has been created and formatted for easy use once you understand the process and learn a few things to do and not to do when editing. Excel formatting can be tricky. Not following these instructions will modify the spreadsheet formatting and make the document much more difficult to use. Please understand the steps below as they will make this important task much easier to accomplish.

Things to Consider

As one of the most important tasks superintendents are asked to perform, understanding how to edit the 3 week schedule is important. Whether or not you understand, you are still responsible for detailed, well thought out lookahead schedules updated weekly. Spend as much time as necessary to follow and understand the steps below so that when creating or updating, you can focus on the schedule and not how to enter the information on the spreadsheet.

Steps

Steps 1-2 cover opening and saving a copy of a new or existing file template.

Steps 4-5 cover initial setup of a blank schedule. Follow these to create your job specific schedule. 

Step 5b covers changing the start date of the schedule. This step will be performed every week to change the start date of the schedule to match the document file date.

Steps 6-7 cover adding/editing black group headings as well as how to add more blank rows for additional tasks under each heading.

Step 8 covers editing individual tasks. It is very important to follow these steps as written. By not doing so, you will modify the formatting and the schedule will not update and auto-fill correctly.

 

1. Open the 3-Week Schedule template you want to build from in Procore found here: (use the previous week’s schedule for weekly updates once the initial schedule has been setup.)

   a.     Job\Documents\Internal Documents\06 Schedule\Three Week Look-Ahead

   b.    File Name: 3-Week Schedule (or previous weeks schedule if building from there)

   c.     Right click and choose Open in Excel. This will open the document directly from Procore saving the steps of downloading and having to upload new versions.

 

2.    Save the file with project specific details as follows: Important: Save a copy prior to editing otherwise you are modifying the template document.

a.  File Name: Job Name - 3-Week Schedule – YYYY-MM-DD

1. The date at the end should be the Monday associated with the first week represented in this update of the 3-week schedule.
2. Opening the document from Procore as in step 1 will automatically save the new file to the schedule folder in your Procore job.

 

3.    BEFORE PROCEEDING, ABSOLUTELY DO NOT MODIFY, CHANGE OR EDIT ANY CELLS OR PART OF THE DOCUMENT OUTSIDE OF THESE INSTRUCTIONS. IT WILL CORRUPT THE FILE AND PREVENT IT FROM OPERATING CORRECTLY.

 

4.    The first step is to enter the Holidays and Non- Working Days, Scopes of work and Subcontractor names. To complete that, click on the “Project Info” tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

 

 a.    Holiday Section:

1.    There is a list of Federal Holidays already entered. If there are project specific Holidays or Dates in which there shall be no work on site (Due to owner request, or otherwise), those can be entered at the bottom of the list.

    If there are additional non-working days for the project, those can be entered here at the bottom of the standard Fed Holidays

 

b.    Subcontractor Information Section:

1.    Scope of Work Column – This column (Column C) has a sample listing of scopes already entered. This list can be modified to fit the specific project scopes.

2.    Subcontractor / Vendor – This column (Column D) is where the Subcontractor’s business names that correspond to the scope of work can be entered. Do not type in the contact name, just the business name.

a.    Note: These Names need to be typed in exactly as they need to be shown on the Schedule. Once the names are typed here, they will be listed in the dropdown options within the Schedule. (Spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc.)

b.    Note: The scopes and names can be changed later in the project if needed.

 

5.    The next step is to enter the Project Name and the Date of which the project is to start. To complete this, click on the “Schedule” tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

a.    Enter the PROJECT NAME on top.

b. Enter the START DATE which should be the Monday that represents the first week of work to be done on site.

Note: This date will be updated every week when the 3-Week Schedule is updated. Changing this date shifts the entire schedule cells in the body of the spreadsheet.

 

6.    The next step is to set up the various Group or Activity Headings. These are shown as the Black Bolded sections within the schedule. There are sample headings (Koester Self-Perform, Exterior Site, Building Shell, Interior Finishes) already established to provide the user with examples. These will be project specific and can be modified to fit the project’s needs. Follow these steps to modify the Headings.

a.    Other than the Koester Self-Perform heading, there are 6 other sample headings provided in the template. If 6 headings is enough to fit the project’s needs, simply type over the existing headings with the desired names.

b.    If 6 headings is not enough, more can be added. IT IS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT TO FOLLOW THESE STEPS EXACTLY! To add more headings, complete the following 6 steps.

1.    On the left hand side of the Excel Spreadsheet, there are Row Numbers starting at 1 and going to infinity. Click on the number of any of the headings and it will highlight that entire row.

2.    Once the entire heading row is selected, click and hold down on the same row number again. With your mouse held down, drag the mouse down the row numbers and Excel will

select all of the rows as you drag.

3.    Now, with the mouse, right click on any of the highlighted/selected row number.

4.    After right clicking, a selection window will open. Click on “Copy” within this window. This will copy all of the highlighted rows so they can be inserted/added in the next steps.

5.    Now, determine where in the spreadsheet the new Heading section should be entered. In this step, the section that was just copied will be entered ABOVE the row that is selected in this step. In this example, the copied section will be added ABOVE the Electrical heading. To do this, find the row associated with the Electrical heading; in this example, row 73. Right Click on this Row.

 

6.    After right clicking, a selection window will open. Click on “Insert Copied Cells” within this window. This will Insert/add all of the highlighted/copied rows above the row selected and completes the process.

Click on Insert Copied Cells

7.    After setting up all of the Headings, each Activity can be entered. There are 10 activities set up under each one of the headings in the template and are represented by the blank rows. These will be specific to the project and specific to each heading they are under. Follow these steps to enter the Activities.

a.    Other than the Koester Self-Perform heading, there are typically 10 Activity lines under each heading. If 10 headings is enough to fit the project’s needs, simply type the Activity Description in the blank spaces provided.

b.    If 10 activities is not enough, more can be added. IT IS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT TO FOLLOW THESE STEPS EXACTLY! To add more activities, complete the following 5 steps.

1.    On the left hand side of the Excel Spreadsheet, there are Row Numbers starting at 1 and going to infinity. Click on the number of any of the activities and it will highlight that entire row. (Similar to adding Headings, multiple rows can be selected and added if desired, follow the sections above to copy multiple rows.)

2.    Now, with the mouse, right click on any of the highlighted/selected row number.

3.    After right clicking, a selection window will open. Click on “Copy” within this window. This will copy all of the highlighted rows so they can be inserted/added in the next steps.

 

4.    Now, determine where in the spreadsheet the new Activity (Activities) should be entered. In this step, the section that was just copied will be entered ABOVE the row that is selected in this step. In this example, the copied section will be added ABOVE the Building Shell

heading, and effectively adding one activity under the Exterior Site Heading; Exterior Site will now have 11 activities. To do this, find the row associated with the Building Shell heading; in

this example, row 29. Right Click on this Row.

5.    After right clicking, a selection window will open. Click on “Insert Copied Cells” within this window. This will Insert/add all of the highlighted/copied rows above the row selected and completes the process.

8.    After the Headings and Activities have been entered, the remaining information for each Activity can be entered (Subcontractor, Start Date, Work Days). To do that, complete the following. It is important to follow the next steps. By not doing so you will change the formatting and the automatic function of the document will not work.

a.    Subcontractor: When the Subcontractor cell is selected, Excel will provide a dropdown list of the Subcontractor’s names that were typed in “Project Info” tab in previous steps. Select the respective Subcontractor that is associated with the activity.

c.     End Date: Do not type anything in this box. The End Date will automatically calculate after the Work Days are entered.

d.    Work Days: Enter the number of days the activity is scheduled to take. After typing in the Work Days, the cells under the schedule will automatically fill in with color on the days the activity is to take place. Excel will automatically account for weekends and any non-working days.

9.    Complete steps 6-8 until all activities within the 3-week period are included.

a.    The 3-week schedule is intended to provide more precise detail than the overall project schedule provides. Utilize the Weekly Subcontractor Meetings on site to get specific details and dates from the Subcontractors. Ask them to give dates they can agree to commit do and encourage them to be reasonable, yet aggressive with their dates.

b.    General Construction activities should be broken down into more specific activities.

1.    Example: Drywall could be shown as 3 separate activities.

a.       Drywall Hanging

b.    Drywall Finishing

c.     Drywall Texture

2.    Example: Footings could be shown as multiple activities

a.       Footing Layout (Survey/Batter Boards)

b.    Excavate Footings

c.     Form Spread Footings

d.    Install Spread Footing Rebar

e.             Pour Spread Footings

f.     Form Foundation Walls – 1st Side

g.    Install Foundation Rebar

h.      Form Foundation Walls – 2nd Side

i.       Pour Foundation Walls

Further Information