A job programme built from the quote and shared with the client

From the quote, in one step, or by hand. Build from quote makes one activity for each priced section of the job’s quote, in order, each following the one before, with Practical Completion at the end, and shares out the weeks you give it by each section’s value.

• Tasks, milestones and summaries in a tree, so a stage can be broken into detail later without losing its links.
• Finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish and start-to-finish links, each with a lag or a lead in working days.
• A link that would make a loop is refused, and the message names what is in the loop.
• Scheduled on working days: Monday to Friday, less the England and Wales bank holidays.
• The critical path is drawn in red: the work with no room to slip before the finish moves.

Take a baseline and the programme measures against it: each activity, and the job, shows how many working days it is ahead or behind. Once work has started the dates are a forecast. Work not yet started cannot start in the past, work in progress finishes no sooner than what is left of it, and a job falling behind shows it without anybody moving a bar.

• Whoever an activity is assigned to records its progress, on the web or in the iPhone or Android app, with a note that goes under the activity’s notes.
• Giving somebody an activity puts them on the job, so they can clock in and out there and book their hours to it.
• Work, then Programme lists every live job with its forecast finish, its slip against the baseline and how much is done, the job furthest behind first.
• Take a snapshot of every job’s dates at once, and see later which have moved.

Planned against earned against actual. Planned value is the work that should have been done by now, earned value the work that has been done, and actual cost what the job has cost, the same figure job costing and the CVR show. They are drawn week by week as an S-curve and listed activity by activity, with SPI, CPI and the forecast cost at completion.

• An activity’s value is its price. Building from the quote values each stage with the overheads and profit spread across them, so the values add up to the contract sum.
• SPI below 1.00 means the job is behind its plan. CPI above 1.00 means the work done has earned more than it cost.
• A figure that cannot be measured yet says why, rather than showing a zero.
• Only people who can see job costs see the value view. Everybody else on the job sees the dates.

Yes, in the client portal, on its Progress tab. You choose in Settings whether clients see programmes job by job, for every job that has one, or not at all, and each job’s Client view shows exactly what its client sees.

• The client sees the planned and the forecast finish, how far through the job is, the stages with their dates and progress, and the milestones and whether each is done.
• Your notes, who is doing what, trades, float, the critical path, baselines and values are never shown to the client.
• If a programme would not reach the client yet, the Client view says why: the quote has no portal link, the job did not come from a quote, or your plan does not include the portal’s project pages.

NoteThe client portal’s project pages are included from Core up.

Yes, as a PDF on your letterhead, landscape on A3 or A4. The full programme is for your own meetings: every activity with its dates, float and progress, the critical path, the baseline under each bar and the milestones. The client’s version is what the portal shows.

• Drawn to print clearly in black and white, with the column headings repeated on every page.
• Both phone apps open either version on A4, to send to the client or print.
• Neither version carries prices.

It is a programme for running your jobs, not a planning package for a major project.

• It does not import or export Microsoft Project or Asta files.
• It does not level resources across jobs. Who is where each day is on the Schedule.
• It works to the England and Wales bank holidays, wherever the job is.
• Planning is on the web. The phone apps show the programme, record progress and open the PDF; they do not change the plan or share it.