How to Build and Manage Your Project Schedule in Franklin

Start by breaking the project into the main phases you want to track.

Depending on the project, these might include:

• concept design
• design development
• permitting
• technical design
• procurement
• site preparation
• construction
• testing and commissioning
• handover

You can then break larger phases into more detailed activities where needed.

The right level of detail depends on what you want to manage. A development manager may need a higher-level overview, while a more detailed project schedule can contain many individual activities.

In Franklin, each phase becomes part of the project schedule and can be positioned on the Gantt timeline.

Next, define when each phase or activity should begin and finish.

For example:

The Gantt chart turns these dates into a visual timeline, making it easier to see which parts of the project happen simultaneously and how the overall programme is structured over time.

This is where a list of dates starts becoming an actual project schedule.

Many activities cannot begin until something else has happened.

For example:

If procurement depends on design approval, the relationship between those activities should be visible in the schedule.

Dependencies help the team understand not only when an activity is planned, but what needs to happen before it can begin.

They also make the impact of changes easier to understand. If one activity moves, the team can see which later activities may be affected.

A schedule becomes more useful when it is clear who is responsible for each activity.

Depending on the project, responsibility might sit with the developer, architect, engineer, contractor, consultant or another project participant.

Assigning responsibility answers a very simple question:

Who needs to make this happen?

This becomes particularly useful when the Gantt chart contains activities across several disciplines and organisations.

A project schedule should not be created once and forgotten.

As the project progresses, activities can be updated to reflect what is actually happening. Some will finish as planned. Others may start later, take longer or change because of new information.

Keeping the schedule updated gives the team a current view of the project rather than a plan that stopped reflecting reality months ago.

But there is an important distinction between updating the plan and overwriting the past.

If every change simply replaces the previous schedule, it becomes difficult to understand how the project evolved.

A January programme and a June programme tell two different stories about the same project.

The January version shows what the team expected at the beginning. The June version shows how those expectations changed as the project developed.

Keeping previous versions makes it possible to look back and compare the original plan with later forecasts and actual progress.

This becomes especially valuable when a milestone moves.

Instead of seeing only that the current completion date is six weeks later, the team can understand when that shift first appeared in the schedule.

See how your project has changed over time for future decisions: whether tasks have been completed on schedule or were delayed.

A project schedule is not made up only of the phases added to the Gantt chart. In Franklin, project tasks are displayed on the same timeline based on their assigned dates.

An issue can have a due date only, or both a start and end date. This means the Gantt view brings together the higher-level project plan and the individual tasks happening within it.

This gives the team a more complete view of the project. A design phase, for example, may run for several months, while the same timeline also shows the tasks that need to be completed during that period and their deadlines.

If an issue date changes or a task remains incomplete after its deadline, it does not stay hidden in a separate issue list. It remains visible in the context of the overall project schedule.

This makes it possible to see both where the project is heading and what needs to happen along the way on the same timeline.

You do not have to review the Gantt chart only visually. When your project schedule and tasks are in Franklin, you can also ask questions about them in the chat.

For example:

Instead of searching separately through the Gantt chart and task list, Franklin can help you quickly find the information you need from the project schedule.

This becomes particularly useful on larger projects where many phases, tasks and deadlines are active at the same time.

What should a useful project schedule show?

At minimum, a useful project schedule should make it easy to understand:

• what phases and activities are planned
• when they should happen
• which dates are important milestones
• how activities depend on each other
• who is responsible
• which tasks are coming up
• what has been completed
• what has changed

The goal is not to create the most complicated schedule possible.

It is to create a programme that helps the team understand the project and what needs attention next.

Build and track your project schedule in Franklin

Franklin brings the project schedule into the same environment as the information surrounding the project.

You can build a Gantt chart, organise phases and milestones, define dependencies, track progress and see project tasks on the same timeline.

More importantly, the schedule does not have to remain an isolated planning file. It can become part of the project's wider history alongside tasks, documents, drawings, issues and changes.