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Auto-scheduling is a powerful feature of scheduling, which allows you to set up the start and finish dates for an entire Bid Schedule at one time.
In order to use auto-scheduling, you will need to set up your scheduling Activities in your Budgets. Most importantly, you will need to determine the Scheduling Order of the Activities, which determines what will be performed before and after what else. You will also need to mark your critical path Activities as critical.
You will also wish to enter some Duration’s. Some Duration’s, like inspections, may always take a day, and can be entered once in the Standard Duration field. Other Duration’s differ from Bid-to-Bid.
To assist you in determining Duration’s, Budgets can accumulate hours spent on a given Activity. (See Scheduling Fields for details.) So, if you see that 14 hours of painting are required, you could easily determine that the Activity will take two days. Or, if you have multiple painters, you may still enter one day.
Once you have set up the Scheduling Order and Duration’s, you are ready to auto-schedule. To do this, go to the Bid menu, and choose Scheduling.... Enter the Scheduling Information, such as the Start Date, Weekends, and Holidays, and press the Reschedule All button.
This will schedule all Activities used in the current Bid. Which ones will be used? Those that (1) have the Always Schedule field set to Y (Yes), (2) those that have both a Total Cost and a Standard Duration or Duration set, or (3) those that already have a Start Date entered. All Activities to schedule must have a Budget Code entered.
Note that scheduled Activities with no Duration’s will get their Duration’s from the Standard Duration. If there is no Standard Duration specified, a Duration of 1 will be used.
How will these Activities be scheduled? They will be scheduled in Sch. Order, even if the Budget List is not sorted by Sch. Order. The first Activity will begin on the Bid’s Start Date (or the first workday after the specified Start Date, if the Start Date fell on a weekend or holiday). The first Activity is generally marked Critical. All non-critical Activities after the critical Activity but before the next critical Activity are done is parallel, and thus given the same Start Date. (You may change these if you like). When the next (used) critical Activity is found in the list, it will be scheduled to start on the workday following the completion of the previous critical Activity (but not necessarily after the completion of non-critical Activities). The non-critical Activities following this second critical Activities will be given the same Start Date. And so on, until the end of the scheduled Activities.
The Finish Date for each Activity used is computed along the way, based on the Start Date and the Duration for the Activity, and of course the holidays and weekends set.
The Finish Date for the Bid is latest Finish Date for any Activity in the Bid, critical or not.
See also: Scheduling Overview, Scheduling Fields, Scheduling Information, Export to Scheduling
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