How I decide if a schedule is real — or just decoration

Most project schedules die before the first pour of concrete.

Not because of Primavera.
Not because of “insufficient resources.”
They die because nobody forces the schedule to pass through a serious control gate before calling it “the plan.”

Let’s be honest:

  • One version goes to management for reporting.
  • One version lives in Excel with the superintendent.
  • One version gets shown to commercial for entitlement and claims.
  • And none of them are actually locked.

That’s not control. That’s theatre.

This article is the opposite of that.
I’ll walk you through the Schedule Control Gate process — the exact approval flow I use before I allow any schedule to become the Control Schedule for a project.

If the field can’t build it, management can’t trust it, and commercial can’t defend it — it’s not a control schedule. It’s decoration.

1. “Pretty” Schedule vs. Control Schedule

A pretty schedule says:

“We finish in June.”

A control schedule says:

“We’re 27 days late on a critical workfront because of X. Here’s the recovery logic. Here’s the cost of not acting.”

The difference is not software.
The difference is governance.

Governance means:

  • We don’t accept a schedule by “feel.”
  • We don’t take a .xer from a subcontractor and paste it into a dashboard.
  • We don’t report dates to executives that the crews in the field already know are impossible.

Instead, we run the schedule through gates.
If it doesn’t pass, it doesn’t get my name on it.
It doesn’t get reported.
It doesn’t become baseline.

That’s the Schedule Control Gate.

2. What is the Schedule Control Gate?

It’s a 5-gate approval workflow.

Each gate tests a different failure mode:

  1. Is the scope complete and owned?
  2. Is the logic clean and defensible?
  3. Can this actually be built with the access, crews, cranes, shutdowns, and windows available?
  4. Do we understand and accept the commercial exposure of the current plan?
  5. Are we freezing this correctly as “the one” schedule for governance, reporting, and claims?

Only when it passes all five do we call it the Control Schedule:

  • The field builds against it.
  • Management reports against it.
  • Commercial defends entitlement and delay against it.

No shadow versions. No Excel-only truth. One schedule.

Let’s walk the gates.

Gate 1. Scope & Ownership Locked

Goal: The schedule covers 100% of project scope and every piece of scope has an accountable owner.

What we check:

  • The entire project scope is represented (nothing critical is sitting “outside the schedule” in someone’s private spreadsheet).
  • Activities are defined clearly and tied to actual deliverables, not vague labels.
  • Work is broken down to a level where durations, access, and sequencing can be discussed in real terms.
  • Each part of the work has an owner. If nobody owns it, it slips quietly. Quiet slip becomes loud delay.

Why this matters:
If the work isn’t in the schedule, it won’t get the crane, the crew, or the shutdown window. Then it “suddenly appears” as emergency scope in the middle of execution. That’s how recovery starts before execution even starts.

Gate 1 forces truth:
“This is the full job. Nothing is floating outside.”

Gate 2. Logic & Network Integrity

Goal: The network actually makes sense.

This sounds basic. It’s not.

What we check:

  • Every activity (except project start / project finish milestones) has at least one predecessor and one successor. No “orphan” logic.
  • Relationship types make sense. Finish-to-Start is the default. Leads (negative lags) are not used to hide overlap.
  • Lags are controlled. If you’re using a 10-day lag, can you actually explain what happens in those 10 days? If not, model it as an activity.
  • Constraints (Must Start On / Must Finish On) are minimized. Hard constraints are not “used to make a date look nice.” They’re only there if reality enforces it.
  • Float sanity:
    • No insane negative float without escalation.
    • No massive positive float (40+ working days) unless we can prove it’s real logic, not broken ties.
  • A clear, continuous critical path exists.
    If “everything is critical,” nothing is critical.

Why this matters:
If the logic is weak, your finish date is fiction.
Worse: the recovery plan later will also be fiction.

Gate 2 protects you from reporting fantasy.

Gate 3. Resource / Access Feasibility with the Field

This is where most schedules fail.

Goal: The sequence can actually be built by the crew, in the real world, with the real limitations.

What we check:

  • We are not double-booking the same critical crew in two critical locations at the same time.
  • Crane time, lane closures, outage windows, shutdown access, lifting restrictions — all respected.
  • We are not promising two “impossible overlaps” just to make a management date look nice.
  • Calendars in the schedule match reality:
    • Night-shift / day-shift rules.
    • Permit windows.
    • No-work periods.
    • Access restrictions.

How this is done:
This gate is not “the planner sits alone and makes a pretty story for the site.”
It’s the opposite.

The planner sits with the superintendent / foreman / construction lead. Together we lock:

  • Sequence.
  • Access.
  • Crane time.
  • Shutdown windows.

Then we push that back into the live schedule.
We are not giving them “our plan.” We are documenting their agreed plan in a way management and commercial cannot ignore.

Why this matters:
This is where buy-in comes from.

When the site sees that the schedule is actually protecting their access, their resources, their shutdown window — they start defending it. Because now it’s theirs.

If the crew doesn’t care, that’s a red flag.
That means it’s still a report schedule, not yet a control schedule.

Gate 4. Schedule Exposure & Recovery Ownership

Goal: We stop pretending recovery is “somebody will try harder.”

At this gate we ask:

  • Where are we already late?
  • Which path is actually driving project finish now? (Driving path, not just the “original baseline critical path.”)
  • Who owns recovery? Not “the project.” A name.
  • What is the recovery method?
    • Sequence resequencing?
    • Parallelizing workfaces?
    • Additional crews?
    • Working in a tighter shutdown window?
    • Paying premium / weekend rate?
  • What is the cost of not doing it?

This is where commercial and project controls meet operations.

Why this matters:
Negative float is not decoration.
Negative float is a commercial signal.
It is an exposure that should either trigger action, or be documented as a claim / entitlement event.

Gate 4 means delay is discovered early, assigned early, and valued early — not “we’ll catch up later.”

Gate 5. Baseline Lock & Change Control

Goal: We establish the one schedule we will manage, report, and defend.

At this gate:

  • We baseline the control schedule — after it passes the first four gates.
  • That baseline is frozen under change control.
  • No “quiet edits.” No silent slip.
  • Any change to logic, sequence, or access that affects entitlement or dates goes through controlled change approval.

Everyone signs:

  • Project Director / PM
  • Superintendent / Construction Lead
  • Commercial / Contracts / Claims
  • Project Controls / PMO

Why this matters:
Once this is signed, there should not be:

  • a shadow Excel schedule for the crew,
  • a different version for executives,
  • and a different version for delay / claims.

One schedule.
If someone reports another version, they’re not reporting status — they’re eroding entitlement.

This is where control actually starts.

Monthly Control Cycle: How You Keep Control After Day 1

Most planning processes stop at “baseline approval.”
That’s a mistake. Control is monthly, not one-time.

The Monthly Control Cycle is simple:

  1. Update actuals
    Real progress, real dates, real quantities. No optimism filters.
  2. Re-run logic
    Identify the current driving path. The true current driver may not be the original “critical path.” Projects evolve.
  3. Surface new conflicts
    • Are we now asking the same crew to be in two places at once next month?
    • Did a shutdown window move?
    • Did access change?
  4. Highlight new negative float
    Negative float is mapped directly to named recovery owners.
    It does not live as “-27d” in a column nobody reads.
  5. Issue exposure
    This is commercial.
    “We are now carrying X days of exposure on Y scope. Recovery option is Z. Cost of not acting is $W.”
    Management can no longer say “we didn’t know.”

In other words:

  • You don’t just “update the schedule.”
  • You re-issue the risk story of the project every period.

That’s how you avoid surprise claims, surprise overruns, and surprise “We’re 2 months late, how did that happen?”

Why this process works (and why people fight it)

Why it works:

  • It forces construction, commercial, and project controls to agree on one reality.
  • It turns the schedule from a picture into leverage.
  • It protects entitlement.
  • It exposes delay early instead of pretending it will “self-heal.”

Why people fight it:

  • People like shadow schedules because shadow schedules let you hide risk.
  • Some managers don’t want written accountability for recovery.
  • Some commercial teams want flexibility to “shape the story later.”
  • Some planners are scared to sit with the superintendent and negotiate real sequence because “Primavera didn’t like it.”

That’s exactly why you need this.

When do I sign my name on a schedule?

Only after:

  • Gate 1: The whole scope is in.
  • Gate 2: The logic stands up to inspection.
  • Gate 3: The site signed off that it’s actually buildable.
  • Gate 4: The delay and recovery story is explicit and owned.
  • Gate 5: Baseline is frozen and change control is active.

If it can’t do all of that:

  • I don’t report it.
  • I don’t issue it.
  • It doesn’t carry my name.

Because if the field can’t build it, management can’t trust it, and commercial can’t defend it — it’s not a control schedule.

It’s decoration.

Want the full procedure?

I’ve packaged the full Schedule Control Gate procedure (v1.1) as a 14-page PDF.
It includes:

  • All 5 gates with detailed checklists.
  • The monthly control cycle.
  • The baseline sign-off block you can literally drop into your project and start using.

You can request it and get it by email.

Schedule Control Gate Request

Use it with your PM, your superintendent, or your commercial lead.
And if you’re already in trouble (delay, negative float, recovery panic, claims pressure), use Gate 4 and Gate 5 immediately.
Those two alone will change the conversation in one meeting.

That’s planning.
That’s control.