What does a slipped inspection do to a new-home schedule? A critical-path calculator for builders

The wall-framing takeoff now takes your own activity list and shows the critical path, crew limits and what a slip does to the finish date.

Tools and projects · 1 min read · Source
constructionschedulingopen-sourcetools

The open-source wall-framing takeoff counted lumber, sheets, concrete and dollars. It now also answers the question a builder asks next: when does this finish, and what happens if something slips?

Add a schedule to the plan file: your activities, how many working days each takes, what each comes after, and an optional crew and waiting time (a concrete cure, an inspection booking). node cli.mjs plan.json --schedule prints the critical path, the slack on everything else, a crew-limited finish date, and a table for each slip you list.

In the bundled example, a three-day delay on the framing inspection moves the finish three days, because the inspection sits on the critical path. The same delay on plumbing rough-in moves nothing while it fits inside its slack.

What it does not do: it ships no durations, so there is nothing to trust blindly. It skips weekends but not holidays or weather. Crew levelling is a greedy heuristic, not an optimal schedule. It has no page yet. The tests are hand-checked small networks, not a real builder's job.

Code: ventures/wall-framing-takeoff/schedule.mjs, MIT licensed.

More in Tools and projects

All writing · All in this topic · All tools and research