The creation of infrastructure is, unfortunately, a laborious and resource-consuming task that requires sufficient growth tracking to flourish. If constructing a building was as easy as sharpening a pencil, then there would be no need for intricate budget management and annual progress reports.
The creation of infrastructure is, unfortunately, a laborious and resource-consuming task that requires sufficient growth tracking to flourish. If constructing a building was as easy as sharpening a pencil, then there would be no need for intricate budget management and annual progress reports.
However, when you have an idea of what tasks are finished or are pending, you also begin to understand the challenges that come with handling concrete flesh and metal bones. As such, the best courses of action you can take to ensure the highest probability of success are setting and sticking to deadlines, dividing tasks into more manageable pieces, and keeping everything in order using a construction project timeline.
Construction Project Timeline Template
Construction Project Management Timeline Template
What are Construction Project Timelines?
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word “timeline?” Do you imagine a long horizontal line with abbreviations like “B.C.” and “A.D.” on them? Perhaps it’s a color-coded bar graph—with only one bar—containing names of timeframes such as the Mesozoic and Pleistocene?
In the world of business and construction, a project timeline provides you the same structure but for a completely different purpose. Instead of dating fossils and prehistoric events, your task is to arrange phases of work in chronological order. What this does is it provides you with a reference for the plan’s progress, challenges, and current status—much like an executive summary. However, even though this document is relatively easy to draft, it’s still helpful to have a few tips and tricks under your belt.
1. Understand Your Project From Head to Toe
What is your project all about? Residential construction? House construction? Perhaps the project’s objective is to build a hospital or airport? No two proposed construction projects are ever alike, as there will always be particulars that make each one uniquely challenging. Hence, make sure you know every nook and cranny of your endeavor you begin.
2. Present Your Data Comprehensibly
No matter how well-conceptualized, frivolous, or creative your project timeline is, if it fails to be understandable, then it fails as a whole. Your project timeline doesn’t need fancy font styles or experimentation on the color scheme; it just needs to be understandable. Much like an organizational chart, even a simple design with just enough eye-candy to keep it from being bland will do—as long as your data presentation isn’t underperforming.
3. Portion Out Your Workload
No matter how hard you work, how many people you employ, or how much machinery you utilize, a construction project is never realistically finished in a day. This fact is backed up by various particulars within the industry, such as cement drying, scaffolding, and risk management. As such, when working on borrowed time—so to speak—the most efficient way to get work done is by portioning out the workload. This includes breaking apart the project into multiple sections filled with various essential activities and assigning enough workforce for the tasks.
4. Provide Necessary Details Concisely
Once you have your basic outline, it’s time to fill it up with vital data. The purpose of a timeline, after all, is to inform you of the construction project’s progress. However, using too much information without consideration for the layout leads to you constructing walls of text that no one wants to read. As such, when you provide the necessary details, keep your spreadsheet concise and clear to avoid overcrowding your timeline with text.
5. Set Deadlines and Stick to Them
Much like businesses, deadlines can cause plenty of pressure and stress—especially the impossible ones. It’s never easy when you have to fight against work hazards, resource management, and time all at once. That’s why you need to set realistic deadlines for your project, and then do everything in your power to meet them through hell or high water.
Now that you now have an idea of how to create a construction project timeline, here are some of the best timeline templates you can find online.
Construction Project Timeline Samples
1. Construction Project Timeline
Whether it’s a commercial, hospital, or residential construction project timeline, you need to make sure that your document isn’t all design and zero information. While the standard and accepted layout of a “timeline” is a long line with information brackets incorporated into it, this doesn’t have to be the case all the time. As you can observe from this Construction Project Timeline, as long as it has a starting point and a finish line, it’s sufficient enough; it doesn’t even have to be a “line” per se. This particular template is free to use, easy to download, and is a viable option for anyone who needs a simple sample that gets the job done.
2. Geothermal Project Construction Timelines
One of the benefits of a construction management project timeline or schedule is that these documents allow you to keep track of crucial phases. For instance, when you’re in the middle of building a critical infrastructure like a nuclear power plant or geothermal pipes, there are parts of the build that require plenty of effort and precision to execute. Otherwise, the seemingly small and inconspicuous mistakes made through rushing will lead to structural instability in the long run.
As such, learn from this Geothermal Project Construction Timelines and plan everything out. This sample shows you the necessary steps the workforce had to take to ensure safety pre-construction, during, and after the project. It also gives you the importance of dividing the work into sections to ensure that each aspect is done well. To top it all off, this template is free to use, easy to download, and safe to store on your device.
3. Construction Project Timeline Sample
Another method of creating a construction project timeline is in the manner of the template provided above. In the same way as a basic checklist, this Construction Project Timeline Sample separates information into relevant sections, arranges them in order, and gives short descriptions of data. This document is free to use, easy to download, and safe to store on your device, so what are you waiting for? Download this PDF file today and enjoy the convenience and quality that this sample offers.
4. Project Construction Timeline Example
Another technique employed by this sample Project Construction Timeline Example is by using actual dates as a basis of reference for the information. Much like a construction schedule, this sample utilizes a combination of the date and activity as the caption for the summary that follows. Free to use and easy to edit, this template is also safe to store on your device, so what are you waiting for? Click the download button today!