A task schedule with dependencies, float and a visible critical path.
Programme, labour and cash flow. 5 questions answered below, each with the arithmetic behind it and the limits of what the tool decides. Open the Project Timeline tool.
A programme is a set of operations with durations and relationships, and the useful part is not the bar chart but the relationships between them. This timeline builds from the operations, their durations and their dependencies, and identifies the chain that decides the completion date. Durations come from quantities and productivity, which is why the labour estimator feeds it. Weather and access are yours to enter as allowances, because they are site facts rather than constants. What the tool does not do is track progress: a programme that is not updated against what actually happened is a drawing of an intention, and updating it is a separate discipline.
A small building with twelve operations: excavation at four days, footings at five, blockwork at eighteen, roof structure at six, covering at four, and the rest following. Blockwork at eighteen days sits on the critical path, so a week lost there moves completion by a week, while the four days of covering has two days of float. Weather allowances of one day in five on the external operations extend the completion date instead of being absorbed into a hopeful assumption, and the crew implied by eighteen days of blockwork is three masons, which is the number that has to be available on the day.
Operations, their durations and their dependencies. Durations come from quantities divided by productivity, or from figures you enter where you know better. Dependencies encode what must follow what, which is the part that turns a list into a programme. The output is a sequence with a critical path and float on the operations that have any.
From the quantities and the productivity rates, so a programme is built on measurement rather than optimism. Where you supply a duration directly, it is used and the derivation is not needed. Where neither exists, the operation is reported as unplaced, because a bar on a chart with no basis is why programmes slip on the first week and are quietly abandoned by the fourth.
Yes, on the operations that carry no float. The critical path is the chain whose duration equals the project duration, so a delay anywhere on it moves completion. The tool identifies that chain and shows the float on everything else, which is the information needed to decide whether a delay matters or can be absorbed.
No. Tracking progress means recording what has actually been done, against when, and recalculating from there, and that is a different exercise from building a programme. The timeline is a plan: it says what should happen in what order and how long it should take. Comparing that with reality is how a project is managed, and the tool does not pretend to do it.
They are allowances you enter. Weather, access restrictions and non working days vary by site, season and locality, and a default would be wrong somewhere. The tool applies the allowances you set to the operations affected, so a rainy season extension is visible in the completion date instead of emerging as a surprise in month three.