Much discussion has occurred on this site over the years regarding the domino effect of construction management where a schedule can be massively impacted by a single incident such as a late product delivery or a labour delay. The likelihood of such delays occurring and then a cascade of unintended consequences impacting future scheduled work increases dramatically once you venture into the unknown territory of highly custom detailed work.

One may consider my entire project to be highly custom detailed work, so how then am I not constantly subject to ridiculously over budget and over time house builds? I think this is because the initial stages of the project can be a lot more similar for any type of build than the final stages. Some parts such as drywall are basically the same in any project I would tackle, the board gets hung, the joints are taped, and so on. Another factor is experience that tells me what to expect from my crews in terms of production and pace. I have used some crews many times, so they dont deviate much from job to job.

The current stair project has been a very interesting wildcard in terms of timing. We got off to a very slow start, some of the components I thought were to be pre-fab actually became ‘site fab’, and, just due to the nature of having no stairs in place, complementary work cannot occur that would buffer us from schedule delays. So basically with this custom project, everything must totally be shuttered at the site except for the ongoing stair work which started January 9th and is now nearly done after two weeks. My schedule only factored in a much shorter install period that actually was supposed to end by January 9th, so all momentum and previously arranged work is in a bit of disarray.

I think what I have learned here, again, as if I didn’t know this before, is that custom work cannot be rushed and will not necessarily cooperate with a prearranged schedule. It is best to allocate a bigger buffer and avoid booking future work until you’ve got a better estimate on completion. While this doesn't lend itself to efficient use of the calendar, it is going to, in the end, be less discruptive