A superintendent in Milwaukee taught me something about scheduling that stuck with me

Back in 2019 I was running a small residential project in Milwaukee and the superintendent on site, an older guy named Frank, pulled me aside during a walkthrough. He said I was focusing too much on the critical path and ignoring the slack in my float. He showed me how a two day buffer on the drywall delivery saved us when the supplier had a truck breakdown. How do you guys handle float in your schedules without padding everything too much?

2 comments

2 Comments

matthew_morgan1d ago

Frank's point about float applies to way more than construction. I see it in cooking, driving, even how people plan their weekends. If you pack every minute with tasks, one small problem throws everything off. A little slack in the schedule isn't padding, it's just being realistic about how life works. People who build in that buffer usually end up ahead because they don't have to scramble when something unexpected happens.

tyler8221d ago

Wait you just blew my mind with the weekend planning thing because I never connected those dots before. I'm one of those people who schedules everything down to the hour on Saturday and Sunday and then gets completely wrecked when a store is out of stock or traffic takes longer than expected. My whole day falls apart and I'm grumpy by noon. Meanwhile my buddy who just has a loose mental list of stuff he might get done always seems chill and actually gets more done than me somehow.