Planning advice for contractors

The contract is signed, the Scope or Specification says the programme goes in as Primavera P6, and the tender programme was built in MS Project. An export produces a file, not a programme the client's planner will accept. This guide covers where NEC4, JCT and FIDIC put the software requirement and the first programme's deadline, what an import from MS Project keeps and loses, whether to convert or rebuild, and how to set the P6 programme up for the contract.

Most contracts ask for a programme of works, and many of the ones that reach a client are bars drawn without logic. This guide sets out what a construction programme must show, the types a project runs through from tender to as-built, how to read one in six checks, and what JCT, NEC4 and FIDIC ask of it, with a fixed price for having yours built in P6.

Primavera P6 is the industry-standard scheduling tool on major UK construction projects. It is also an opinionated one. Its defaults were shaped by contracts that work very differently from NEC, and a P6 schedule built to generic best practice will usually look fine on the surface and fail at the moments that matter most. This is the complete contractor guide to Primavera P6 for NEC programmes.

Excel is not a planning tool. It is a calculation tool with planning-shaped output. NEC contracts are built on logic recalculation. The seven recurring pitfalls of Excel programmes on NEC projects are not seven separate problems with seven separate fixes. They are seven symptoms of one structural mismatch between the category of tool and the category of contract. This is the complete analysis: why Excel cannot perform the contractual functions.

Most construction delivery teams still rely on fragmented spreadsheets, scattered emails and static PDF reports that take hours to compile and rarely tell the full story. The Contractor Performance Dashboard consolidates everything a Project Manager, Planner, QS or Site Manager needs into one coherent view: live SPI tracking, plan-versus-actual S-curves, structured obstacle logs, work-pack variance, four-week lookahead and compensation event evidence.

An NEC job won, the first programme due and the planning seat empty. This guide compares four ways to cover the seat, shows the weekly lookahead, obstacle list and monthly report that remote NEC planning support delivers, and says plainly when a full-time planner is the better choice.