Trac2 Scheduling Program

A SCHEDULE THAT TELLS YOU WHY THE JOB LOST THE DAYS - NOT JUST THAT IT DID

Press Issue Copy and the program writes a separate file. That file is what

the trades get, and there is no editing in it. Not a locked grid - no grid

to lock. The dates are plain text and the only button on it is Print, which

is also how a sub makes his own PDF.

Across the top it states the two things he opened it to find: the completion

date now, and the days lost against the baseline. At the bottom, every delay

you entered with the reason you typed - "rain, no pour Tuesday" - beside the

date it moved.

A new date on its own starts an argument in the trailer. The reason ends it.

And six months later, when somebody wants to know how the job ended up where

it did, the record is already written. You don't go looking for it.

Delay reasons are built in. It is the only thing I know of that writes them down as they happen. Register this week and Register whole job add the days up by trade.

ON SCREEN TOO. Press Delays and reasons on the Report tab and the same list

is in front of you without printing anything: how many days behind, which

task added them, and the reason you typed against it. A superintendent

checking what slipped this week should not have to run a print to find out.

IT WRITES THE SCHEDULE FOR YOU

Pick the structure type, the building use, the sitework and the number of

levels. The program writes the rest - and the questions change to suit the

building. A wood frame house isn't asked about window curbs, because a

framed wall doesn't have one. A wood frame job doesn't get a tower crane.

 Single family house    Wood frame

 Low rise apartment    Wood frame, mid rise

 Warehouse / industrial  Tilt-up concrete

 Warehouse / industrial  Pre-engineered steel

 Office building      Structural steel

 Condo / apartment tower  Concrete, cast in place

One to 60 storeys. Crawl space, slab on grade or full basement. Up to 8

underground parking levels. Open cut, shored, or deep excavation.

WHAT IT ALREADY KNOWS

This is the part that is hard to buy. On a concrete tower, every one of

these is wired in as real logic, not a note on a bar:

 - The floor to floor cycle, with the fly tables stripped off one floor

  and flown up to form the floor above

 - Window curbs following the fly form removal - and releasing the

  finishing trades behind them

 - Transfer slabs over a high ground floor, and the relocated tower

  column starters that go with them

 - Tower crane erected during the footing pour, on a pad that gets poured

 - Man and material hoist, and when the crane can come down

 - Hoistway doors, one per landing - often the real driver on a tower

The same depth is in the smaller buildings. It just has less to say about a

house, because a house has less going on.

THE SCHEDULING UNDERNEATH

 - Full CPM, forward and backward pass

 - Critical path with a near-critical slack threshold, and multiple

  critical paths

 - Task path highlighting - select any task and see what drives it and

  what it drives, both directions, in one click

 - Working HOURS per day, not just working days, so a half day task means

  half of an actual shift

 - Half day Saturdays handled as a shorter window

 - 15 regional holiday calendars, Canada and the United States, with the

  weekend rules and Christmas shutdown handled

 - Manual or automatic scheduling per task, progress and percent complete

 - Detail levels - issue 100 rows instead of 1,000

AND IT IS STILL YOUR SCHEDULE. Every judgement call about how a team runs a

floor is a field on the title page, not a number buried in the code. Change

one and the whole building re-sequences. The generator is a head start on

the buildings it knows - not a limit on what you can schedule. Insert your

own tasks, indent them, link them, set constraints: a renovation, a tenant

improvement, a subdivision.

HOW IT RUNS

 - One HTML file. It opens in any browser.

 - No installation, no account, no subscription.

 - Works with no internet - which matters in a site trailer.

 - One file per job. Save it, email it, open it anywhere.

 - Autosave with recovery if the program closes with work open.

 - Export to CSV, or print with the title block.

WHERE THE NUMBERS CAME FROM

Some of these blocks were measured off real job files. Some were built from

published practice. They are not the same thing, and the program says which

is which - in the dropdown, while you are choosing. Where a block is

published practice, your own numbers beat mine.

YOU KEEP IT

You download it and keep it. It works with no internet, and it still works if I retire or a website goes away. One price, no subscription.

Save your jobs wherever you like: a cloud folder such as OneDrive, Google Drive or iCloud, or a flash drive if you would rather keep them off the internet. To share a job, save the file and email it. The other person needs their own copy of the program to open it.

You are buying from the person who built it. If something you need is missing, tell me. Good ideas get added to the program, and the update is free.

What it is not: it is built for one person to work on a job at a time, and it is not an enterprise scheduler like Primavera.

WHO BUILT IT

Brian Gillett. 55 years supervising construction, most of it high-rise - carpenter

apprentice through Construction Manager on twin high-rise towers. Projects

from $100K to $90M+, excavation through occupancy. This is the schedule I

wanted on those jobs.

Questions: trac2.mgmt@gmail.com

Free updates. If you have a good idea for the program, tell me and I will add it, free.

Also from TRAC2: concrete and formwork takeoff feeding a full CSI estimate,

in one tool - the TRAC2 Estimating Suite. trac2.ca